Presbyterian News Service

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01039
January 31, 2001

New applications boost WCC’s membership to 342 churches

by Jerry L. Van Marter
Ecumenical News International

POTSDAM, Germany – Nine churches, ranging from a church with 1,500 members on the Pacific island of Niue, to a Namibian church with more than half-a-million members, have been accepted as members of the World Council of Churches (WCC) yesterday, bringing membership in the world’s biggest ecumenical organization to 342 churches, including 35 associate member churches.

The applications were approved by the WCC’s central committee yesterday at a meeting in this German city near the country’s capital, Berlin.

The smallest of the new member churches is the Ekalasia Niue, to which about 75 percent of the inhabitants of the Southern Pacific coral island of Niue belong. The island has a total area of 260 square kilometers and receives financial support from Aotearoa/New Zealand. The island’s Polynesian population is overwhelmingly Christian. (New member churches are generally required by the WCC constitution to have at least 25,000 members, but there are provisions for exceptions.)

Originally set up on the island in the mid-1800s by missionaries from the nearby Samoan islands, the church was officially established by the London Missionary Society. According to a statement by the WCC, the "Ekalasia is ecumenically committed and active in the Pacific Conference of Churches. One of the main concerns the church is facing is the migration of people from the island to Aotearoa/New Zealand. This is related to questions of unemployment, low standards of education and the economic situation of Niue."

The other member churches accepted into WCC membership yesterday are:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia – a church of 550,000 members that grew out of missionary work by he Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission in the late 1800s.
The Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches, with 100,000 members in 749 congregations. The church dates back to Baptist missionaries from Sweden.
The United Reformed Church. With about 105,000, this church is the result of a merger last year of two WCC member churches – the Congregational Union of Scotland and the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom.
The Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. The result of a merger in September 1999 of the Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. The church has between 100,000 and 150,000 members.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana: Finnish missionaries from Nigeria established a Lutheran Mission in Ghana in 1958. The church now has 25 655 members, and has in turn sent missionaries to nearby Uganda and Benin.
The Africa Inland Church – Sudan. This church has 70,000 members in 154 congregations throughout the country and is deeply involved in relief work with displaced people in war-torn Sudan.
The Association of Baptist Churches in Rwanda (Association des Eglises baptistes au Rwanda). The association was founded in 1965, based on the work of the Baptist Foreign Mission Society of the USA. With 250,000 members in 120 congregations, the church is heavily involved in reconciliation and rehabilitation work.
The central committee also accepted a church from Myanmar as an affiliate member, and approved four regional councils of churches as affiliate councils – bringing to a total of 60 the number of councils associated with the WCC. And the central committee formally recognized two international ecumenical organizations as being "in working relationship" with the WCC.

The new associate member church is the Mara Evangelical Church, Myanmar. The Mara are an ethnic group whose territory spans the India-Myanmar border. Missionary work among the Mara was begun in 1907 by a British couple.

The four associate councils of churches include the French Protestant Federation (Federation Protestante de France), which, according to the WCC, "has been the main ecumenical partner of the WCC in France for many years. It has now expressed the wish to affirm this relationship by becoming an associate council."

The other new associate councils are the National Council of Churches of Burundi, the Federation of Protestant Churches and Missions in Cameroon (Federation des Eglises et Missions evangeliques du Cameroun) and the Malawi Council of Churches.

The international ecumenical organizations now in working relationship with the WCC are the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and the Ecumenical Youth Council in Europe.