The very use of that word denomination has become a handicap when discussing Christian unity with some persons. There are those, all too many, who insist upon defining that word pejoratively to mean willed distance, stubborn views, and overt division. The original use of the word when first applied to some church group had none of these connotations. Nothing negative was associated with being a “denomination.” Historian Winthrop S. Hudson has explained that “The word ‘denomination’ implies that the group referred to is but one member of a large group, called or denominated by a particular name.” [Winthrop S. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity; A Seventeenth Century Conception,” in Denominationalism, ed. by Russell E. Richey (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977), p. 22.] In tracing the first uses of the word back to the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in seventeenth century America, Hudson was offering a statement about how those early churchmen explained their diversity within the wider Church. It was their belief—and it had been the belief of the major Protestant reformers before them—that the Church does its work in the world by assuming some organizational or institutional form. At the same time, however, those leaders understood that no single institutional form can qualify to be identified as the whole Church. They were aware that the true dimensions of the Church are not constricted by the boundaries of human organizational concerns. Those leaders wisely stressed the importance of Scriptural truths, not the organized form of the group of persons who held, believed, and promoted those truths. It must be said, then, that the first uses of the word denomination were not to express exclusiveness but to express diversity in a related community. It was a word of confessed community, explaining some questioned method or form as a practical unit representing the whole church in some strategic way.
A group of persons “denominate” themselves when they achieve a sense of peoplehood and become covenant-sharers holding common beliefs, values, and interests which they desire to preserve and pass on. Those beliefs, values, and interests will tend to promote a group identity, and inspire loyalties, duties, attractions, preferences, and, finally, some structure by which that identity can be reinforced and sponsored. There is nothing wrong about this, and no negatives should be registered against it. It is how any “culture” develops, religious or otherwise. This is not to deny that some groups have become problems because of pride and prejudice against those who do not belong, all of which forbids fellowship with other Christians; it is rather to say that no one form should be judged divisive just because it is a form. Organized units in the Church can be practical bases of community life; they can provide needed contexts for nurture, relations, and mission. The diversity reflected between organized groupings need not mean distance nor does it always spell division. Diversity is not division when the spirit of relating to those beyond the group is kept alive.
Denominations are basically contexts of community. They each provide orientation to some particular emphasis or emphases of the larger Church’s faith and life. When each one is true of the spirit and life of the Church, it represents the whole, however different its style and form might appear to those who do not readily understand it. The existence of diverse groups in the Church allows a wide patterning for diverse persons to learn, share, and live the Faith. If any denomination lives with this as its primary concern, then those who relate to it as members receive positive benefits from it.
No denomination should seek to highlight itself as anything other than a part of the wider Church. It should aim to reflect and represent the wider Church by being a group of believers who have agreed to function with this as their concern, taking some specific approach for cause. This is usually the case with a local congregation that develops; it can also state the case for many larger denominational groupings.
The New Testament is filled with references to social groupings of believers which functioned separately along well understood lines of difference and preference. The social groupings called “house churches” were a kind of modified institutional form. Each separate house-church group operated within agreed organizational features. Each had recognized leaders, patterns of life, codes for regulating behavior, and procedures for receiving and retaining what Paul referred to as the “right hand of fellowship” (Gal. 2:9). This gesture, together with the “holy kiss” (or kiss of peace), was an understood sign of agreement and acceptance among those who were members of the group. The persons who gave their hands in fellowship and met with embrace thus reaffirmed their recognition of each other as those who belonged to each other and the Lord, and they did this sharing on the basis of known norms. This should be understood as a part of the institutional side of group life.
To be sure, there are more problematic aspects when a group structure becomes complex and when the “institutional” side begins to take on a life of its own. Institutionalism is always a danger when the life of any group deepens in history, tradition, and its effects upon those who relate formally to it. Avery Dulles writes, “A Christian believer may energetically oppose institutionalism and still be very much committed to the Church as institution.” [Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1974), p. 32.] We must be, because institutional features generally develop as any group gathers a history around itself. Whether that group be large or small, congregation or denomination, that history it gathers around itself will have its organizational side. This is inevitable as any group adapts and responds to historical conditions of its time and place and people.
