EMQ

In recent months questions have arisen about the validity of indigenous church principles in relation to modern missionary work.

Henry Venn’s famous formula coined in 1861 as a definition of the autonomous church— self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating (extension)— has been so misused that massive education is necessary to review the thinking of both the donor and the recipient in mission-church giving.

A unit of the World Council of Churches sponsored a symposium which has fiercely attacked missionary work among Indians in South America.

To understand the Barbados Declaration we certainly need another document to interpret the document. The symposium of secular anthropologists, who composed the statement, met as part of the World Council of Churches “Program to Combat Racism”, and operated within the frame of reference of the doctrine of liberation.

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has chosen “Salvation Today” as the umbrella topic for its next assembly to be held in Bangkok late in 1972.

On the night of March 25, 1971, negotiations in shambles, President Yahya Khan of Pakistan gave the order to his troops to smash East Pakistan, beginning with the capitol city, Dacca. That first night Sheikh Mujib, head of the Awami League, was captured, the Dacca radio station commandeered, and many, many people killed.

Whether you are making shoes or planting churches you face the constant problem of how much to emphasize quality and how much to emphasize quantity. And people may disagree about where to strike the balance.

“Everyone in Latin America sighs for `the revolution’ as if they were sighing for the Messiah,” says Orlando Sandoval, director of the University Student Center in Chile. In his country “the revolution” came quietly when Salvador Allende, a Marxist, was elected president in 1970.

(An interview by John K. Branner)

Allen Thompson didn’t receive my sheet of paper with resolutions on it at the close of GL ’71. Nor did I send it to him. But I did take his exhortation seriously when he warned against putting off what you intend to do as a result of what you have learned at GL ’71. These reflections express the burden of what grabbed me.