The head of the World Evangelical Alliance, Geoff Tunnicliffe, was in Germany last week for the Rostock rally, and to meet with church and government leaders.
He represents around 430 million Christians worldwide as head of the WEA and is currently driving forward a humanitarian campaign called Micah Challenge to make sure politicians do everything in their power to halve extreme poverty by 2015.
Christian Today caught up with Mr Tunnicliffe to find out more about the social justice work of the WEA and its response to G8.
CT: You met with many church and political leaders while you were in Germany. What has been a particular highlight been for you?
GT: I think one of the highlights for me has been the growing awareness for German evangelicals to embrace an understanding of integral holistic mission in terms of word and deed, proclamation and demonstration. I was very impressed with that growing vision among young and old evangelicals here.
I was here for Kirchentag [a five-day German Christian conference] and I think it makes a statement about the continued relevance of the church in society and what is being called post-Christendom Europe.
To gather 100,000 Christians in Cologne in what is a growing secularised continent is quite impressive.
CT: You met last week with a representative of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office. How did it go?
GT: I was very pleased with the reception. They seemed to affirm our commitment to Micah Challenge of holding governments to account but also playing a significant role as Christians in nation-building and contributing to the global response to the poor and neglected in societies around the world.
CT: G8 leaders agreed a $60bn aid package for Africa. Are you pleased with that?
GT: Actually I am quite disappointed. On one level, the good thing is that they reinstated the goals of Gleneagles for aid but the disappointment is that there is no timetable of when that is going to happen and in reality not much of the money that has been committed again is new money.
At Gleneagles they said they were going to commit to full availability of antiretrovirals but now they are talking of 50 per cent. Five million people could now die because of that decision.
