travel, hotel and booking Information

Students attend World Council of Churches assembly

Date 3/9/2006 12:00 AM | Topic: News

This February, three Luther students and a faculty supervisor traveled to Porto Alegre, Brazil to attend the ninth assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an international conference attended by delegates from 348 Christian churches located in over 120 countries.

The assembly, which is held every seven years, was an opportunity for the WCC to formulate overarching policies, as well as to spread its ecumenical message to people unfamiliar with the organization.

Leah Bock ('06), Niki Mosier ('08), Carl Westphal ('08) and Germano Streese, a visiting assistant professor and reference librarian originally from Brazil, left for Porto Alegre on Feb. 10 and remained for a week of lectures, forums and workshops until Feb. 18, when they returned to Luther.

All of the activities at the assembly were designed to parallel the topics that church delegates were discussing: HIV/AIDS prevention, water and land issues, youth leadership and overcoming violence. The purpose of the activities was to facilitate dialogue on the churches' roles in these issues.

Prior to the trip, the students had not had much experience with the WCC.

Westphal was intrigued by the organization after hearing about it in a religion class and attending an information session.

"I honestly had no idea there was such an organization at the time and it excited me to think there was one, especially considering how large it is," Wesphal said.

Mosier echoed his excitement.

"It sounded like a really awesome way to connect faith and social justice issues," she said.

Mosier, one of the co-leaders of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, found the trip relevant to her life at Luther.


"I went to a lot of workshops on HIV/AIDS and was able to bring a lot of that back here with me," Mosier said. "The workshops and connections I made are also going to be helpful in a research paper I am writing on HIV-positive women in African countries."

Traveling to Porto Alegre was familiar for Westphal, who had studied abroad in Brazil over J-term. This didn't mean that the assembly wasn't memorable, however.

"There were many workshops that stick in my memory," Westphal said. "Specifically, I attended several workshops on ecumenism that were both informative and challenging."

The week-plus that the students spent in Brazil was the result of both an organizational and financial collaboration. Students were able to make the trip in a large part due to aid from Luther's Sense of Vocation program, student congregations and First Lutheran Church in Decorah. The trip was also coordinated largely by Streese and Mike Blair, campus pastor, who, according to Westphal "did a ridiculous amount of work."

Blair said the administrative work was made easier by the students' anticipation of the trip.

"I became an agent for them [the students] to make connections with people, and since they had such an interest and enthusiasm it was easy to do work to make it happen," Blair said.

One aspect the students were interested in, and which they learned more about at the Assembly, was the idea of ecumenism. Ecumenism is at the center of the work of the WCC.

"The ecumenical movement brings churches together, not in terms of creating a 'mega-church,' but instead allows churches to come together for common good," Streese said. "With the shared core of Christian belief, we can sit around a table and discuss how the gospel of Jesus can be expressed in concrete ways in the world."

Streese, an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, has been involved in the ecumenical movement. He was enthusiastic to attend the assembly, which was the first WCC assembly to be held in a Latin American country.

The assembly was split into two sections. One featured 700 official church delegates who revised the WCC's constitution and discussed policy on international concerns. The other section, entitled Multirão, focused on workshops and forums and was attended by various church congregations and groups like the Luther students.

One congregation, composed of working class Brazilians, traveled for four days in a rented bus from the northern city of Belem do Para.

"When they got there, they were so happy," Streese said. "For them to take the time and money to attend was incredible. They sold T-shirts to help pay for their trip home. It was very inspirational."

Westphal believes he learned several important lessons at the assembly, especially "the importance of exposure to information and differing viewpoints."

This trip is not the first time that the WCC has made an impact at Luther. This past fall, representatives from the WCC visited Luther and other Midwestern colleges where they gave lectures on the ecumenical movement and led class discussions. Besides creating awareness, the tour fostered relationships between the WCC and Luther that laid the groundwork for the students' trip to Brazil.

For more information on the World Council of Churches, visit or .

--

Jeff Bozeman

[ Comment, Edit or Article Submission ]