Church leaders work toward historic new "interconfessional entity" at January meeting.

On Jan. 7-9, 50 church leaders from a very broad range of Christian churches met together at Camp Allen near Houston, Texas, to work toward the launch of a historic new interconfessional entity called Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT). Stanley Noffsinger, general secretary of the General Board, attended for the Church of the Brethren.

The purpose of CCT is "to enable churches and national Christian organizations to grow closer together in Christ in order to strengthen our Christian witness in the world." Churches from all major Christian families—evangelical/pentecostal, Catholic, Orthodox, historic racial/ethnic, and historic Protestant—are moving toward joining together to launch CCT in the spring of 2005. Never before in the history of the US has such a broad and widely representative group of churches come together in this way, according to a release from CCT.

At Camp Allen, church leaders and representatives of national Christian organizations prayed and talked together, identified and achieved consensus on all major issues related to the founding document, engaged in discussions on both the nature of prayer in diverse Christian traditions and the explosion of Christianity in the global South, and deepened their fellowship in Christ through numerous personal conversations.

More than 25 Christian communions are currently officially engaged in deciding to become founding participants of CCT, in ways appropriate to each church's polity. It is expected that a substantial number of denominations will decide to become founding participants of CCT in 2005.

Source: Newsline 2/06/2004
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