House churches, congregations, denominations, all these are voluntary societies. At their best they are ways of gathering believers and socializing the visibility of the Church in a given time and place and style. At their best, denominations are part of the vast social diversity of the Church. At their worst, denominations are agencies of separatism and schismatic emphases. Whether any particular group is at its best or worst depends upon how and why it began, what it teaches and promotes, and the spirit that characterizes its life. If that spirit is one of openness and cooperativeness with respect to other believers, then that denomination is not a barrier but a means to express the purpose and visibility of the Church. But if the spirit of a denomination is closed, competitive, and argumentative, then that group—whatever its beginning and orthodoxy—is in need of renewal and reform.
Some Negative Features of Denominational Life
However holy its beginnings or concerns, organized group life is problematic. Over against the positives of denominational life there are also some negatives to consider.
Any organized process has some built-in dangers which must be watched. Organization can help a group to achieve an end, but it can also become an end in itself and obscure purpose for some persons. Denominational church life has suffered much under this factor of “ambiguous validity.” While it is true that the unity of the Church is deeper than any organizational separateness among members, it is also true that those separations have tended to obscure the oneness of the Church in the eyes of the world.
Many denominations appear to have overlooked the fact that separate organizational structures and patterns are but tentative and provisional as means to an end. It is one thing to organize group life to bring cohesion and ordered response, but mobilization can also modify freedom. It can produce conventions which harden as a yoke around the life the organization was originally intended to reflect, project, and guide.
Over a given period of time, any human grouping tends to develop some organizational patterns for its life and work. Church life is no different in this respect. Organization is an essential if any group is to have guidance and its members are to relate to it with any sense of its meaning and possibilities. Organization can be honored and utilized to the good, but only if it is not viewed as unchangeable. Organizational form can be a means to an end, but it must never become an end in itself. The organizing of church life and work can help to nurture believers and provide distinct norms for needed togetherness, but the organized forms must serve the members and not impede their growth, vision, and relationships as members of the wider Church.
John A. Mackay has written, “The reality of Christian fellowship is much more basic than the character of Church organization. The fellowship and all that it implies must ever be given a prior place to the organization and must always be regarded as more ultimate than the ecclesiastical structure.” [John A. Mackay, Christianity on the Frontier (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950), pp. 186–87.]
Every denominated group must be vigilant and keep its organized pattern of life and work measured against the purpose and spirit of the wider Church. It is not evil to organize the group life or the group’s work. It is not divisive to honor patterns of grouping for life and work. Organized togetherness can be so structured that unity is served, made visible both to those who belong and to those who watch them live and work together. Organized togetherness can allow experiences to take place within which unity is discovered and reaffirmed. Different organizational patterns can exist within the Church without being divisive in nature or effect. But those who honor the separate patterns must never relax their vigilance; they must keep themselves open to the rest of the Church. They must remember that structure is never paramount, but that fellowship and witness are. Only in this way can the negatives of legitimately separate groupings ever be overcome. The Apostle Paul reminded the members of the church at Corinth, burdened by schism, that differences need not divide, and that diversity is not incompatible with unity. Thus his use of the body metaphor, with each member mentioned as distinct and diverse but necessary and joined, as l Corinthians 12:12–27 points out. Paul understood the richness that diversity grants, and the complexities that such differences cause. He also knew that unity is more basic and fundamental than the differences seen and felt, however many and pronounced they be. Diversity should not be viewed as division. Separately structured group life is not necessarily schismatic. Diversity is one thing, while a spirit of division is quite another.
The New Testament deals constantly with the need to honor a God-given unity in the midst of diversity that human circumstance and preference cause. The unity of the Church is rooted in the work of Christ. The diversity of the Church is rooted in the nature of humanity. A common faith does not necessarily demand a common style of worship. A common mission in the world does not demand the same strategies of operation for success to occur. A unified Church does not demand a single structure to reveal its spirit and significance to the world. As Robert E. Webber has rightly explained it,
The church has unfolded in many forms, and no single external form stands alone as the correct visible expression. As the church settled in various geographical areas and as it penetrated through a variety of cultures, it found expression in multifaceted forms. Thus, the insistence that the church must exist in a single form is a denial not only of the richness of creation, but also of the complexities of the human response. [Robert E. Webber, Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978), p. 57. Used by permission.]
To demand oneness of form because of a oneness of faith is requiring that which nothing in the New Testament supports. It is to require what human nature does not seem equipped to allow. Diversity is germane to the life of the Church, but division has no place in that life.
For Discussion
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1. Do you agree with the author’s explanation of the word denomination? Do you agree with his statement that “different organizational patterns can exist within the Church without being divisive in nature or effect”? If you disagree, explain why.
