Philip Potter

W. A. VISSER 'T HOOFT has for the past forty years
been identified with the Ecumenical Movement,
and particularly with the place of youth in it. With
him the role of youth in the life of the Church moved from
being a pious exhortation to a dynamic reality. He gave the
greatest impetus in this century to youth being at the forefront
of the battle of the Church militant rather than trailing behind
waiting to take the place of weary, battered warriors. This
achievement was one which began with himself and it was based
on his overwhelming sense of the sufficiency of God. Because
God alone in Christ is sufficient to do his work among men,
those who have accepted him gladly by faith, be they young or
old, are given an astonishing freedom from the coils of immobile
tradition, complacency and fear. They are accorded the glad
fearlessness of bearing to be the instruments of the liberating,
directing and creative Spirit, as fellow-workers with God in his
world and among his people.

When I first met and heard Visser 't Hooft at the Oslo World
Conference of Christian Youth in 1947, he was nearly 47. Yet
the fire was still burning in his belly, and it was he more than
any other speaker who set the hearts of so many of us burning
in utter reliance on the sufficiency of God, not as a means of

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