WCC NEWS: Latest issue of International Review of Mission focuses on “reconciliation as a missional task” 📕

The latest issue of the World Council of Churches’ journal International Review of Mission deals with one of the most urgent issues in the world today – reconciliation. Under the title, “Reconciliation as a Missional Task,” the issue explores the meaning of reconciliation, how it can be understood theologically, and what its missiological dimensions mean for the church’s missional task. Photo: WCC 27 May 2021 This is the second issue of the journal dealing with “mission and reconciliation” as a contribution to the WCC’s assembly in 2022, with its theme “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.” Future issues of the journal will focus on “mission and unity.” Reconciliation, according to editor Risto Jukko in the editorial, “is a task, a ministry, a mission that is given to us,” with reference to Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (5:14-21). “As Robert J. Schreiter has pointed out in many of his writings, reconciliation is ultimately spirituality, not a strategy to be implemented or followed, or a task to be performed,” notes Jukko. The latest issue presents various situations and contexts where reconciliation, in all its dimensions, is fundamental to the church’s missional task. These include Africa and South Africa, Guatemala, Indonesia, the Korean Peninsula, as well as the challenge of racism. Other articles deal with the “Great (whole) Commission”; discipleship as a missiological theme in recent ecumenical theology; the opening up of the Pentecostal movement to ecumenical collaboration; and the Maori concept of kotahitanga (indivisible oneness) and koinonia in shalom as the objective of the mission of God. Fundamentally, writes Jukko, “reconciliation is not something that we human beings could fabricate or produce by or for ourselves. The origin of reconciliation is God, and reconciliation is given to us by God. We humans can only experience and receive it as a healing, as a gift.” International Review of Mission is published twice a year by Wiley on behalf of the WCC. Read-only article from the latest issue:“Mission and reconciliation: Theology for a new remembrance,” by Rastko Jović Contents of the latest issue (May 2020): “Reconciliation as a Missional Task” The International Review of Mission in the Wiley Online Library Subscription information     See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland