This consultation provided an invaluable opportunity to face anew the economic and ecological situation. It is said that concern for ecology will distract attention from more basic issues of social and economic justice. But mounting evidence is convincing that these two concerns can no longer be treated separately. A diminishing resource base combined with an increasingly polluted world fundamentally alters former definitions of political and economic responsibility.

The suffering poor -- poor nations and the poor people within wealthy nations -- should have fair access to the world's resources and fair protection from its pollution. And this generation should respect nature both in its own character and as a support for human life, so that future generations may have opportunities comparable to those we inherited, admitting that technological achievements may compensate for some diminished natural resources.

These convictions and commitment to the implications to which they give rise, involve many questions that need further attention -- economic, political, technological, ethical, and theological. Thus, the consultation recommends that:

• The Foundation and the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, to whom we are grateful for this present opportunity, distribute our findings to other interested groups; and that

• they convene future consultations to advance this unfinished work and to keep abreast of changing world conditions.

• Likewise, that the World Council of Churches' Commission on Justice, Peace and Creation explore the possibility of convening a larger meeting on these matters to help enable the World Council of Churches' Assembly in 1998 to set before the churches a more complete and substantial account of the prospects for humankind and the obligations and responsibility before all people.

Such consultations should be broadly representative in several respects, including:

• interdisciplinary, involving the skills of specialists in science and technology, economics, community organizing, and theology; 

• diverse in geographical location, ethnic identity, cultural setting, economic situation, ideological inclination to give voice in the debate to the diversity of experience, reality and insight;

• bringing together women and men, young and old, especially the voices usually excluded from Summit Meetings of the world's leaders or absent from the chorus of builders and shakers who generally dominate the Bretton Woods Institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Through such a process the churches may contribute to the conversations and decisions which affect the world at large. They may also contribute to their own self-understanding, raising consciousness of both their complicity in the world's troubles and the new relevance of their faith today.

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland" said Jahweh through the prophet.  (Isaiah 43:19, Holy Bible, New International Version)

The churches, too, are called to do new things. .