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2. To which Christian group do you belong? How and why did that group emerge in history? What sentiment is stirred in you as you reflect on the group’s story and message?
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3. If you could effect any changes in your group life, what would they be? Why?
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Chapter 9
Making Christian Unity Visible
IT IS EASIER to relate with Christians from separate denominational groups within the Church when we have learned to see them through eyes that are not clouded by discriminating categories of placement. A deep interest in unity, together with a high and reverent view of the Church, can help us all move beyond the limited notion that only those who are of our particular group heritage are God’s true people. When we have learned better, and have discarded such prejudices, then the imperative to relate and make unity visible will find room to express itself in full. Denominational differences are a matter of historical circumstance, and such circumstances should not unduly influence our understanding of the Church; nor should those differences cause us to compromise what agape love prods us to do. The New Testament tells us that all true believers belong to the Church. As fellow members, each and all are worthy of our embrace; they all belong within our circle of regard. They all belong in very fact. We must so work and relate that no one will stand apart in feeling.
It is our responsibility to promote an atmosphere of participation and belonging. Any believer’s tie with some separate group background is largely “historical accident,” and this does not freeze anyone into any limiting mold unless that person allows it to happen. Every Christian must be committed to unity and break out of any such mold, resisting any notions of exclusiveness which forbid fellowship in full. The concern must be for exposure and the experience of unity. When that concern is healthy and strong, when it has conditioned us to see all believers as members of the same Church because followers of the same Lord, we will no longer compete and promote survival techniques to make our own group heritage primary. When this is given the sanction of our lives and the sentiment of our hearts, then the creative constraints of love will work in and through us. Those constraints will affect us, even as our spirits and deeds will affect others. As Frederick Douglass once explained, “A man is worked on by what he works on.” [Cited by Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (New York: Othello Associates, 1958), p. 11.]
Every Christian has a legacy in every other Christian. We experience that legacy only as we receive each other and relate, moving eagerly beyond group boundaries.
There was a time when the various church groups were vigorously engaged in waging war on each other, trying to undermine the position and influence of each other by claiming priority in one or more ways. It was the time of competing traditions. Each group was fighting for more footage on the national and local scene. It was a time of elitism among church groups, and each one was trying hard to project a more attractive image than that of any other group. It was a time when church differences were exaggerated on purpose. It was not unusual to read or hear about denominational groups clashing with each other, trying to point out the other’s limitations in doctrine, learning, ethics, leadership, styles, size, and claims. It was a time of self-conscious aggressiveness marked by ambition, traditionalism, pride of one’s own group, and mistrust of all others who differed.
The church scene has largely changed now. The perspectives on the Church have widened, thanks to a new openness generated by increased contacts and common problems in the world. Attitudes and motives have been examined and changed, thanks to the ongoing work of the Spirit of God among the people of God. The scattered peoples of the Church are being informed more and more by Scripture and are regarding and receiving each other. Judgments against each other as poor shadows of the real are less and less the case, and energetic participation is being seen as a necessary factor, especially where church mission is involved. More and more believers have declared their unwillingness to dismiss as foreigners those who differ with them in some emphasis or tradition. Institutional belligerence is in decline, and names and labels are not as central in church talk as before.
The relational imperative is at work in the Church. There is strict interest in seeing the Church and seeing it whole. The age-old demand to be “particular” by standing over against other believers is being tempered, and the new will is to be participant, standing with other believers. Many of those who have been working for these changes are reassured about the changing climate, somewhat anxious about the slow pace, but still absorbed in the faith and will to see unity made visible on an ever widening scale.
As Christian believers have conversed they have discovered that there are two factors which they have in common: a relationship with the same Lord, and an inward stirring to be related in the experience of fellowship. Institutionalism does not influence believers in the same ways as before, and the imperative to relate has been gaining more and more momentum. Some lingering loyalty to traditions notwithstanding, the obvious bent now is toward sharing and cooperative mission.
Love Never Stops Prodding!
It is time for all Christians to move visibly beyond the boundary lines and make common cause with each other. We can and must move beyond attitudes of suspicion about others and pride about ourselves and cease being competitive. We must go beyond the boundaries and relate with each other because the unity of the Church helps to insure that the task of the Church will be fulfilled in proper time and order. Our world needs the effects of our combined witness. Through a realized unity, through the strength of togetherness made visible in ready fellowship, the universal Church can serve with power as a missionary movement. Jesus had that in mind and heart as he prayed that “they may all be [hosin, “continue to be (as an observable fact)”] one, … so that the world may believe [pisteue, “enter into the experience of faith”] that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21). His love for the Church will not let us rest in separateness. That love will never stop prodding us to seek each other and to relate with concern.
