Ecumenicity: The U.N. of the Church

Once again, my apologies for limited postings. This is a rough quarter for me, but I promise I'll get back at it. Its my last year at seminary, so there's lots of things to consider. And maybe sometime, like Ryan, I'll have to shut down my blog so I'm more marketable :) Until then, read on.

One of the blessings of my current job is that I've gotten the opportunity to dip my feet into the waters of ecumenism like never before. I've had experiences in the past of bi-lateral ecumenical projects, working with one or (at the most) two churches on a mutual interest. The sadness of the Greenville situation is that, with churches feeling the inevitable pocketbook pinch the parishoners are feeling, staff and programs are being cut at such an alarming rate that our only choice is to link up on things. Its a blessing in disguise.

I've gotten the opportunity most recently to be involved with a couple different community-wide youth ministry groups. What I find interesting is that when senior pastors get together, they often meet at a fancy restaurant and function largely as a social support group. Of course, that's needed, but what's been great about the youth groups is that they're very much action-oriented. It makes sense, after all, that we plan events together if our kids all go to the same schools and are faced by the same issues in the community. We get to pool our expertise and get to pool our knowledge.

Theoretically, this works, and, for the most part, I'm appreciative of them, like I said. But like anything, there's pitfalls. So, for as apt as I am to paint rosy pictures of ecumenicity, here goes some ventures of critique.

My main thesis is what my title says: ecumenical bodies look like and function like the U.N. Now why is that bad, you say? My wife will tell me that the U.N. is the greatest thing ever to happen to the world, and I'll agree to a point. The problem, of course, is two-fold. On the one hand, the U.N. gets held captive by the reluctant and the crazy and the rich (or some combination of the three). On the other hand, because the U.N. has the interests of everybody in mind, it really has the interests of nobody in mind. Its very similar in community ecumenical groups. When the senior pastor group runs a community dinner for poor people, the rich people foot the bill, the church with the most volunteers hold the most influence, and the few crazies in the group are the loudest ones of all, wagging their fingers at people, telling them they'll go to hell if they don't repent over their mashed potatoes. When the local ultra-fundamentalist church puts in their bulletin the following Sunday that 25 people "got saved" through the free turkey give-away, and the Methodist Church can't recall anyone coming to faith, you see the heart of the matter. Or consider the other scenario: the community youth pastors band together to host "insert-crazy-youth-event-here". Many kids come, but have no clue who put it on or how to move along in this new fascination they've found. If you allow one youth pastor to hand out business cards, you open the floodgates for crazy recruitment fairs instead of sensitive youth events.

Like everything, the answer has to be somewhere in the middle. If you read my blog a lot, you'll remember my comparison of the CRC folk and the Amish in our community. That's not a good alternative, but polite hand-shaking community events aren't the answer either. I've more and more been leaning on what Steve Anthony is doing in Toledo, OH. He runs an organization which unifies local churches like a denomination.....not based around doctrine, but based around common interests (ie, local poverty, local schools, gospel missions, shelters, etc.). So, you set up an administrator for the "ministry shares" to be dispensed instead of each church fighting the daily barrage of people asking for electric bill payments (my daily exercise of answering machine cleaning). In addition, the churches participate in mutual agreements about encouraging Christian accountability by fighting church shoppers. Each church agrees to not receive members (or even deter visitors) who have not made peace with their former congregation and been "released" by their council/board. Its radical, but its realistic and effective.

In the end, the needs will inform the means. If you're in a community like ours where needs are so great, then a coordinated effort of Anthony's model is about the best thing one can think of. In other scenarios, the needs may be different and so should the means. What this requires is a great degree of trust and a great deal of theological humility. To be sure, we in the CRC can take this lesson to heart, but its just as true of conservative Lutherans or Baptists, as well. We often practice what Pope Benedict preaches: our church is the only true church and the others are a nice try. Make the starting point "The Church" not, "our church" and maybe we'll start getting somewhere.