The Emerging Face of Being One: Exploring Various Models of Christian Unity

Invited and hosted by the Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations Office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Chicago, Illinois, was the city where the North American Academy of Ecumenists gathered September 27-29, 2013, for its annual conference. Its intriguing theme, Emerging Face of Being One: Exploring Various Models of Christian Unity, not only drew participants and presenters from across the spectrum of Christian identity. It also echoed the description of the goal in a study paper written for the 2010 General Assembly of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC): goal is celebrate the wondrous diversity of our God-given oneness as God's people, Christ's body, the Spirit's temple. (1) The Friday evening address opening the conference was a presentation by the Rev. Dr. Carmelo Alvarez of Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana, focused on Pentecostalism in Chile, in particular the Pentecostal Church of Chile and the Pentecostal Mission Church of Chile. (2) Saturday morning opened with a dual presentation on Discerning into the Ecumenical Community, with presentations by the Rev. Dr. Dale Luffman of the Community of Christ and Shirley Paulson of the Church of Christ, Scientist. The community into which they are discerning is the NCC. Community of Christ completed its discernment in 2010 and became a member-church of the Council during the NCC's 2010 General Assembly, while the Church of Christ, Scientist, is still discerning. The papers by Luffman and Paulson disclose a certain reality, with ensuing reactions, their churches experience with other churches, in particular those of the so-called mainline, which by its very nomenclature dismisses them as sideline. One reality is the tendency at times for churches unchurch each other--a reaction breaks the heart of Jesus the Christ, who prayed that all in him may be one so the world may believe (Jn. 17:21). Given such realities and reactions, Luffman and Paulson and their churches are truly emerging faces of unity. Consequently, and sideline need realigning. Churches perceive themselves at the center need attend the from the margins, and vice versa. Center and margin belong the same ecclesial trajectory, and sometimes the periphery becomes the core. Luffman notes the transformation in his church: movement from isolation based on defined difference and distinction has given way a transformed communion increasingly engaged in the pursuit of peace and justice in the places and opportunities where it can share its influence. A new face has emerged. (3) Paulson says of her church's experience, The effort learn the language more comfortable others has provided the means by which they can ask deep questions from the basis of their own context. Mutual understanding (of both similarities and dissimilarities) increases with more opportunities share commonalities. (4) The Rev. Dr. John H. Armstrong, the president of ACT3 and author of Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ's Mission Is Vital the Future of the Church (2010), addressed Emerging Face of Being One: Ecumenical Windows for Evangelicals. While he traced a certain isolationist tendency in Evangelicalism, he also stresses the fact evangelicals were deeply involved in ecumenism until the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. (5) Drawing on friends, mentors, and colleagues, Armstrong opens Evangelicalism's ecumenical windows, as he speaks the not-so-poised tension whether to identify Evangelicalism with the wider Christian tradition, not simply with those conservative Protestants who left the mainline denominations or formed new institutions in the twentieth century in reaction more liberal expressions of Christianity. (6) It is from the perspective of mission he makes a compelling argument being Evangelical and being is not a contradiction in terms. …