Churches Together in Pilgrimage (PDF)

(Published in 1989 for the Inter-Church Process Not Strangers but Pilgrims).
The next steps for Churches Together in Pilgrimage include definitive proposals for ecumenical instruments. These have been revised in the light of the churches’ and other bodies’ responses to the Swanwick Report and the Reports of Working Parties on Ecumenical Instruments produced earlier in the Not Strangers but Pilgrims Inter-Church Process. The Introduction spells out the radical shift in thinking, feeling and action required at all levels, local, regional and national, and the radically new style of working which will result when ‘ecumenism as an extra which absorbs energy’ gives way to ‘ecumenism as a dimension of all that we do, which releases energy through the sharing of resources’. The Swanwick Declaration ‘from co-operation to commitment’ and the Swanwick Report’s description of the Context and Content of our Pilgrimage, lead through common sections on Membership, Meetings and Finance, to specific proposals for Churches Together in England, ACTS (Action of Churches Together in Scotland), Cytun (Churches Together
in Wales), and a Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. These are commended to the churches’ Synods and Assemblies for decision in 1989 in the hope of their implementation in 1990.