I had the privilege of attending the World Council of Churches General Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany as a Methodist delegate. It was a fabulous experience, full of colour, diversity and inspiration.

The WCC is made up of 352 member churches, bringing people together from every continent and from a wide variety of Christian traditions. The Assembly meets every eight years and in 2022 was attended by 3500 people, so it was a massive gathering. As one person said, the whole world was present in all its diversity.

Considering how far we had to travel, Aotearoa was well represented. Our group was made up of Methodists (including our General Secretary, Tara Tautari), Anglicans (including Anne Mills, Dean of the Auckland Cathedral), Presbyterians (including their Moderator, Hamish Galloway) and members of Te Runanga Whakawhanaunga o Aotearoa: the Māori Council of Churches (including Te Aroha Rountree and Bishop Kito Pikaahu). One of our Methodist youth (Filo Tu) was also there as a steward.

Some of our families also came - I had my laundry fairy - and we bonded well as a group. We were together on our final evening when we heard that Queen Elizabeth had died. Bishop Kito led us in a mihi and that was a special moment.

The Assembly meets to make decisions to guide the work and programmes of the WCC, however it’s far more than a decision-making body. On the opening day the Moderator of the Central Committee, Dr Agnes Abuom, set the tone of the Assembly. She talked about how relationships are fundamental to the ecumenical movement. “That’s what makes experiences like the assembly so precious and formative”, she said. “We encounter one another - in all our uniqueness - and recognise a neighbour in the stranger, unity in the midst of our diversity”.

I really appreciated that emphasis and the way it fed into the Assembly programme. Every day was a mix of very large gatherings (worship, plenary sessions and business) and much smaller groups (home groups, regional and denominational gatherings and conversation groups). We had a chance to experience the excitement of being together as a worldwide family and the opportunity to share at depth and get to know people.

One of the other strong themes of the Assembly was the idea that we were coming to Karlsruhe as pilgrims on the path towards justice and peace. In a world facing many global challenges, disciples of Jesus of Nazareth are called to be “people of the way”, people walking and working together for the end of war, for greater economic justice, for the healing of creation, and for the wellbeing of future generations. This emphasis was reflected in the content of the Assembly. We discussed things like climate change, the war in Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East and human sexuality.

Given the large and diverse gathering, it wasn’t surprising that people weren’t all of one mind on many of these issues and it was interesting to see the way this was dealt with. There had been suggestions that the Russian Orthodox Church should be expelled from the WCC because of its support for the war in Ukraine. The Acting General Secretary of the WCC, Professor Ioan Sauca, argued instead that the WCC was created as “an open platform for dialogue and encounter, for discussion and challenging one another”. We are here to build bridges, he said, not to destroy them; to bring people to dialogue, not to expel them. The Russian Orthodox remained although they were left in no doubt that the Assembly denounced the war as “illegal and unjustifiable” and called for an immediate ceasefire and for dialogue and negotiations to secure a sustainable peace.

We know from our own church debates that there’s often tension between dialogue and taking action for peace and justice and that was present at the Assembly. There were times when people voiced frustration and a desire for less discourse and more action. The Assembly’s final message, “A call to act together” acknowledges that in the Assembly we used many words, but from these “we have fashioned a new resolve. Now we ask God’s assistance to transform our commitments into action” working with all people of good will for the sake of the last, the least and the lost.

May it be so.