c) on the holistic understanding of mission, being developed in recent years within WCC. Especially we considered this conference important and providential among other world mission conferences of this kind, because of its new shift in mission paradigm, which makes it resonate with the theology, spirituality and contextual realities of our Orthodox Churches. We Orthodox do not only benefit from the ecumenical encounter and dialogue but also bring challenges coming from our history long mission experience and our mission theology with echoes from the time of the early Christian communities.

Especially with regard to the Orthodox Church of Greece, I would like to stress that our Church, without forsaking her traditional achievements, is characterised by a visibly extrovert tendency to make new "openings" to the world, in the spirit of Pentecost, within the frame of mutual understanding and cooperation with every constructive agent to man's profit, and by the need for direct contacts and relations among people. This tendency results from the fact that our Church acknowledges the vital importance of the values of friendship, respect, freedom and love for the person itself, independently of religious, cultural and social differences. Within this context of the Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit plays a specific role, the Church of Greece welcomes members of the WCC from different countries of the globe, emphasizing the significance she gives to the world fellowship of Churches "which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures... to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit". After the successful organization here in Athens of the Olympic Games, almost a year ago, the Church of Greece is willing to offer the possibility to the member-Churches of WCC for a fruitful exchange of missionary experiences.

4. You are all well aware of the constant complaints, concerns, and even objections of the Orthodox concerning a number of issues (from the decision-making procedures, and the forms of common prayer, to ecclesiology); you may have even experienced, or heard of, the vocal reactions of a segment of our Orthodox community against our decision to host this event. For the last forty years or so there were reasons, some justified and some unjustified, that made the Church of Greece, though one of the founding members of the WCC, to limit her participation to it to the least necessary point. The recent developments with the "Special Commission on the Orthodox Participation in the WCC" have convinced us that a new era in WCC-Orthodox relations is about to be inaugurated. We are grateful to the organizers of this conference that for the first time the agenda of a World Mission Conference was set with Orthodox sensitivities in mind.

5. All these, as well as our determination to witness our Orthodox faith to the world in a visible manner, will hopefully result in the awareness that Orthodoxy has an important role to play within the wider Christian community, faced with a growing hostility against our faith. Our Church has never denied dialogue; on the contrary, she seeks dialogue along the line of St Markos Evgenikos of Ephesus, the bastion of our faith, who stated that "when some differ from others and do not enter into dialogue, the difference between them seems to be greater. But when they enter into dialogue and each part listens carefully to what the other is saying, their difference is found to be much smaller".

6. Allow me to reflect from our Orthodox theological perspective on some very important aspects of your conference. First of all I rejoice on the liturgical dimension, quite evident in the title or theme of the conference which is shaped in a prayerful manner, i.e. as an invocation of the Holy Spirit to heal and reconcile. In post-modernity the importance of liturgy and of the experience in general, are significant elements for our Christian witness, equally significant as the proclamation of the Gospel. Almost all Christian missionaries recognise today that the exclusive emphasis on the verbal proclamation of the Gospel and the rational comprehension of truth dangerously diminishes the effective reception of the Gospel. Many people nowadays remind us that we have to open our mind towards knowledge- science, development, finance, profit.