Love will never stop prodding us to transcend what is local; it will keep working to inspire us to think and pray and plan and work with the wider world in view. The Church has always known that ours is a universal mission. It was so from the start when Jesus gave the promise of his presence to attend our journeying and our work. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). Jesus views his Church as a fellowship of promise and a family of witnesses. He expects us to maintain the family attitude toward each other and to fulfill that promise to which our calling points. His love will not let us rest or stop short of this goal. The Church is a worldwide reality; we must not rest until we make it a visible fellowship.
Worship occasions, cooperative work experiences, retreats, Bible study sessions, social ministry opportunities, prayer gatherings—all these are ways of acceptance and agreement with which denominational ties have nothing to do. When the will to fellowship is strong and when we are clear about centralities, there will be a spirit in us to say “we” and never “they.” Our roots might well be in separate places and traditions historically, but spiritually our common life is in Christ. The structures to which we are related must not divide us but provide opportunity for a fuller experience of the Church.
Some ways of moving beyond the boundaries have been mentioned. There is yet another way to aid visible unity. It is to include all other Christians in our prayers. Our prayers should be offered for all persons and groups at work promoting the life and work of the Church. This means that our prayers should include those movements, councils, and agencies at work at home and abroad. Although there might be questions or even disagreements about some methods and steps taken to promote visible unity (for example, unions, mergers, conciliar relations), prayer to God for the total Church is surely not to be questioned. And apart from any deep convictions which compel us to act otherwise, we should back up our prayers with tangible aid to those at work to strengthen the Church and extend its mission. The opportunities for togetherness are many, and these should not be neglected.
The story is told about a young, eager graduate student who worked for a while at Harvard University with Dr. Louis Agassiz, the Swiss biologist. Assigned as assistant, the student felt a sense of special fortune in the privilege. During the first morning of the partnership the young man was given a folded paper which held a small object in it. He was asked to take it to his laboratory for study, then to prepare a report about what he had identified in his study of the object. This did not take long to do.
After the student returned he reported that the object was a fish scale. The manner in which he reported showed his surprise that the learned Agassiz had asked him to undertake such an elementary project. The biologist was not alarmed, however, and he asked the student to take the fish scale back to the laboratory for further examination.
The student’s return showed an increase in his findings: he told what kind of fish it was, the approximate age of the fish, and the probable location on the body from which the scale had been removed.
Again and again the student was sent back to the laboratory, and he learned still more and more, seeing far more each time than previous observation had permitted. He was being taughtto see.
There is more to Christian unity than meets the eye, more than we experienced at first or have experienced since. There are deeper levels in fellowship than we have dared to open ourselves to experience. We need to take another look, and still another. The seeing will search us and test our attitudes and openness. There is more in the doctrine and experience of Christian unity than we have ever seen or lived.
For Discussion
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1. The author has suggested that “denominational differences are a matter of historical circumstance.” Probe this statement for a while and try to understand its meaning.
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2. If “a man is worked on by what he works on” (Frederick Douglass), then reflect on what that means if one works for unity with the whole heart. Then think about what that means if someone strongly opposes fellowship because of certain fears or prejudices.
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Chapter 10
Moving Beyond the Boundaries
THE FIRST step in going beyond once hard-set boundaries was made when believers who discovered each other in other settings began to share their experiences. In so doing, those believers discovered their common faith, the contagion of each one’s witness, and an embracing love that they could not refuse. Some believers were from communions with highly refined statements about “the Faith,” and detailed meanings attached to those statements, but all agreed on what were basic truths for belief that leads to salvation. Further reflections on all this are still taking place, and must, but those reflections are being done in togetherness, both prodded and aided by insights from the rich heritages of doctrine held by the different religious groups.
But contagious witness has been playing its important part. Some believers have carried a persuasiveness in their life and personal statement about their faith. The confession they made was with “flavor,” and its appeal could not be denied.
