New forum’s ambitious goal—get the world’s Christians talking

Posted: 8/31/07

New forum’s ambitious goal
—get the world’s Christians talking

By Adelle M. Banks

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Like cousins at a big family reunion, representatives of the various streams of Christianity from across the globe will gather this fall near Nairobi, Kenya.

The Global Christian Forum is a rare opportunity for Christians who don’t always speak to each other—and in some cases have never met—to spend a few days together and simply get to know one another.

It’s not, supporters and organizers say, meant to be a new large organization with a new large agenda for the world’s Christians.

“Enormous numbers of Christians do not talk to each other,” said Cecil Robeck, a Fuller Theological Seminary professor and Pentecostal who serves on the forum’s planning committee. “They talk about one another or they just try to do their own thing.”

Robeck and other committee members hope the gathering, set for Nov. 6-9 in Limuru, Kenya, will open new conversations that might not have occurred a generation ago.

Existing ecumenical organizations often have differed on whether evangelism or social action should be their focus.

Groups such as the World Evangelical Alliance and the World Council of Churches gather smaller circles of Christians and have differing ideologies or political persuasions that have kept them apart.

“I think, increasingly, a whole new generation is saying, ‘This is nonsense. This is a violation of what we should be about,’” said Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, a member of the planning committee and a president of Christian Churches Together, a U.S. group that shares a similar vision.

Some 250 representatives of Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians will break into small groups at the global meeting and share their “faith journeys,” study the Bible and discuss the results of meetings that brought dozens of Christians together ahead of the gathering in Kenya.

The last regional meeting, held in June in Chile, included Latin American and Caribbean religious leaders. Members of Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal and Protestant churches attended.

Those involved in the upcoming meeting say it’s uncertain where it will lead. Another could be set for a future date or other regional gatherings could be planned.

Denton Lotz, outgoing general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, said he hopes Christians can gather and realize the basics of their faith on which they agree.

“We’ve been invited to a table to discuss and to see: Is a forum a potential avenue for Christians around the world to share with one another those things that unite us more than those things that divide us?” Lotz said.