(Eleanor Jackson ENI)A conventional listing of the many and various positions James Edward Lesslie Newbigin held from the time he joined the Student Christian Movement in Cambridge, England, through his consecration in 1947 as one of the first bishops of the newly-formed Church of South India, to his retirement as minister of Winson Green United Reformed Church, Birmingham, England, in 1988, would hardly do justice to the depth and breadth of his contribution to the ecumenical movement and the church itself.

From his teenage rebellion against his Northumbrian Presbyterian background, to his last words - "For all that has been, thanks" - murmured to a friend before he died, aged 88, on 30 January, hope, humility and hard work characterised the life of Bishop Newbigin.

Professor Rudra, of Allahabad, India recalls that as a small girl in 1960 she stood in front of Lesslie Newbigin when he preached in Boston, Massachusetts. When he finished preaching, she asked: "What is a bishop?" He replied: "A bishop, my dear, is a wastepaper basket." He was then general secretary of the International Missionary Council, seconded from the Church of South India, and must have been feeling he was a worthless vessel, with everything dumped on him.

Lesslie Newbigin's association with India began in 1936 when, newly ordained as a Presbyterian minister, he set out as a missionary to work in the Church of Scotland district mission in Kanchipuram. He became fluent in Tamil and played a significant role in the discussions leading to the formation, in 1947, of the Church of South India (CSI), which brought together Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists. Lesslie Newbigin was one of the CSI's first bishops, serving from 1947 to 1959 in Madurai.

In 1948, the year after the formation of the CSI, he represented the church at the founding assembly in Amsterdam of the World Council of Churches, beginning a life-long association with the WCC. He played a key role in drafting the Message of the Amsterdam assembly and in organising the theological input for the WCC's second assembly at Evanston, USA, in 1954. As chairman of the International Missionary Society from 1958, and its general secretary from 1959, he used his intellectual abilities and diplomatic skills honed in India to achieve the successful integration of the WCC and the IMC at their assemblies in New Delhi in 1961. The fact that the WCC today, with church members on every inhabited continent, so strongly represents churches outside Europe and North America is in no small measure due to his pioneering efforts.

After the integration of the IMC and the WCC, Lesslie Newbigin became WCC associate general secretary and the first director of the WCC's Division of World Mission and Evangelism. In 1965, he was recalled to South India as Bishop of Madras, but remained involved in the life of the WCC, particularly its work on Faith and Order.In 1974, Lesslie Newbigin retired from South India and returned to Britain. Since his episcopal consecration in the CSI was recognised by Anglicans, he was invited to be an assistant bishop in the Church of England. But he returned to the tradition from which he had come, and joined the United Reformed Church, the product of a union in 1972 of Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

His retirement meant a new career, first as a lecturer at the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, and then, from 1980 to 1988, as minister of the United Reformed Church at Winson Green, Birmingham. Convinced of the need for the "re-evangelisation of the west", he regarded this as his most difficult missionary posting, as he and an Indian colleague built up an inner-city congregation. He became known as an outspoken critic of the "Western free-market culture" calling on the churches to challenge the immense power of this culture, which, he said, was an "idol not susceptible to moral persuasion".

From 1978 to 1979 he served as the moderator of the general assembly of the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom (the first, and so far, only, episcopally ordained bishop to hold this position), and after that continued to play an active role in the life of the URC. One of his last public appearances was in July last year, when he spoke out at the URC's general assembly against the ordination of practising homosexuals.

Yet Lesslie Newbigin would not want his past cherished and preserved except as a springboard for a vision for the future. He was always happier listening to his visitors' present and future plans than recalling his past.

He was a prolific writer. A bibliography prepared for a volume to mark his 85th birthday in 1994 listed 209 titles, but recent research in the WCC's library in Geneva revealed a number of omissions. A surprising number of his works are still in print. Of these, the most important heavyweight contribution is The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1987), in which he tackles the Christian crisis of confidence in the face of post-modernism and secularism, but the book which has been most widely read and has had most influence is The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches (1983). He dashed it off in about three days when he was enraged by preparations for a British Council of Churches conference on church and society, believing a shopping list of social issues was being considered without any undergirding doctrinal analysis. He challenged Christians to recognise they lived in an alien culture and to develop a proper, soundly-based biblical and evangelistic answer.

By the standards of religious publishing, the book was a best-seller, and the issues raised in it became the centre of a major WCC project on Gospel and Culture, which culminated in 1996 at the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism in Brazil. Then aged 86 and with failing eyesight, Lesslie Newbigin travelled to the conference, where he was greeted by a standing ovation when he addressed the meeting, without notes, for more than an hour.

