Ecumenical Activity and the Local Church
Monday, September 01, 2014
5:10 PM
Christian Unity and the Practice of Local Ministry
The way I see the ministry of the local congregation, I see four areas of ministry within the local congregation.  It’s important to see that these are not mutually exclusive.  They belong together.  They are seen as we consider two overlapping continua in the goals and foci of the church. The horizontal continuum illustrates the tension between internal focus and an external focus. The vertical continuum emphasizes two primary goals of the church.  The first goal being that the goal of the Christian life is to relate spiritually to God and the other end of the continua meeting tangible human needs. The intersection of these focuses and goals creates four responses to the question: What is the purpose of the church?
Disciple making:  The purpose of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  The focus is inward on the membership with the goal of strengthening their relationship to God.  Church members are encouraged to devote time to prayer and Bible reading. Opportunities for Bible study and Christian education are offered.  
Discipleship needs to contain focus on unity is integrated into baptismal preparation and on-going discipleship.  Foundationally, the affirmation that the Church is one should be presented both in baptism preparation and in introductions to Disciples theology.  I frequently do this by talking about the structure of the New Testament that contains letters addressed to local congregations and letters addressed to Christianity in General.  Letters addressed to congregations and letters addressed to the whole.  I stress to baptismal candidates what my pastor stressed to me—when you are baptized you are baptized into the whole church not a specific congregation.  Moreover, it is important that we recognize the need to speak of baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit not only as it is biblical but also as it has been affirmed in our ecumenical participation (ie., BEM)
Through our ecumenical work, Disciples have come to affirm the importance of Ecumenical ways of speaking of faith.  In particular, while our traditional slogan is “No Creed but Christ.”  I do feel that we to introduce and utilize the work 
I also think its important to stress ecumenical spirituality.  Through attention to ecumenical spirituality not so much as the participation in the breadth of spiritual practices drawn from different tradition—as fruitful as that might be—but in attention to  the spiritual dispositions that enable fruitful ecumenical and inter-faith exchanges as learned by those who have had the deepest experience in those areas.  
World Serving:  The purpose of the church is to make a positive impact on the surrounding society.  The focus is outward on the world beyond the church’s members with the goal of meeting tangible human needs.  Church members invest themselves in outreach ministries—programs for the homeless, hungry, those in need of shelter.  
(1) The value of cooperative partnerships and ecumenical mission work is more than functional (ie. we can’t do it by ourselves).  It is preferable because through cooperating with other Christians in serving the world we make the unity of the Church visible.  
(2) Integrating theological commitments as to motivation.
Evangelizing:  The purpose of the church is to bring people to a point of confessing Jesus Christ as the Son of God, Lord and Savior.  The focus is outward on the world beyond the church’s membership with the goal of moving people toward a relationship and connectedness to God.  Church members see the need for inviting others to church.  They wish they could witness or communicate the gospel in one-to-one conversations with non-believers.  
With this basic framework of local congregational ministry in mind, I’d like to propose how I see ecumenism and unity informing our ministry in the local congregation.
(1) As with serving to meet human needs, evangelism is best done 
(2) Evangelism is not stealing members from other churches.  We face the challenge of how to speak about Christian faith without constantly trying to compare ourselves to others.
(3) Ecumenism’s commitments pushes against the Church Growth practice of targeting certain people as the aim of church growth (i.e., Saddleback Sam). All means all.  
What I see in these three of the four purposes of the church is a parallel to the three streams of the modern Ecumenical movement from the early part of the 20th Century
Gospel Sharing, 1910 World Missionary Conference.
World Serving, 1925, Life and Work Movement
Discipleship, 1927, Faith and Order Movement
Just as the 20th Century saw a convergence of these movements and the 21 Century insights emphasize the systemic interaction of these foci.  I see that systemic quality interacting at the local church level.  
Of course, that levels one area of ministry that doesn’t really have anything to do with ecumenism.  
Community forming:  The purpose of the church is to provide a context for interpersonal relatedness.  The focus is inward on the membership with the goal of meeting tangible human needs—particularly in this church the need for companionship and support, and also the needs for day to day assistance.  Church members, for instance, help each other get to and from the hospital or the doctor, take meals to each other when needed, assist one another in necessary home repairs or automobile maintenance.
Matt is a Nurse in transition.  He's an Elder and has been chair of the Elders.  Maybe 50 years old at this point. He's a good friend and when I told him I was doing this, he asked to come with me.  This past year Matt lost both parents and his job.  What a year!  But, that has brought him to a place of considering his own vocation.  He's considering applying to Brite and I hope he will.  I'd like to share his story toward the end.  In one of Matt's many trips back to the Panhandle to take care of his parents, he crossed paths with Doug Peters--my good friend from North Davis Church of Christ.  You may or may not know that Doug and I connected in large part through our participation in coordinating a worship service as Skillman during one of the earliest Stone-Campbell Dialogues.  Anyway, Matt and Doug recognized each other because over the years North Davis and FCC have done several things together.  Matt was at a place where he needed a pastor.  Doug just happened to be there.  It was ecumenical efforts that enabled them to share in that moment of ministry.  As Robert would say, we do this because it's personal. 
1.  The emergence of CCU reflected a transition in Disciples understanding of denomination from condemnation of denominations to cooperation with denominations. 
2.  The role CCU has played in externally representing our ecclesiology in ecumenical contexts has also served to fuel an internal self-description (i.e., Commission on Theology, "Words to the Church," Church for Disciples, my own personal experience with CUIC and the WCC Document on the nature of the church, BEM, and other interpretive work).  Being an ecumenical church means we don't just get to say whatever we want to theologically.    
3.  The transition of the past 10 years has really shifted of "unity" more broadly than crossing denominational boundaries.  The experience of CUIC around racism, the consultation on multi-culturalism, and the frontiers of interfaith and multiculturalism, the focus at the 2010 Visioning conference of the table as model for engagement with the world, etc.,  
4.  I know that Newell wants me to say something about the Stone Campbell Dialogue.  Which seems to me to belong to the fourth insight that our ecumenical work isn't about 1 journey but about engaging in multiple journeys that unfold in different ways. 
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