WCC to Celebrate Centenary of Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in June 2010

Christians around the world are remembering the 1910 World Missionary Conference in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh as a key initiative that led to the ecumenical movement seeking the unity of the Church, according to the Ecumenical News International (ENI) website.

"The unexpected intuition to flash forth from the conference was the awareness that Christian disunity is destructive to the very mission of the Church, and the corresponding search for Christian unity began," said the Rev. John Gibaut, Director of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Rev. Gibaut was preaching at a service at the WCC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to mark the beginning of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, as churches around the world prepare to mark the centenary of the 1910 conference.

The WCC will play a leading role in the organization of a celebrative mission conference in June 2010 in Edinburgh, in coordination with partners in the ecumenical movement, within and outside the WCC's fellowship.