2008 should ring a bell for United Methodist s about the importance of this century's ecumenical movement whose message is that God's purpose for Christians is to reconcile God's fractured church and world. Jesus prayed "that they may all be one . . . so that the world may believe." (John 17:21)

One hundred years ago, Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement at Graymoor held the first Church Unity Octave praying for Christian unity. Every year between January 18--25, Christians around the world celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity together, with the encouragement of the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Also, in December 1908 the Federal Council of Churches (predecessor of the National Council of Churches) was formed and sent to the churches a Social Creed that prophetically called for healing many injustices of society. Now 100 years later the NCCC has formulated a new creed for churches to carry into the 21st century.

Our Northern Illinois Conference joined together in 2000 with other denominations to form an Ecumenical Millennium Committee in the Chicago area to invigorate the boundary crossing movement into the future in our communities. This year 20 denominations offered the Eighth Metropolitan Area Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Ecumenical Prayer Service which took place on Sunday, January 20, at Christ Community Church of God in Christ in South Holland, IL. The Rev. Dr. Daniel D. Davis III, professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary, and recent visioner at the Oberlin Conference on Faith and Order, preached on the 2007 theme, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5: 17).

The NIC Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns hopes that this year's Week of Prayer service, based on a liturgy created by international ecumenical partners, can be replicated in our local communities and be added to other local initiatives of ecumenical cooperation, such as pulpit exchanges and common social action. .

As United Methodist co-sponsors, the CCUIC is also cooperating in planning the 2008 National Workshop on Christian Unity to be held Monday through Thursday, April 14-17, in Chicago, at the Marriott O'Hare Hotel 8535 W. Higgins Road. The NWCU includes Ecumenical and denominational worships, and 18 Seminars on critical ecumenical issues relevant to a fractured world.

Rev. Catiana McKay, chair of our CCUIC and vice chair of the NWCU Local Plan Committee, and Rev. Edgar Hiestand, NIC Ecumenical Office, have helped the plan committee organize four local seminars: Dialogues with Muslim women, Interfaith work in Edgewater, Ecumenical work in Edgewater, and Justice ministries, including panelists Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, from United Power for Action and Justice, and Rev. Jacques Conway on gun violence.

On Tuesday, April 15 Bishop Hee-Soo Jung will preach during the combined United Methodist / Lutheran / Episcopal communion at 6:00 p.m. in St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Park Ridge. Wednesday evening there is a Cultural event at Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. Workshop registration ($125) can be done online at the NWCU Website www.nwcu.org.

Rev. Catiana McKay, chairperson of the Ecumenical Colleagues (ECCO), is also organizing the Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC) service Wednesday at 5:30. Significantly, given the CUIC agenda against racism, the service at First Baptist Congregational Church in Chicago founded as an abolitionist church, captures the larger purpose of why all this ecumenical talk/walk. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose holiday falls within Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, said in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in 1964, "We have inherited a big house, a great "world house" [oikoumene] in which we have to live together . . . This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical [oikoumene] rather than sectional." Jesus, who entered many an oikos, revealed God's plan that All people are to realize they are brothers and sisters in God's household

The CCUIC is offering information on these and other ecumenical and interreligious initiatives at district workshops in January, and on the NIC CCUIC website www.gbgm-umc.org/interrelig