This seminal outlook continues to deepen as the MECC discovers how increasingly significant its role becomes in the Middle East and worldwide. Five key themes characterizing its program and activities:
1. The MECC is committed to strengthen a sense of unity, confidence, continuity and purpose within the fellowships of its member churches. The activities and programs of the council seek to encourage Christians to remain in the region and to make positive contributions towards its new and better future.
2. The MECC encourages its member churches to support and uphold each other as they help their people understand their faith and witness. Within the MECC Christian dialogue takes place on all levels, from the pastoral grass-roots to academic halls, from formal dialogue among church leaders to the day-to-day fellowship among Christians on the street. With greater maturity, they respond to the demands of their faith and witness.
3. The MECC builds bridges of understanding and mutual respect between Christians and people of other faiths. The council believes that Christians have a vital role to play within the Middle East’s pluralistic society. Although numerically small, a self-confident and committed Christian community knows how to respect and celebrate diversity. The MECC is therefore well positioned to be a bridge between people of different faiths.
4. The MECC nurtures within the churches the spirit and resources for service (diakonia). The Middle East is an arena for economic, political and often violent conflict. In this environment the legions of the poor, the down-trodden and exploited, the sick and suffering, the deprived, disenfranchised, and displaced grow more numerous every day. What guides the council in its ministry of compassion and service is the realization that Christ died for all people. To heal, to transcend barriers, and to touch the spiritual as well as the material, social and physical needs of people is to imitate Christ.
5. The MECC is a mediator not only between Christians and churches in the Middle East, but also between them and their brothers and sisters in Christ elsewhere. Social and cultural gaps often impede or undermine understanding. But with its historical heritage, the council is uniquely equipped to bridge these gaps, to nurture trust in partner relationships, and to focus broad Christian concern for justice, peace and the relief of human suffering in the region.