THE COMMITMENTS OF THE SALVADOR CONFERENCE:A WINDOW ON WORLD MISSION TODAY

Abstract

In response to the request of Christopher Duraisingh to write on the subject of world mission today, I could think of no better way of approaching the broad, unmanageable theme suggested by him than to use the Acts of Commitment made by the participants in the recently held Conference on World Mission and Evangelism, Salvador, Brazil, 1996. These Acts, drawn up in the course of a global, ecumenical conference on world mission at the dawn of a new millennium, have the virtue of crystallizing with freshness some of the principal contours of God's mission, and thus important directions for our involvement in world mission today. While the participants spoke with authority only for themselves, it will be obvious that Christians and churches around the world are invited and challenged to relate these commitments to their own situations and their call to witness to the gospel. I believe they are very relevant. Some preliminary remarks about the Salvador conference, as an event, are in order. They will enable us to better understand the significance of the Acts of Commitment. First of all, it is important to note that the focus of the conference, namely, the inter-relationships between gospel and cultures, had been a subject of discussion through an ecumenical study process carried out over four years. Through the active encouragement and guidance of the Gospel and Cultures desk of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) unit on mission, a fruitful reflection on many aspects of this focus had been developed with study groups in a multiplicity of local settings. While considering the overall theme of the conference, Called to One Hope: The Gospel in Diverse Cultures, a conscious attempt was made to use the prism of the inter-relationships between the gospel and cultures to understand the meaning of the churches' worldwide witness to God's hope revealed in Christ today. The study process had a direct impact on the preparatory document, which drew on the understandings that the more than sixty participating groups had sent in, and it influenced the heightened sense of awareness of the theological and contextual issues involved in relevant mission. At Salvador itself, the participants exhibited a keen desire to share their insights and questions at a global level. The exchanges and discussions were numerous, predictably uneven, often challenging. Some of this richness -- in terms of global awareness, theological discernment, and cultural sensitivity -- shines clearly through the commitments. I would like to link the above remarks to the following constatation about the conference: Salvador was an exercise of deep listening and new seeing. The Conference Message bears this out when it lists sixteen examples of hearing, seeing and first-hand learning. The evaluations and reports that come in also show that the colourful images of the Rainbow exhibition, encontros, worship and Bible studies, and the words of all those plenary and group meetings stirred the participants at many levels (emotion, cognition, will, etc.). While there were many points of tension and disagreement, deep rifts or conflicts did not appear. We need to ask why, of course, and we could be suspicious of the planning or methodology of the conference, but I think it is significant that an ecumenical gathering on mission was able both to affirm and to challenge several erstwhile deeply held, opposing views. Such was the case of the dialogue that took place between the militant evangelists and the culture enthusiasts, as Sam Ada, the WCC's secretary for Evangelism, has pointed out. Rather than wholehearted affirmation or all-out condemnation of either of these stances, the conference recognized their value but also challenged them and asked them to recognize their respective limitations. It is my belief that we have reached an important plateau in the articulation of insights on mission today. Salvador indicated that we are as ready to listen and learn as we are to account for our biblical, theological and contextual perspectives. …