Delegates to the 27th General Council approve Theology and Mission reports

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — On Tuesday, delegates to the 27^th General Council of the WCRC steadily made their way through approving two significant reports: one on “Persevere in Your Witness: Theologies for a Wounded World” and the other on Mission.

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The Rev. Dr. George Marchinkowski, general secretary of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, presented the reports section by section for approval, giving thanks to the delegates’ discernment groups for their thoughtful work. “Each day three of us who are discernment mentors go around to groups, and each day we give thanks for the quality of the input we received,” Marchinkowski said.

‘Theologies for a Wounded World’

Among the conceptual goals approved by delegates were doing theology as a practice of empathy, care, love and joy to sustain churches and individual believers to persevere in their witness in difficult times; doing theology as a communal activity of solidarity and accompaniment; and recognizing that human perseverance inspires theology in action.

Strategies include exploring ways to live into God’s covenants with humanity and creation, emphasizing human stewardship; developing a sense of critical openness to the diversity in expressions of our one shared Christian identity; fostering theologies of care, love, and joy; challenging the abusive use of end-time eschatologies, religious extremism, Christian nationalism and libertarian ideology; and contextualizing theologies of perseverance from our different regional contexts as a means of empowering communities with what we learn.

Mission

Delegates offered numerous amendments to this report, several of which were adopted.

After affirming “the great value in emphasizing continuity” with its foundational confessions, including Barmen, Belhar and Accra, the legacy “compels the church to discern its mission in an ever-changing, yet unwaveringly hostile world for the vulnerable, the poor, the excluded children of God.”

The mission of the church in the 21^st century is “fundamentally a call to join God’s rebellion against injustice, oppression and the forces of empire,” the report says. “It is defined by costly solidarity with the vulnerable, a prophetic critique of power, and a radical commitment to dismantling systems of domination — particularly settler colonialism.”

Conceptual goals include: the WCRC proclaiming “that mission is disruptive and transformative”; that it will work “for the realization of God’s transforming power leading to justice and peace, will continue to privilege the voices from the margins and outcasts from society, and will boldly proclaim God’s work and love to all; and that mission “is characterized by discipleship and partnerships between churches and around the world.”

Strategies include: to define ways of costly solidarity that transforms the way we do mission today, in that “mission begins with listening”; to continue the work of advocacy and expand advocacy platforms for engagement “that are built from within the local contexts of member churches’ reality of struggle”; and to continue to be in solidarity and support of oppressed people who are suffering in different contexts, in particular Palestinian people.

One strategy, which would be to “consider, recognize and declare the phenomenon of Christian Zionism as fundamentally evil, racist and a travesty to the Gospel,” was postponed for additional discernment.

“I think we can give a clap offering to ourselves for bringing this deciding plenary back to the time we have,” said the WCRC’s general secretary, the Rev. Dr. Setri Nyomi.

Nyomi noted that on opening day on Oct. 14, he’d announced that 98 member churches — about 57% of active member churches — were participating in the 27^th General Council. On Tuesday, he announced that as of Monday, that number had increased to 117 active churches participating, more than two-thirds of the active members of the WCRC.

“I think this body needs to recognize that,” Nyomi said.

The Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, is leading a PC(USA) delegation to the 27^th General Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Read additional reporting here and here.