Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has launched an international search for 30 religious youth to embark on a 10-month journey of interfaith service for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

“As changemakers for current and future generations, young people have the opportunity to establish a new vision of inter-religious interaction that places protecting the welfare of the world’s poorest at its center,” Blair stated in an official announcement.

The "Faiths Act Fellows," as the 30 "inter-religious ambassadors," aged 18 to 25, will be called, will be brought together by the Faiths Act Fellowship to first go through a two-month intensive initiative that includes fieldwork with primary health care partners fighting deaths from malaria in Africa. more >>

A delegation of African Christian leaders joined their American counterparts this week on Capitol Hill to give voice to climate change concerns and its impact on the lives of poor Africans.

Crops are failing and storms are increasing across Africa, says the group of Christians from Uganda and Zimbabwe to U.S. congressmen, according to the National Council of Churches USA.

Delegate member Rosemary Mayiga, a Ugandan Catholic and rural economist, says crops die and African farmers have to plough and plant again because of climate change. more >>

Hundreds of churches and Christian organizations around the world will pray for peace this Sunday on International Day of Prayer for Peace.

In the United States alone, nearly 140 congregations and Christian groups are organizing public prayer events on Sept. 21.

The day will also feature a coordinated event involving different countries around the world for a 24-hour prayer chain. In total, nine countries – America Samoa, Canada, Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand, Norway, Samoa, Tuvalu and the United States – will be linked in the day-long prayer event. more >>

An ecumenical church delegation witnessed last week a war-ravaged South Ossetia where whole neighborhoods had been razed or torched during their visit nearly a month after the war.

Members of the World Council of Churches paid Russian and Georgian Christian communities a visit on Sept 3-7, with the South Ossetia trip taking place in the latter half of the trip. The first sight they saw when they reached South Ossetia were villages that were destroyed house by house.

They also saw incidents of looting and arson, as well as carloads of people presumed to be vigilantes. more >>

A delegation from the World Council of Churches began its five-day visit to member churches in Georgia and Russia on Wednesday with the goal to facilitate harmony between the two Christian communities despite their countries’ current political conflict.

"We expect this visit to encourage Christians in both countries to keep talking to each other and praying for each other," said Elenora Giddings Ivory, WCC director of Public Witness and Global Advocacy.

"If Christians in Georgia and Russia manage not to allow the divide between their countries to separate them, they may help their governments to move towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict." more >>

The world’s largest ecumenical body celebrated its 60th anniversary Friday afternoon in Amsterdam, Netherlands, at the same church it had held its opening service decades ago.

Representatives of member churches gathered at the Nieuwe Kerk Church for “prayerful celebration” for the official founding of the World Council of Churches on Aug. 23, 1948.

At its founding, the WCC had only 147 member churches but now it has grown to 349 churches, denominations and church fellowships representing more than 560 million Christians worldwide. more >>