Why Have a “Vision Statement”?
The WCC claims “no blueprint for foreign or global polity.” It offers no overarching visions of how life on earth should be ordered. To be sure, elements of the biblical vision of the kingdom of Goda reign of wholeness and harmony, of peace, justice, and righteousness, of healing and salvation, of freedom, prosperity and well-beingpresent an abiding judgment on the way things are in the world. When churches speak and act together on world issues, what they say and do must be evangelical, combining the hope and promise of the vision of the kingdom with a call to repentance, as well as accurate and convincing in its grasp of the social and political and economic realities. The persistent danger is that statements on public issues will emphasize prophetic denunciation of specific injustices without offering corresponding concrete suggestions for achieving justice (Introducing the World Council of Churches, p. 79). The dangers are of being mere talk without deeds, of being reactionary rath
