Volume 9 – Issue 2

Mr. Chairman:

When approached to disclose to this conference my inner wrestlings of heart and conscience rising from this fresh exposure to the Word of God, and to the voices and concerns of my brothers and sisters, my first instinct was to draw back.

Eventually someone will pick a name, but so far no one has proposed one. How do you adequately define and identify a small but significant group of evangelical churches in Japan that are rapidly adding a new hue to the already colorful church history of their country?

One of the good things about the “Salvation Today” conference convened by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches at Bangkok, Thailand, December 29, 1972 through January 8, 1973, was that you could form your own opinion of it without much fear of being contradicted.

When the theme for the eighth ecumenical World Mission Conference “Salvation Today” was announced shortly after the Uppsala Assembly in 1968, many evangelical minds all over the world rejoiced.

The experience of revisiting an area of the world after an absence of over twenty years is both exciting and frustrating. This latter is especially true when one is expected to submit his impressions to the scrutiny of the public.

Over fifty years ago several U.S.A. based younger churches established missionary churches in the Caribbean. Others did so since then; and over the years, almost all have sent many missionaries and given much money for the growth and development of these overseas churches.

The purpose of this article about the recent “Salvation Today” conference is to attempt to react to it in the perspective of its own particular history. The brochure describing the conference program, and at least three other things written in anticipation of Bangkok, have sought to establish a continuity and development from Edinburgh, 1910 to Bangkok, 1972-73.