Howard Thurman tells of a certain Thanksgiving service he attended while pastoring in Oberlin, Ohio, many years ago. It was a community service in which all the churches and the college shared, a yearly tradition there at the time. Thurman recalls that after the sermon that day, a period for personal testimonies was allowed and different believers were free to rise and express themselves about their thanksgiving to God. That particular morning, he reports, the testimony of a very elderly black woman touched him deeply. As he tells it, “She had learned to read when she was sixty-two years old, in order that she might read the Bible for herself. She was overcome with emotion; at length she recovered her bearing and said simply, ‘I know that my redeemer lives, for he lives in my soul. Glory Hallelujah!’ ”
A moment of silence fell, an understood and breathless silence. Then another voice was heard, calm, contained, and complimentary. It was the voice of Professor Edward Bosworth, who said, “ ‘What the sister has just said is the final word that the human spirit has to say about the meaning of God.’ ” Then he added, —“I rejoice to be in her fellowship, and I can only repeat her words, ‘I know that my redeemer lives, for he lives in my soul. Glory Hallelujah!’ ” [Howard Thurman, Deep Is The Hunger (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951), p. 159.] There is an essential appeal in a personal witness. On the lips of a true believer, the witness rings true, and other true believers hear it “loud and clear,” sensing the unity of experience between them.
The embracing love some believers exhibit, puts a recipient under obligation to affirm, to respond in kind, and to identify with those believers … . The sharing of a self and an experience with God usually helps to bring it all about.
Believers have gone beyond boundaries as they have learned to appreciate the diverse emphases and expressions in the Church.
While it is generally the case that most Christians accept their own denominational grouping as normative, they also know that no one religious group can rightly claim to be “the Church.” I was impressed with the attitude expressed in a flyer which treated the history, characteristics, activities, concerns, faith and practice of a certain denominational group. The flyer began: “The—Church is a part of the one Church which began some two thousand years ago when Jesus Christ commissioned His Apostles to go into all the world under the guiding power of the Holy Spirit.” Then followed a brief history of the group being introduced. But the basic statement was about the Church, with added comments about the share that group had in the Church’s ongoing history.
It is important that Christians learn about and appreciate the place various church groups have had in the linear flow of church history. The formal history of any church group will usually explain how the group began and tell what its members see as the group’s importance in God’s providential design for the Church at some given time and place. To trace a group’s reason for being is a meaningful task, and one can begin to see and appreciate the primary distinctives of that group. As Charles R. Brown once commented, “Our total Christianity is a very large affair.” [Charles R. Brown, The Larger Faith (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1923), p. 3.] It is instructive to put oneself mentally into another denominational setting as one studies its life:
It is well for any individual Christian occasionally to take some other man’s gait. There are bodies of Christians which move habitually in a regular and dignified walk … . There are others who occasionally strike a good round trot, others less conventional in their methods are accustomed to pace, while some zealous people even break into a splendid gallop. [Ibid., p. 4.]
Such a variety of differences is human, on the one hand, and providential, on the other. We tend to appreciate this when we stay open and “catch some other man’s mood and movement,” Brown continues, letting each one of us “come back to his own place in the procession, a more limber, a more likable and a more useful Christian.” [Ibid., p. 4.]
It is far easier for some persons to engage in controversy than to use their time and energies trying to see how church groups complement each other. Those who obey the relational imperative will not fight but will stay open to the constraints of love and relate despite differences. As they do, they will increasingly discover themselves captivated by contagious and compelling experiences of unity. At last those believers will see that experiences of oneness are more fundamental than the traditions and structures that separate and categorize the different church groups.
We can all go beyond the boundaries of denominationalism if we learn about each other and dare to appreciate the diverse emphases and expressions in the Church as gifts of providence.
Diverse expressions in the Church were inevitable, and they are legitimate. This must surely be understood when one remembers the wideness of the human family, the utter richness of human nature, and the swirling currents in the flow of history.
The Baptist emphasis upon personal belief, publicly expressed through water baptism, has indeed sharpened the awareness of many about the need for personal commitment and public witness. The Congregationalists have blessed generations of believers through their insistence upon voluntariness and the freedom of the local congregation. They have rightly stressed the importance of democracy in congregational life, and they must be credited as well for their founding of many noted colleges and universities in America, among them Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, Wellesley, and Mills, to name a few. Charles G. Finney and Dwight L. Moody were nurtured in the Congregationalist tradition, and both evangelists were widely accepted throughout the wider Church. The Presbyterians have been just a step removed in the way they have ordered their church life, and their emphasis upon leadership, doctrine, orderly worship, and systematized nurture has helped the rest of the Church to sense the meaning and value of a conservative approach and spirit in church order. The organizational efficiency and zealous social concern of the Methodists are well-known features in their heritage. And one must also honor their emphasis upon the experience of practical Christian holiness of life. The Lutherans have emphasized the greatness of grace, the authority of Scripture, Christian freedom, and the Protestant principle.
