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.
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.
A unit of the World Council of Churches sponsored a symposium which has fiercely attacked missionary work among Indians in South America.
Every message basically has two dimensions: form and meaning. Form involves the given language, a specific language level or style, the particular grammatical patterns, specific words, the gestures, etc. Meaning relates to the content.
“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.
In April, 1906, speaking in tongues broke out in the Azusa Street Methodist Mission, Los Angeles. The experiences in Azusa Street blended with similar events in other areas to give birth to the modern Pentecostal movement. Whether or not it is accurate to speak of a “Pentecostal Revival” in 1906 is a debatable point (Orr 1965:240).
Belgium is still a mission field. If missionary work as traditionally understood is needed anywhere in the world, it is needed in Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Greece. A Congo missionary told me that the Belgian churches— the free evangelical ones— are way behind the Congo churches.
Since August, 1971, a monetary crisis has been shaking the commercial world. It had an immediate effect on the lives and work of missionaries. In major areas of the world the U.S. dollar now buys less units of the local currency than in past years. The purchasing power of the missionary was immediately cut when this revaluation occurred.
The need to plant vigorous evangelical churches in Europe is acute. It is illustrated by the statement of a State Church pastor in Germany who declared, “We are all Christians here without having the least suspicion as to what Christianity is.” Four hundred years after the Reformation there are still 250,000 towns, villages and cities without a Protestant church.
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