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News from the Ecumenical Committee
SPRING 2002
Sent to all District and Synod Ecumenical Officers, Synod World Church Advocates and Synod European Partnership Co-ordinators for copying and distributing to local churches.
Partnership in the world Church The European Region of CWM has appointed Francis Brienen as its mission enabler. The new CWM emphasis on the regions will mean new structures and new money to challenge the European Region (URC, Union of Welsh Independents, Presbyterian Church of Wales, Congregational Federation and the Reformed Church in the Netherlands) to partnership in mission at home.
The Window on the World conference of the European Region, Swanwick, 3-9 August, has Musa Dube from Botswana as Bible study leader and an aboriginal group from Taiwan as worship leaders.
The Belonging to the World Church programme is using a body called International Ministry Exchanges for short term exchanges, no longer only in the developed world. The BWC one-year scholarships for overseas partners will now, because of demand, focus on the Church Management course at Selly Oak. There are now guidelines for the Global Partners' programme which encourages small group exchange visits with CWM partners.
Leaders from our Ghanaian partners, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, will meet with the URC in May to review the post of Ghanaian minister for London. This post, based in the two London synods, is a bridge-building one both within the Ghanaian community, and within the URC.
In search of Christian unity - by various paths Church of England/Methodist/United Reformed Church relations: a resolution to General Assembly will commit local churches, District Councils and Synods to study and respond to both Conversations on the Way to Unity and An Anglican/Methodist Covenant by 31 March 2003. A leaflet to assist the URC in making a response to both reports will be available by General Assembly. The Church of England and the Methodist Church are producing study group material on An Anglican/Methodist Covenant and theological briefing material, and are running day courses for their ecumenical officers to brief them on how to introduce the report. They do not include the trilateral report in this.
Two new LEPS between the URC and the Church of Scotland, in Aberdeen and Barrhead, are likely to come to the CofS Assembly – at the same time as the proposals of the Scottish Church Initiative for Union are running into difficulties.
Models to enable single-ethnic congregations, largely not worshipping in English, to become fully part of the United Reformed Church, continue to be explored – drawing on the experience of the Uniting Church of Australia.
The anglican Church in Wales is beginning to formally consider the revised proposals for an Ecumenical Bishop in East Cardiff. Such a post would be an ecumenical break-through. The proposals come to our Assembly this year
The committee now has a representative from the Finance Committee and from the Racial Justice Committee
The Secretary for International Relations introduced the General Secretary and the Convener of the Ecumenical Committee to the work and staff of the World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches on a recent visit to Geneva.
A brief commentary from the URC Advisory Group on Faith and Order on the Leuenberg document, The Church of Jesus Christ, is now available from this office.
At the Assembly of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, in late February, the URC was represented by David Cornick, John Rees, Andrew Bradstock, Sheila Maxey, Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, Wilma Frew, John Young, Nikki Andrews, Jackie Yeomans, Lorraine Downer, Ray Adams, Ruth Clarke. An excellent lecture by Grace Davie on the Church in Europe today, entitled From Obligation to Consumption can be found on the CTBI web site – as can other material from the Assembly whose theme was In Search of Holy Ground
John Young, Jenny Poulter, Hugh Graham, Angela Gemner-Snell, Sheila Maxey and two others will attend the June Theological Consultation with the Church of the Pfalz. The theme will be developments in worship, especially ecumenically.
Tony and Valerie Burnham visited our CWM partner churches in Mizoram and Bangladesh on behalf of the URC.
As the Britain and Ireland representative on the executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Church, Elizabeth Nash was invited to report annually in person to the committee, once her term as a member ends this summer.
Revd Chang, Jen-Ho from the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan will be the URC's newest mission partner through CWM when he begins his chaplaincy post, based in Manchester, in August.
John Rees (Convener), Mary Buchanan, Darnett Whitby-Reid, Phillip Jones, Elizabeth Nash, Bryan Shirley, Cecil White, John Smith (Scotland), Stuart Jackson (Wales)
Representing other committees: Carole Ellefsen-Jones, Alistair Ellefsen-Jones, Hugh Graham, Suzanne Hamnett, Rosemary Johnston, Avis Reaney, Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, John Crocker (Convener of the International Exchange Sub-Committee), Representing other churches: Colin McClure (Presbyterian Church in Ireland), Elizabeth Fisher (Church of England), Peter Sulston (Methodist Church).
Sheila
Maxey, Secretary for Ecumenical Relations [ecumenical@urc.org.uk] Philip
Woods, Secretary for International Relations [international@urc.org.uk] Veronica
Singh, Personal Assistant to Secretary for Ecumenical Relations Doris
David, Personal Assistant to Secretary for International Relations.
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