Features: October 2006

A Case for Listening by James G. Kirk

The Nicene Marks in a Post-Christendom Church by Darrell L. Guder

Called to Be One Church: An Invitation for Churches to Renew Their Commitment by Robina Winbush

It Is Not So Among You! by Walter Altmann

Where Is Bread? by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

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Called to Be One Church: An Invitation for Churches to Renew Their Commitment

Robina Winbush

Do we function as a part of the whole — or as though we were the whole ourselves?

An historical witness of disunity
I’ve been wondering lately if the institutional church has lost its focus. With so much attention and concern about internal struggles of membership, faithfulness, integrity, witness, and diminishing resources, we become consumed with our own life and survival. In congregations, presbyteries, synods, and General Assembly agencies, the struggles reveal themselves in very familiar ways. These struggles can be seen not only within the PC (USA), but often with our ecumenical partners throughout the United States and the world. The struggles often give birth to threats of schism and divisions, within and between communities of believers.

Struggle within the Christian community is as old as the very first community. The first disciples pursued positions of privilege and preference in relationship to Jesus. Greek- and Aramaic-speaking Christians struggled over the fair distribution of resources within the community. The Church at Corinth fought over many things, including whose baptism was superior and what food was prohibited. The church at Galatia struggled with the relationship between “Jewish Christians” and “Gentile Christians.” As the church grew, so did its struggles and so did its divisions. Whether the Chalcedonian divide following the Sixth Ecumenical Council or the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or the American divisions over chattel slavery in the nineteenth century, the witness of the church has not been its unity, but its division and proliferation. In the midst of this ethos, the institutional expression of the community of believers becomes obsessed with its own particular and internal realities. Our witness becomes defined in market terms of competition — numbers, resources, and influence. We function not as part of a larger whole but as the whole by ourselves.

God's Spirit flowing through the whole
The best of our Reformed theology articulates an understanding that “the Church universal consists of all persons in every nation, together with their children, who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and commit themselves to live in a fellowship under his rule” [Book of Order: The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II (2005-2007), G-4.0100]. We know that we are not the Church universal, but only one part of it in one place in history. What does it mean, however, to live not as the whole but only as one part of the Body of Christ? How do we live as relational Christians?

Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus is a word so familiar that we often lose its power and its challenge to our contemporary expressions of the Christian community. “All of you are part of the same body. There is only one Spirit of God, just as you were given one hope when you were chosen to be God’s people. We have only one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. There is one God, who is the Father of all people. Not only is God above all others, but he works by using all of us, and he lives in all of us” (Ephesians 4: 4-6, Contemporary English Version).

The fact that we are in relationship with other parts of the Body of Christ is irrefutable. The quality of the relationship determines the health and functioning of the Body. The unity of the Spirit of God is intended to flow through the Body of Christ as oxygen flows through the human body, and yet too often struggles and internal obsessions threaten to cut off access to this life-sustaining Spirit. It is not to suggest that institutional divisions are not at times necessary. It is to suggest that our divisions do not make us independent and self-sufficient, without relationship to the other parts of the Body of Christ and the unity of the Spirit of God.

The WCC invitation: “Called to Be One Church”
The Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches adopted a text on ecclesiology, “Called to Be One Church: An Invitation for Churches to Renew their Commitment to the Search for Unity and to Deepen Dialogue.” In this text, the WCC invited its member churches: “(a) to reflect what the churches, at this point on their ecumenical journey, can say together about some important aspects of the Church; and (b) to [engage in] a renewed conversation – mutually supportive, yet open and searching – about the quality and degree of their fellowship and communion, and about the issues which still divide them” (World Council of Churches, “Called to Be One Church: An Invitation for Churches to Renew their Commitment to the Search for Unity and to Deepen Dialogue,” 2006 ).

In this invitation, the WCC poses several questions to its member churches. I share them with the readers of Ecu-Dialogue and invite you to consider the answers for your own congregations and middle governing bodies and also for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a whole.

On the surface this might seem to be an easy exercise. But I invite us to go beyond the easy answers, to examine our lived realities and to consider our answers in relationship to parts of the Body of Christ with which we are in the greatest struggle. As we develop mission statements and ministry goals, may these questions give rise to new possibilities of relationship and witness.

Questions that raise possibilities

• To what extent can your church discern the faithful expression of the apostolic faith in its own life, prayer, and witness and in that of other churches?
  
• Where does your church perceive fidelity to Christ in the faith and life of other churches?
  
• Does your church recognize a common pattern of Christian initiation, grounded in baptism, in the life of other churches?
  
• Why does your church believe that it is necessary, or permissible, or not possible to share the Lord’s Supper with those of other churches?
  
• In what ways is your church able to recognize the ordered ministries of other churches?
  
• To what extent can your church share the spirituality of other churches?
  
• How will your church stand with other churches to contend with problems such as social and political hegemonies, persecution, oppression, poverty, and violence?
  
• To what extent will your church share with other churches in the apostolic mission?
  
• To what extent does your church share with other churches in faith formation and theological education?
  
• How fully can your church share in prayer with other churches?

*******

Robina says, “I would love to read your responses and encourage you to send them to me.” Your reflections will find a way into the thinking for the PC(USA) response to the WCC.

Send to:

Robina Winbush
100 Witherspoon Street,
Room 4412,
Louisville, KY 40202
Email: Robina Winbush


Robina Winbush is associate stated clerk and director for ecumenical and agency relations.

© Ecu-Dialogue (vol. 17, number 2, Fall 2006). Used by permission.

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