Commentary: WCC Getting Together and Getting Along

on February 14, 2008

GENEVA—For the World Council of Churches, getting together and getting along prove to be monumental tasks. The distances are great—both in thousands of miles traveled for meetings and in barriers of language, culture, and church tradition surmounted. However, convening February 13 in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Council of Churches Central Committee (WCCCC) willed itself off to an earnest and affable start to its eight-day meeting.


The World Council of Churches Central Committee plenary as seen from the press table. Presiding are the Central Committee officers, from the left: His Excellence Metropolitan Prof. Dr. Gennadios of Sassima, Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; the Rev. Dr.  Walter Altmann, Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil; the Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches; and the Rev. Dr. Margaretha M. Hendriks-Ririmasse, Presbyterian Protestant Church in the Moluccas (Indonesia).

The WCCCC is an unwieldy 156-member coordinating cabinet for the World Council of Churches, which holds a General Assembly only every eight years. Because of cost considerations, it meets only every 18 months. Thus, committee members do not necessarily know each other well—or at all.

Yet members are bound together by strong ecumenical longings that the Church would be visibly one, and so they gather in a colorful show of diversity in that unity. With simultaneous translation from and into at least four languages, with an intriguing array of clerical and ethnic garb, and with a broad and delightful mix of ethnicities, the Central Committee meeting presents a colorful and fascinating spectacle of world Christianity.

In the early hours of its meeting, the Central Committee displayed some of its corporate personality. That personality includes a generous display of courtesy and deference. Many high-ranking church leaders make up the membership. In the same room and on a generally level plane are archbishops and bishops and metropolitans of their communions, denominational presidents and cabinet members, movers and shakers, His Eminences and the Very Right Reverend Doctors—some of the most prominent people in their national churches, and often in their nations as a whole. A formality of titles and regard reigned, and the very-important personages seemed to genuinely care about one another and seek to give honor rather than demand it. Indeed, God was honored in how they related to one another.

But even at that, not everyone agreed. A few concerns bubbled up, seeking a place to be considered. A few preliminary speeches were made, setting the groundwork for the pursuit of new agendas or the correction of present agendas. An episode early in the meeting illustrated how the WCCCC tends to handle such occasions.

A Slight Made Right Without a Fight
A rather routine report on the assignment of committees became a little delicate when a WCCCC member who had previously chaired a committee was left off not only the committee leadership, but also the committee membership altogether. Bishop Dr. Owdenberg Moses Mdegella of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, the member thus slighted, rose to ask why he had been left off the Ad Hoc Committee on Communication.

Bishop Mdegella’s concerns ranged beyond his own participation. “I am worried that a small group of four people is being given a lot of power,” he warned, painting a picture of cronyism and concentration of power. In the choosing of the committee, he felt, “the moderator of the first group influences a second group, and so on. There is a tendency of one person going from one chair to another chair.” This way of forming the ad hoc committee sets up “a small-core clique, and it should not be accepted.”


Clergy attire varies widely at WCC meetings.

The bishop’s concerns were quickly addressed by two of the very people who perhaps would be thought part of that clique. The Rev. Dr. Fernando Enns, a German Mennonite representing the Vereinigung der Deutschen Mennonitengemeinden, expressed his opinion that the committee leadership is intended to be “not the most powerful group, but the responsible group.” Enns did not mention that power does  usually accompany responsibility in any organization. Enns concluded that “as a member of the Programme Committee, I am happy with this solution.”

Likewise, Lois McCullough Dauway of the United Methodist Church expressed her support of the new arrangement that would cut out Bishop Mdegella. Dauway is the proposed moderator of the committee. Then it was time for a break, and it looked like the proposed committee structure would remain intact, despite the personal and procedural concerns raised by Bishop Mdegella.

However, immediately upon calling the session back into order after the break, the WCCCC Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Walter Altmann of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, proposed adding three more members to the Ad Hoc Committee on Communication. Among those three was Bishop Mdegella. Apparently the WCC leadership huddled over the break and hastened either to correct an oversight or reverse a decision in order to assuage Bishop’s Mdegella’s concerns.

It was not entirely clear if the moderator’s suggestion was an impressive display of concern for individual expression or a glaring display of corporate spinelessness in the face of minor opposition. One would think the former. At any rate, the leaders heard the concerns and altered their plans. The WCCCC concurred with the chair by raising orange cards in consensus (look for more about consensus in a following article).

Interestingly, following his raising the concern, Bishop Mdegella had indicated his willingness to be cut out of the communications leadership and simply go along with the committee structure first announced. He had stated his concerns, and he wasn’t going to cause any further disruption. However he seemed pleasantly surprised with the announcement after the break and concurred with the new consensus that he be added back in to the committee. All was well on the floor of the Central Committee.

No comments yet

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.