A comment on my last post inquired about ideas for concrete forms of grassroots ecumenical engagement. In one of the chapters of my forthcoming book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity, I suggest that the ministers and members of neighboring local churches of different denominations that have been in official ecumenical dialogue with one another at the national or international levels could gather to study and discuss the reports of those dialogues together. One contributor to the current ecumenical impasse has been the fact that the members, and frequently also the ministers, of local churches know nothing of the convergences and agreements that have been reached at the international level between their own denomination and other churches. The concrete action of gathering to consider the implications of these reports for how local congregations relate to one another would go a long way toward rectifying that.
The most extensive collection of such international reports is the Growth in Agreement series published in association with the World Council of Churches: Growth in Agreement, Growth in Agreement II, and Growth in Agreement III. Some of these texts are also available online; one source for these is a list of links to interconfessional dialogue reports maintained by the Centro Pro Unione in Rome. In a previous post I provided links to reports from the international dialogues in which my own world Christian communion, the Baptist World Alliance, has been involved.
I would be interested in how the growing post-denom. sentiment has changed the conversation. I was part of an ecumenical group in NC where our youth groups did things together and not one of the ministers (5 of them) were working at the denom. they grew up in. There were even moments where the one who grew up DOC was telling the the one working at a DOC church about the tradition and vice versa. The biggest problem we had was talking the powers that be into letting us serve communion together.
ReplyDeleteOn top of ministers not really being bound to a denom. more people see their identity to be with a congregation and not the denom. brand. As that becomes more the case it seems the local congregation will become more important for these efforts because the local congregations may not care what the heads of the denom. said or did with anyone else.
Glad you are blogging.
Tripp,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you! I think your observation re the implications of this for the role of the local church in ecumenical engagement are right on target; actually you've illustrated well Yoder's point in one of the quotes from my last post.
SRH
Tripp,
ReplyDeleteOne more thought in response: I do hope, however, that those with post-denominational sentiments can reallize that they do in fact stand within an identifiable ecclesial tradition, whether it is called a "denomination" or not, and that they can claim it as the standpoint from which they can receive the gifts the other ecclesial traditions have to offer and in turn share gifts with the other traditions.
SRH
Dr. Harmon,
ReplyDeleteI followed the link for your next speaking engagement and, as you might expect, I find the conference at Beeson to be very exciting. Unfortunately, with all the time I'm taking away from the church to be at IBTS these next three weeks, I can't see myself coming down for that. Do you know if there is any intention to publish papers from this conference?
Chris,
ReplyDeleteYes--Baker Academic will publish them in the Beeson Divinity Studies series.
Blessings on your work at IBTS.
SRH