There is more to be said, much more, and about so many other groups, but it cannot be said in full. The Disciples of Christ and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) have witnessed long and loud about the need to heal the divisions within Christendom, advising that rules and opinions not found in Scripture are injurious to fellowship and the experience of unity. The intent has been to help the rest of the churches become aware of how denominational separatism limits fellowship and hinders having a visible unity.
When one looks at all of these groups and emphases, plus those not mentioned here, then more and more appears of what constitutes the wideness, wealth, and witness of the Church. While some critics are still saying that we must look for the Church beyond the churches, it must also be reported that some have seen the Church because of the churches.
Sooner or later the discerning Christian will see that denominations are mainly patterns of partnership in which believers have tended to cluster. The patterns need not be mutually exclusive, although they are different. Many denominations are now softening their approach to allow open fellowship with members in other bodies; this is helping to raise the sights of many to see that their own group is not the singular and exemplary expression of the Church. Most denominations have long since recognized that they are qualitatively imperfect expressions of the larger Church, and that aspects of the greater Church are realized but meagerly in the separate communions.
Every believer needs to understand that no separate expression of the Church in our time is a full one. No one group is the complete historical embodiment of the Church as Jesus planned it, even if its emphasis is more nearly apostolic or embraces a greater area of the original teachings that undergird the Church. We are learning at long last to see with wider vision and to be more inclusive in attitude and action. At long last one must come to see how churches point to the Church. This is why it is imperative that fellowship be fostered, and that unity be experienced and expressed visibly.
The Church is one. We must express that oneness by shared experiences and a visible fellowship. To understand this is to segregate and partition believers and groups no longer. It is to dismiss any lingering rivalry and not allow distance to forbid contacts. Division is not overcome by an agreed structure but through a changed attitude and outlook. Only this will bring church life to a new level of experienced oneness. Only this can help one be at home everywhere because it anchors one in the Church, not in some arbitrary pattern and limited concern.
Some denominations have been busy promoting fellowship in a formal way by negotiating a union relationship between themselves. Since 1925 there have been sixty-five major church unions effected. In 1979 thirty-five negotiations were in process to bring desiring denominational groups into union relationships. [See “Survey of Church Union Negotiations, 1975–1977,” in The Ecumenical Review, Volume 30, No. 3 (July 1978), pp. 231–59.] It should be said, and quickly, that such negotiating seeks far more than the simple merging of bureaucracies and power committees. Unions honor the strategic principle and importance of diversity, and seek the enrichment that happens when strong heritages are thus related. Given a strong will to associate formally and receive continually what each can contribute, a union relationship is for many church groups a quite feasible and functional plan.
The burden of separateness has been so heavy that rarely have Christians experienced themselves as Christians without additional labels. Because church orientations differed and loyalties sometimes clashed, the burden of being under this or that church label has often hindered freedom to experience others as fellow Christians. Although being Christian is itself the common bond, the churches dared to particularize beyond that, and a major fact about our faith—the unity of believers—was obscured by the circumstance of group difference. It is a time to shout when that circumstance is surmounted and the burden of difference removed in part or in whole.
Union agreements do remove that burden in part. As a functional arrangement between two or more denominations, a union agreement helps the members to share formally in love and unity. Diversity is honored while division is dealt a heavy blow. Administration is also centralized without loss of identity and freedom to promote the heritages.
In June 1977, in Sydney, Australia, three church groups joined in a formal service of union: the Congregational Union of Australia, the Methodist Church of Australia, and the Presbyterian Church of Australia. The new name of the union was to be the Uniting Church in Australia. The process which led to the union began in 1957. The negotiations involved the recognition of common concerns, a common field of labor, and the study of agreement plans being used at the time in other parts of the world. By 1971 a “Basis of Union” study had been prepared and was examined by each church group for possible approval and implementation. All three church bodies approved the study, and by 1977 The Uniting Church in Australia was in the news.
