Report of the general secretary - WCC Central Committee: Geneva, 26 August-2 September 2003

1. As you are certainly aware, this will be a fairly decisive meeting of the central committee. We shall be electing a new general secretary and shall begin to take the first steps looking towards the ninth assembly of the Council at Porto Alegre in 2006. Decisions about the theme, the allocation of seats and the basic shape of the assembly will be on our agenda in the coming days. However, important as these matters of decision-making are, we also need time for genuine deliberation. As you have seen from the agenda, the central theme for this meeting will be "caring for life". This has been one of the overarching themes for the work of the Council adopted after the Harare assembly. After considering the other three possible themes in previous meetings, it was decided to place the plenary sessions and the biblical reflections at the 2003 central committee meeting under this theme. I will therefore begin my report with some reflections on the importance of the theme "caring for life" for the life and activities of the WCC at this point in history. After a brief look at some important developments in the Council since our last meeting, I shall come back in the final part to the discussion which developed in response to my initial reflections last year about "a new ecumenical configuration for the 21 st century". With the explicit encouragement of the officers I shall try to take it a few steps further.

Caring for life

2. Caring for life has always been one of the central motivations in the work of diakonia and service in the Christian churches. Let me give you some examples from my recent visits to member churches. In March of this year I visited several churches in Asia, in particular the churches in Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Pakistan. The first three are countries which are marked by the very ancient Buddhist tradition which is rooted in a spirituality of caring for life. In Laos, the small Lao Evangelical Church has begun to emerge from a long period of repression and suspicion on behalf of the government. It has won respect and recognition through its dedication to serving the common good of the people. We were invited to be present at the ceremony of handing over to the supreme patriarch of the Buddhist community ten units of hospital beds destined for a hospital which has been built for Buddhist monks. In Thailand, the churches have for more than a hundred years held a central place in providing educational and medical services for the country. In Chiang Mai we visited the McKean rehabilitation centre, which had been established in 1908 as a place for the treatment of leprosy patients, and has now become a specialized centre providing rehabilitation treatment for people suffering from diverse impairments and injuries, Its imaginative approach to this growing challenge has become exemplary for the whole country.

3. Perhaps the deepest impressions I received during my visits to two schools for the blind and for the deaf in Rangoon, Myanmar. Again, they are unique in the country and young people are coming to these schools from far away in the countryside to learn basic skills that help them manage their lives. In particular they have pioneered in developing Braille and sign language for the Burmese context. The caring dedication of the teachers and the life-affirming spirit in these two schools are a form of Christian witness that is well understood in this Buddhist society. Let me add a very recent experience during a visit to Belarus in July. With the help of ecumenical partners, the Orthodox church last year opened a "House of Charity (or Mercy)" on the outskirts of Minsk. Among the many activities that are sponsored there are programmes of rehabilitation for children affected by radiation after the Chernobyl accident. For example, a very ingenious chair has been developed which enables measuring the degree of radiation in the body and thus to determine the therapy. Another programme helps people bound to wheelchairs acquire the necessary skills to carry on their lives. Other examples could be added, especially the responses of churches and local Christian communities in Africa to the growing number of persons, including children, who are HIV-positive; I remember in particular very exemplary initiatives in Namibia and Botswana. I am sure that each one of you could add further examples that would show how central the task of "caring for life" is to the mission of the church today.

4. At this meeting we approach the theme "caring for life" from a more specific perspective, i.e. the concerns about issues of bio-technology and the work among persons with disabilities. The other two plenaries on youth and on a Latin American regional perspective will also contribute to our reflection about the theme. The theme "caring for life", especially if approached in this way, confronts us with many of the fundamental spiritual and ethical concerns of our time, as they have been identified by the central committee in 1999. In addition, it could provide a learning field for developing a new ethos of the WCC. In fact, the expectations that the churches find the courage to address the fundamental spiritual and moral questions among people today is increasing everywhere, not least among those who carry social and political responsibility. This was evident at the meeting of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre in January of this year. It is here that the WCC can and is in fact beginning to make a difference, but this will require strengthening a culture of dialogue and an ethos of spiritual discernment leading us beyond the political struggles of the day.