Abstract
Emilio Castro is Director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. Born in Uruguay fifty-three years ago of a Chilean father and a Spanish mother, Castro graduated from Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and studied for one year under Karl Barth in Basel, Switzerland. He began his pastoral ministry in Bolivia with the Methodist Church in the 1950s, arriving soon after a revolution that had totally shaken the nation. This was a period of great upheaval and growth in the life of the Methodist Church, which until 1952 numbered only five hundred members after fifty years of work in Bolivia, but suddenly—due to various factors—grew to more than four thousand members. In this context the young pastor witnessed the power of the gospel of the kingdom to provide the basis for living in society with meaning, justice, and responsibility. In 1957 Castro took up a pastorate in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he developed a popular—and controversial—TV program dealing with these themes of the gospel Before coming to Geneva and the World Council of Churches in 1973, Castro worked for seven years in the continentwide ministry of UNILAM, an ecumenical agency concerned with the development of Protestant unity in Latin America.
Today Emilio Castro is one of the most influential—and still controversial—leaders in the world mission of the church. While teaching a seminar at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, Ventnor, New Jersey, in January 1981, he shared some of his thoughts on recent developments and directions in world mission with Editor Gerald H. Anderson, Associate Editor Norman A. Horner, and Research Assistant Robert T Coote of the International Bulletin.
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