Invited to Australia in 1978 as guest leaders for The Uniting Church, my wife Gwendolyn, and I were privileged to observe its life across a full month of ministry among the city churches of Brisbane, Sydney, and Canberra. The original invitation asked that I be part of the inaugural gathering in June 1977, along with Dr. Philip Potter, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, but because of a serious schedule conflict I had to delay my visit a year, at which time I was commissioned to lecture each morning to leaders from the three uniting churches, teach Bible study groups each evening, and address mass gatherings at night as mission preacher. My prolonged stay in Australia permitted me to observe the scene and spirit of the union with closeness, and I was convinced, after consultation with many leaders and laypersons, that union under certain conditions can make some positive contributions to Christian fellowship and mission.
The positive benefits of that union were quite apparent to me. Some neighborhoods in the larger urban areas had churches of all three denominations in close proximity; in more than one instance they were within a block of each other. The union enabled the neighboring congregations to work in formal togetherness on a total parish basis. I saw the value of this arrangement as I worked in several sectors of Brisbane, Sydney, and Canberra. It is commendable that those churches saw it as advantageous to relate their work in a formal fashion. The union had their sanction as “grass roots” involvees.
The strategy used in formally relating was handled step-by-step. That strategy enabled the various members of the churches to understand and approve the patterned procedure. The proof that agreement had occurred at the most practical level came home to me as I met and conversed with respective members of the previously separate groups. I sensed the spirit of interdependence and belonging. I knew that among them unity was more than a quest. Christian unity was being experienced and the impetus of that experience was being made visible in the cooperative ministries under way through the new union. Fellowship was steadily deepening after only one year of formal togetherness. The union appeared to effect something for them that mere courteous acknowledgement of each other had not done in all the years before.
It must be reported, however, that the union plan did not please all of those affected by it. About 40 percent of the Presbyterians remained separate from the union, as well as about 19 percent of the membership of the Congregational Union of Australia. The Presbyterian dissenters stayed out because of doctrinal issues that were not resolved to their satisfaction. A legal arrangement was effected for them so that the dissenters could keep the church buildings they occupied. The concern was to be fair with all who refused to agree to the union. The final union brought together almost two million members between the three previous church groups, and 2,400 ordained clergy were united in serving them. By 1978, the union was proving to be effective on the Australian scene.
The concept behind the new name, “The Uniting Church of Australia,” intrigued me. I was told that the gerund form, uniting, was to reflect their awareness that the process was not concluded, and that the union was open to the fellowship of all other Christians who desired to cooperate and share with them as members of God’s Church. Given that declaration of openness on the part of its leaders and laity, I understood more readily why there was so much contagion at work in their midst.
To be sure, the business of uniting is never concluded anywhere. Again and again we must seek occasions for fellowship and relation. We must always be eager to know ourselves in relation with others whose meaning augments us. The business of uniting must continue on the part of every believer because unity is realized only in experiences of togetherness. There is no better way for Christians to show concern for the Church than that they look forward to closer ties with each other, and work always to reach those sectors of Christ’s people who have not been reached by them before. The cause of fellowship demands concern and optimism. A. Harold Wood expressed it for the Australians when he wrote, “Ours is a truly ‘Uniting’ Church and we have taken only the first step.” [A. Harold Wood, Our Heritage in the Uniting Church (Melbourne: Aldersgate Press, 1977), p. 7]
Those who have felt the imperative to relate and have seen the vision of a fully sharing Church, know that only the first steps have been taken. Conditioning and positioning ourselves to experience fellowship is the first step along a long road. The conditioning has to do with humbling ourselves and recognizing the pride we hold for our own views and background within the Church. The conditioning has to do as well with opening ourselves to listen to other believers voice their concerns. More often than not, we will hear doctrines and emphases that we have neglected while promoting our own.
Every church group has its strengths and weaknesses, its emphases and areas of awareness, its unique witness and its blind spots.
I thought of this more seriously during a trip some years ago when my wife and I had to use plane travel. The preparation for takeoff was being made in the pilot’s cabin, and the stewardess was making her routine announcements to us about safety precautions back in the passenger cabin. “Please extinguish all cigarettes, return your eating trays to their original position, and fasten your seat belts.”
One fellow was sitting just ahead of us on the other side of the aisle, reading, too preoccupied to hear (or perhaps overly familiar with the instructions she had just given), and his book was still propped up on the tray table before him. I said to my wife, “People just don’t listen anymore; they’re too preoccupied!” The stewardess saw him, noticed that he had not heard her, and she repeated herself in a courteous tone. But finally she had to move down the aisle and touch him on the shoulder to break his preoccupation due to reading. She nevertheless smiled as she lifted his tray table and fastened it to the back of the seat in front of him. Then I heard her politely ask him to fasten his seat belt.
