So What Is the WCC, Anyway?

GENEVA—Jesus had a communications strategy: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” It worked and is working still.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is working on its communications strategy, which it needs to work and to work well. On day two of its February 13–20 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the WCC Central Committee heard from its Director of Communications, Mark Beach. A Mennonite from the United States, Beach arrived in his position in Geneva last summer. Since then, he has been studying the organization and hastily preparing a communications strategy. He is rolling it out at this meeting, hoping the Central Committee will buy into his proposal, so he can continue implementing the strategy.

WCC Director of Communications, Mark Beach, proposed a new communications strategy for the organization emphasizing the words “unity,” “witness,” and “service.” (Photo © WCC / Peter Williams)

Beach is asking the fundamental questions communications directors start with: Who is the WCC? What do they do? And why does it matter? In his conclusions, Beach has either found the exact essence of the WCC—so accurate that three major speakers have spontaneously used the same words as he—or he has done an excellent job of briefing three rather independent parties to get each to bolster his point. Either way, it was a masterful job by Beach.

The fact of the matter is that the WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia, the WCC Central Committee Moderator Walter Altmann, and His All Holiness Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox branch of Christianity, each used in a major address the words that Beach had discovered to describe the WCC: unity, witness, and service.

• On Wednesday in his Moderator’s Address, Altmann reminded the Central Committee delegates that, according to the WCC Constitution, “the primary purpose of the fellowship of churches in the World Council of Churches is to call one another to visible unity in one faith and in one Eucharistic fellowship, expressed through worship and common life in Christ, through witness and service to the world, and to advance towards that unity in order that the world may believe” [emphasis added].
• On Thursday in his Report of the General Secretary, Kobia stated that “Unity, common witness, and service are somehow the three basic building blocks of the WCC’s DNA.”
• Then on Sunday, the Ecumenical Patriarch H. A. H. Bartholomew proclaimed that “… it is my firm belief that the three pillars—unity, witness, and service—on which we built the Council 60 years ago, must be retained and even strengthened.”

Let No Good Idea Go Uncriticized
Beyond distilling the WCC to the three words, Beach also listed eight strategies, complete with implementation plans. Communications need to “strengthen the overall profile and image of the WCC, find agreement on a focused message to reinforce the WCC profile and image, build internal and external communication skills among staff,” and so on. Beach is obviously a good communicator himself, since his plan was clear and direct. Besides that, it made good sense.

“The better the work we do in the WCC, the better our communication will be,” said Bishop Dr. Martin Hermann Hein of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland. (Photo © WCC / Peter Williams)

But with a group the size of the Central Committee—more than 150 members—and with such diversity, somebody is bound to not buy just about any idea, and this was no exception. “I am concerned if the wording of the message doesn’t happen through the communication itself, but rather by the communication department,” worried the Rev. Frank Schurer-Behrmann of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (the main Protestant church in Germany). “These three words generate more questions than answers. For instance, we are not showing unity…. Service may be a little strong. Maybe we should use dialogue, and then witness can be brought in.”

“The WCC has produced materials, but how far have the materials penetrated the local church?” asked Bishop Taranath S. Sagar of the MethodistChurch in India. “In many countries the systems are not available to accept the materials of WCC. We need to teach churches how to get it.”

The Rev. Carlos Duarte of the Iglesia Evangelica del Rio de la Plata in Paraguay, one of the few WCC churches of the Pentecostal stream, disliked the word service. “There can be military service,” he argued, obviously disdaining that context. “And service even covers bathrooms,” he noted, referring to rest rooms commonly being called los servicios in Spanish. What did Duarte prefer in place of service? “Solidarity is much more important,” he argued.

When the subject of WCC communications came back to the full Central Committee from committee on February 19, the wording finally approved in place of unity, witness, and service turned out to be Greek: koinonia, martyria, and diakonia, with the freedom to use whatever words work best in a given language. “It was precisely because the words are hard to define that we want to go with the Greek,” explained communications committee chair, Gregor Henderson. Thus a concept that started out profound in its simplicity and easy recognition became practically unintelligible to those not theologically trained, and hardly snappy or memorable.

Not everyone, however, wanted to alter Beach’s plan. One of the eight Central Committee Presidents stood up for the report. “Three basic words,” began H. B. Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durres and All Albania of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania (names and titles can be a mouthful in the WCC). “To communicate to others what we are, we need to be more simple, clear, and faithful.”

Yes, but “wecan only show in our window what we are selling in our shop,” cautioned Bishop Dr. Martin Hermann Hein, also representing the Protestant church in Germany. Hein has become a bit of a burr under the WCC saddle, having aired in a pre-meeting news interview major concerns about the General Secretary’s travel schedule and management style. “The better the work we do in the WCC, the better our communication will be. The work we do is good, but nobody knows.”

Maybe that will change under Mark Beach. Then again, the work does need to be good, because better publicity of disturbing actions would be no boon for the WCC.