Editor EMILiO CASTRO

Managing Editors T. K. THOMAS THOMAS F. BEST MARLIN VANELDEREN

Editorial Assistant JOAN CAMBITSIS

The quarterly of the World Council of Churches

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The World Council of Churches opens itself to the possibility of profound change at its general assemblies. Coming every seven years, the Assembly is, in the words of the Constitution, the Council’s “supreme legislative body”. Every member church is entitled to send one or more delegates to contribute to the deliberations and cast a vote. That makes the assembly a forum of the churches whose diversity and representative character are unrivalled as an occasion for Christians to present a contemporary testimony and to express a common mind about what they ought to be doing together in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

To be sure, not all assemblies embrace the radical possibilities inherent in their constitutional function “to determine the policies of the World Council”. Shaping an assembly’s assessment of the ecumenical situation, the state of the world and the possibilities of the WCC are decisions of previous assemblies and the history, programmes and structures of the Council. Moreover, the assembly’s large size and relatively brief duration are not conducive to detailed decision-making.

Yet the occasion of an assembly - with the extensive preparations for it by the WCC’s governing bodies and staff and the churches around the world - inevitably prompts discussion of the future of the World Council of Churches. As the churches have prepared for the Seventh Assembly in Canberra, there has been heightened awareness of the value and need of raising such questions together.

One may suggest several explanations for the increased urgency of our discussing what the WCC is and what it might be.

0 Most obvious are the vast changes that have shaken Central and Eastern Europe - entirely unforeseen at the Vancouver Assembly. Even if it is too early to speak confidently of long-term consequences, it is clear that the “end of the Cold War” is a momentous change for an organization like the WCC, whose history so often bears the marks of that geopolitical conflict.

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