Meanwhile the plane was being backed out from the ramp. I was still watching the other passengers as the stewardess came down the aisle checking for fastened seat belts. As she neared me, I shuddered. Looking down I suddenly realized that I had not fastened my seat belt! Just as she was about to say something to me about it, I grabbed my belt, hooked the ends quickly, then looked up at her with a kind of half-guilty smile! Preoccupied and judgmental, I was blind to my own fault! My wife rebuked me with a mild laugh. When I told my Detroit congregation about it, the members there roared with laughter, but that laughter soon ebbed away because I was preaching a sermon about religious prejudices. I was seeking to raise the consciousness of some listeners whose view of the Church was so narrow that it took in only those who spoke, looked, believed, and acted like themselves—and bore the same church name as ours. The illustration was a part of my counsel. It was a word about the need for caution and love in observing and dealing with group differences. That sermon helped several members to see their own narrowness, and it helped them to check their hasty criticisms of other Christians. How often we can be wrong by default, so preoccupied with voicing criticisms that our own personal blind spots are overlooked.
Congregations and denominations can be guilty of the same preoccupation. The Church is wider than any one expression of it. The Church is vaster than our experience of it. The Church is older than the history of our group. It is helpful to us all to take frequent looks at the New Testament pictures of the Church because there is always so much more that we discover by viewing it again.
Some denominational groups have sought to go beyond the boundaries in still other ways. They have opened their visible institutional life to the presence and participation of invited representatives from other groups when they meet in annual session.
Many church groups have invited representatives from other groups to be observers during annual gatherings. Those representatives have been free to attend plenary sessions, certain small group functions, and selected special committee deliberations. But those observers have not usually been asked to share in the decision-making process, nor to stand and speak a word on some issue from the perspective of their background. Although attending meetings as observers has often brought the benefit of new understandings through such prolonged contacts, the limitations are still obvious. Understanding can go only so deep when there is no freedom to ask questions openly; and cross-fertilization is hardly possible when observers are not asked to offer additional elements of thought from their own tradition.
But this picture has been changing within recent years. It has been changing to the extent that some denominations now invite chief executive officers from other groups to attend annual gatherings not as observers merely but as participants, as insiders free to enter into dialogue in both committee and plenary sessions. The intent is to receive from participants who can speak to some issue from a different viewpoint of tradition and thought. It is a way to foster togetherness on the level of shared views and values. It is a way of saying to each and all that some things are of vital interest not only to one group but to other Christians as well. It is a way to check separatist attitudes and expose one’s group to the evaluation of others. This kind of action honors and promotes unity; it makes unity visible at the level of planning for mission.
The Presbyterian Church in the United States has pioneered in promoting such a plan to invite ecumenical advisors and representatives from other communions to meet with Assembly boards and committees to participate in discussion, planning, and decision making. Each year at least eight “ecumenical participants” have been invited to meet with the General Assembly.
I was privileged to be an ecumenical participant from the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) during the 1979 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. All the reports and official documents which were to come before the Assembly were sent to me for reading and study. These acquainted me with the major business to be handled there. Information about Presbyterian history, heritage, and theological beliefs was also sent to me. More strategic still, I was assigned to serve on one of the Assembly boards. The choice of board or committee was made by random computer selection, and it was controlled to the extent that only one Ecumenical Participant could be appointed to any one board or committee. This same procedure is used for Commissioners elected by the various Presbyteries.
There was a second category of persons from other church groups as well: ecumenical representatives. They were invited to bring greetings from their churches and observe, but the ecumenical participants had freedom to participate. We had the privilege of voice and vote on the respective committees to which we were assigned, and we could speak to issues on the floor of the Assembly itself during plenary sessions.
An informal briefing session for the ecumenical participants was held on the first day of the General Assembly. The time together was spent exploring the concept and ways of participation.
This plan has been in use among the Presbyterians for several years now. It has been a bold, business like, and beneficial venture in unity. The Assembly business was handled with understood deliberation; and the freedom we ecumenical participants had to express ourselves on the Assembly business was not merely honorific—it was actual.
For Discussion
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1. What did Jesus have in mind when he planned and started the Church? What have you been taught about this? What have you seen in Scripture that helps you to answer this question?
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2. Does the vision of a fully united and sharing Church excite you? Are you working to help make other Christians sensitive to this possibility? If so, what are you doing to promote such an interest?
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