In a statement issued today, the WCC said that the "loss of Bishop Newbigin will be felt throughout the Christian world". His legacy, the WCC said, would "live on and continue to shape the ecumenical vision for the new millennium".

The present moderator of the URC's general assembly, David Jenkins, said that Lesslie Newbigin had "proclaimed unity with great courage, probed for truth in turbulent times, and has led Christians deeper into faith".Perhaps the most important event of Lesslie Newbigin's life occurred in 1930 when he fell in love with Helen Henderson, the young woman interviewing him for the post of Scottish SCM secretary. He decided to try and ensure she would take him on as her husband, and, almost six years later, they were married. "Without her, my life would have been a poor thing," he once wrote. After 61 years' happiness, he leaves her, and their children, Margaret, Alison, Janet and John.

Ends

Missonary marks 40 years of service to Japan's Church

Forty years of missionary service were honoured with a resolution and a standing ovation by the Executive Council in November, thanking William "Fred" and Eleanor Honaman for "their inspiring example of unselfish, dedicated and effective ministry in the service of our common Lord."

On 1st November 1957, the council passed its first resolution on behalf of Honaman, appointing him "a missionary of this church." For the next 14 years, he served in the Episcopal Church office in Tokyo. From 1972 onwards, at the specific request of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, he served seven primates as they developed the Japanese church's role and brought it to full partnership in the Anglican Communion.

The NSKK, or Holy Catholic Church in Japan, traces its history back to 1859, when two American Episcopal missionaries were sent from China. Its 11 dioceses cover more than 300 congregations in Japan and Okinawa.

The Rev Samuel I Koshiishi, acting general secretary. Describes Honaman as "the man who appears almost everywhere in Nippon Sei Ko Kai."

Describing the missionary ideal of living together with the people as "a means for sacramental existence of the church," Koshiishi said, "Fred has been working here in Japan exactly in this way."

"Fred has always been clear about what he understands to be the mission of the church," said Presiding Bishop Edmond L Browning, a friend for nearly four decades. "He and Eleanor have always extended themselves in the best way they can to reflect the love and ministry of Jesus,"

Eleanor Honaman has devoted herself to the care and pastoral counselling of patients at St Luke's hospital in Tokyo. Fred is liaison for the American Committee for St Luke's and for the American Committee for KEEP (the Kiyosato Education Experiment Project, founded by Paul Rusch after World War II).

Looking back on these transformations, Honaman said, "You never know what God will work out. You can never plan it as well as God will arrange it for you."

He was instrumental in forging a number of companion-diocese relationships, most notably that between Central Pennsylvania (his home diocese), Kita-Kanto, and Dhaka in Bangladesh.

When Honaman applied for missionary work at the age of 26, he was already a father, a graduate of the Far Eastern Studies Centre at the University of Michigan, and a Korean War veteran who had been decorated with the Silver Star for his compassionate and courageous action in the field. Fred was the son of Suffragan Bishop Earl M Honaman of the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa, but he did not want to be ordained. "I knew that I was not called in that way."

His first position in Japan was business manager of the Episcopal Church office in Tokyo, but the role soon grew as he and Eleanor provided practical and personal support to many missionary families, including Edmond and Patti Browning.

The Rev Donald Bitsberger, a fellow Japan missionary, adds, "Fred was supportive of us and enabled us to adapt our lives in another culture and another church. He helped us to understand what it meant to be, in St Paul's words, 'ambassadors for Christ.'" More than that, though, "He helped the American church to understand what the Japanese church was facing, and what they both had to give to each other."

Honaman's "respectful and trusting relationship with the church and the primate" would stand both the American and Japanese churches in good stead during a time of upheaval and transformation. In 1972, the Episcopal Church office in Tokyo was closed.

"It was a great day in 1977 when the Japanese church became financially independent and realised its ability to continue on its own," Honaman recalls. The bridge between the two churches was maintained, however, through the continuing support of the Honamans' service. 'Honaman's salary as a missionary is the only Episcopal Church support the Japanese church receives.

As Honaman reflected recently on his mission career, he laughingly recalled one of the first Japanese words he learned to pronounce. "I use it still - when someone asks me to do something I say, "Hai, kashikomarimashita" (I understand and will carry out your request)." No word could be more characteristic of the ministry of Fred and Eleanor Honaman.