Perspectives

No, not the friends of someone with an over assertive personality.....Bossey is the Ecumenical Institute near Genava and closley linked with the World Council of Churches.  The friends are a small group of people in the UK who have or have had a close involvment with the centre and try to encourage the link and new initiatives.  We met on Monday 18th at the CTE offices in London and heard, amongst other things, of the plans for two students of Bossey from China to spend Chritmas in Milton Keynes as part of a gradually developing link.  Milton Keynes, with its long ecumenical experience is working towards establishing a dimension of ecumenical theological reflection and education and sees the link with Bossey as an important dimension of this. The centre runs courses throughout the year and has a graduate student programme but can also be used for independanetly run seminars and conferences. Have a look at their website .

The meeting was held from October 13th to 15th October at the Swanwick conference centre. Its origins of  lay in the joint resolution presented to both Methodist Conference and URC General Assembly in 2008. There has been a liaison group in existence for some time, dealing with grass roots issues whilst at the same time the Strategic Oversight Group, consisting of the Moderators and Presidents, the general secretariat of both churches and the shared treasurer has looked at more 'conceptual' issues of working together and the potentials for closer union. It was this group which organised the joint council. In the event there were probably those who would have liked the councils to have achieved much more, especially given that one of the papers which came to the meeting was a proposal to work towards a uniting church with the Church of England. The meeting stayed, by and large, on a 'getting to know' you level with the exception of issues in the area of youth and chil...

Ecumenical officers from the Baptists, Church of England, Methodists, Roman Catholic and United Reformed Churches came together for 48 hours at the Swanwick conference centre from 11th to 13th October. This was primarily a conference focussed on the Edinburgh conference of 2010 but with a retrospect to the first conference in 1910. What where the characteristics of the Church and society reflected in the first conference, how have things changed over the century in between and where are we now? The standard of input was extremely high and the papers are being made available on the CTE website. One of the noticeable aspects of the meeting was that some people commented on the becalmed state of ecumenical relations in the UK. This was responded to by referring to the changed nature of the dynamics of Ecumenism which is becoming increasingly diverse, moving into areas that were not originally on the agenda. There is progress towards closer relationships between the URC and the C of E,...

The CCU is the Church of England body which deals with its ecumenical relations. It met for 24 hour's in Woking over the 29th and 30th September to consider an agenda which included its relations with the other churches of the Porvoo agreement, the Methodist Church and it received a report on the work of a small group which has been meeting with the URC. This will hopefully lead to some significant celebrations in 2012 which will be the 350th anniversary of 'the great ejectment', when many priests were ejected from the Church of England and became independents. The meeting also spent a long time considering a document on local unity in mission which maps out almost the entire landscape of C of E ecumenical involvement. It focuses in one part on the scope of the ecumenical canons which provide the legal permission for ecumenical work at parish level. If the document is properly handled, it could go a long way towards encouraging closer working.  From a URC point of view, ...