Mission and Ecumenism in 2010

The great missionary conference of 1910 was the culmination of the Victorian evangelical passion to “bring the world to Christ in our generation.” It was later judged to be the birth of the modern ecumenical movement. Mission and Ecumenism were seen to go hand in hand. Working together, the Churches could accomplish anything in a world which was increasingly celebrating the achievements of the human race. Nothing was impossible for the race or the Gospel.

The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the Great War in 1914 brought the end of a lot of that triumphalist view of human nature. But mission was more than ever on the agenda. There was work for the Church and it was in the new ecumenical context. Worldwide, denominations merged and united in new alliances and structures, often in the name of “mission”.

A hundred years later, Mission is still running its course – after a fashion. But not much in mainstream denominations which are in lockdown to somehow turn the outgoing tide. And Ecumenism is also eluding us in a retreat into flogging the dying horses of denominational brands.

Here in the Far North, a pioneering and spirited adventure of four decades of actually doing ecumenism at district level is being dealt a hefty blow by our parent denominations. As they spread their failing resources more thinly they are demanding that our ecumenical district organisation be sucked into their structural death-throes.

I think Northland deserves something better from them.