Mission and Ecumenical Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia:: The Reformulations Comprehending Socio-Cultural and Religious Life of the People of Asia

Foreword More than a century ago, the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, in its Second Commission, discussed the relations between the questions of the Home Church and the Churches in the mission fields. The Western Churches' mission then considered the churches in their mission fields as younger churches. The presumption among the delegates by and large at that time was about the ascendancy of the mission agencies and their parent Churches in the West over the younger churches planted as offshoots of their pioneering work in the mission fields. The follow-up of the Edinburgh outcome was the impetus for the modern ecumenical movement. The subsequent efforts for coordination in the mission fields led to the creation of National Missionary Councils in various countries, which eventually converted themselves into National Christian Councils or National Council of Churches (NCCs). The NCCs became the focal point of inter-church activities and were branded as ecumenical structures. The impetus and the reasons for the genesis and metamorphosis of regional ecumenical organisations, such as the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), were different from those of the contributions of the missionary movement. However, today what we witness is that Western dominance has ended in their former mission fields or in places where they had initiated churches in Asia. The churches that were once the fruits of the missionary movement are now playing a vital role in the life of the ecumenical movement in Asia.

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