Methodist URC Joint Resolution Progress Report

This is the first of a series of excerpts from the Methodist Conference 2011 Ecumenical Report.  This first excerpt covers material relating to relations between the Methodist and United Reformed Churches.

Further report on progress in response to the Joint Resolution of the Methodist Conference and the United Reformed Church Assembly in 2008

1.1 Background to the Joint Resolution

In 2008, the URC Assembly and Methodist Conference approved a joint resolution which had been proposed by the Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury District of the Methodist Church and the West Midlands Synod of the United Reformed Church. Full details of the resolution can be found on the Methodist Church website [2008 Resolution 62/2]. Its main points are as follows:

• to explore further joint working for the sake of shared mission;
• a structure that minimises ecumenical meetings but facilitates diversity;
• exploration of joint structures at synod/district level;
• effective use of resources.

1.2 Joint Meeting of the United Reformed Church Mission Council and the Methodist Council

A report on this first joint meeting can be found in the report of the Methodist Council elsewhere in this Agenda.

This report is buried in the Methodist Council report and so it is reproduced here in full.  These links are to reports of the joint councils meeting, Better Together, on this blog.

One major development in the life and work of the Council this year was the first joint meeting of the Methodist Council and the United Reformed Church Mission Council. For many years there has been, and continues to be, a Methodist-United Reformed Church Liaison Committee. In 2008 the Methodist Conference and the URC Assembly both adopted resolutions committing themselves to closer working together. Following that a Strategic Oversight Group of a few senior staff and officers of both Churches was established. That in turn led to the proposal that the two Councils should meet together.

The joint meeting took place at The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, in October 2010. The normal one day meeting of the Methodist Council was lengthened to a 48 hour meeting to make this possible. During the time the two Councils met separately for a number of sessions to conduct their own business and complete their own formalities. Interspersed among these were nine sessions where the two Councils met together. These included an opening session exploring the history, context and characteristics of the two Churches within a framework of worship; a Bible Study on the need to welcome all people whatever their status into the embrace of the Church; and discussion groups on the key challenges facing Churches both locally and denominationally. There was a presentation on “Fresh Expressions” by Bishop Graham Cray, the Bishop responsible for that work in the Church of England, a work in which the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church are partners. The General Secretaries of the two Churches gave an outline of the pressing issues and current initiatives in both Churches, which led to the recognition of how many themes were common to both. There was then a series of workshops developed in response to requests from the discussion groups.

The final joint plenary sessions then received presentations and engaged in discussions of a number of issues which led in turn to the making of some shared decisions. The report of a joint Church Buildings Think Tank led to a call for the Strategic Oversight Group to look at the possibility of forming a follow-on group to facilitate the next stage of this work. A document on work with children and young people led to the staff teams being directed to bring plans for joint working to future meetings of the Councils. A paper on Poverty in Britain 2010 led to a commitment to challenge the causes of poverty and inequality inherent in our society. A report on the Review of the Methodist/United Reformed Church National Rural Officer Post led to a commitment to continue the joint post and accept the recommendations made in the report.

During the joint meeting members of the Methodist Council were introduced to the United Reformed Church’s way of making decisions by consensus, and this was tried in a number of cases. In general, the making of decisions prompted interesting reflection. The two Councils do not have exactly equivalent responsibilities, powers or ways of working. In effect the two Councils made separate but parallel decisions in each other’s presence. This will need further attention in any follow-up event. Feedback from the Councils of both Churches has suggested that the joint meeting was worthwhile and worth doing again. A second joint meeting is therefore being planned for autumn 2012.

1.3 Other developments

A senior officer of the Methodist Conference now attends the United Reformed Church Mission Council as a participant observer, and a senior officer of the United Reformed Church attends the Methodist Council in a similar capacity. The Strategic Oversight Group continues to meet regularly.  Its membership is currently: from the United Reformed Church, the General Secretary, the Deputy General Secretary and the Treasurer; and from the Methodist Church, the General Secretary, the Secretary for Team Operations and the Secretary for External Relationships [nb the offices of Treasurer of the United Reformed Church and Secretary for Team Operations in the Methodist Church are currently held by the same person]. Conversations are beginning about how the Methodist-United Reformed Church Liaison Committee’s work can interact productively with that of the Methodist-Anglican Panel for Unity in Mission.

Ecumenical Identity

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Two intersecting circles illustrate Ken's point.

The following is a post prepared by Revd Ken Howcroft, Connexional Ecumenical Officer:

The word “identity” has kept cropping up at ecumenical meetings and discussions recently. Thinking about it, it strikes me that there has been a shift over the years.

At one time we looked for areas where the circles of our various Churches’ identities overlapped, and we thought of that area as our common Christian identity or the identity of the universal Church of Christ that we share in common. We then sought to do everything that we could to expand that area of overlap, seeing the things in it as the essence of our identity as parts of Christ’s Church and the things outside it as secondary. It led to us talking of “the coming great church” and “visible organic unity”.

There are great strengths in that. But there are also some potential problems. One is that the giving and receiving of gifts (“receptive ecumenism”) could come to be seen as a matter of exchanging luxuries or ephemera rather than essentials (rather like Christmas presents for people who have got everything they think they want!). Another is that Churches (particularly but not exclusively large and powerful ones) can tend to assume that their secondary markers of identity will remain and that other Churches will just accommodate to them.

A third problem is that it works best with a conciliar view of ecumenism (in which ecumenical Councils of Churches are seen as prototypical governance bodies of a single united Church that is coming into being). So the shift towards a Churches Together way of working has been accompanied by a radical shift in the model.

The idea of separate Churches working together in a way that leads to visible communion (rather than merger into an homogenous, single institution) means that what defines each Church’s identity becomes not what it shares in common with others but the special attributes and emphases or particular combinations of them which distinguish it from others.

The danger then, however, is that things which seemed to be second-order or non-essential issues forty years ago now take on first-order importance (a phenomenon noted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a speech in Rome last year). In this model the common essence of what it means to be Christ’s Church tends to vanish out of sight, or at best be subsumed into the things which differentiate that Church from others.

Moreover receptive ecumenism now becomes a giving and receiving of gifts that is akin to trading in essentials, with all the power-brokering that that entails. In other words it becomes even more difficult to do, particularly where the essentials are in tension with each other: for example (and admittedly to caricature the point in order to make it), “I will receive the gift of the historic episcopate from you provided that you receive from me the gift of the primary locus of oversight being the local congregation with which nobody else can interfere”.

I would like to think that there was another way forward. Identities are not suits of clothes that you can simply put on and take off. Even an actor who takes on the outward markers and even the intellectual and emotional mindset of a whole range of different characters has to find an integrity of performance, and that means recognising how the identity being assumed as an actor connects with the essential identity of the actor as a person.

Who we are as individuals and as Churches develops and changes over time. It gets expressed and re-expressed in different contexts. There are continuities and discontinuities in those forms of expression. But unless there is some underlying continuity in the development the result is dis-ease, a lack of wholeness and, dare I say it, a deficiency of holiness.

Thus my identity includes the fact that I am a son, to which I have added that of being a husband and being a father. But I would be a dysfunctional father if I forgot what it is to be a son. Similarly when St Paul says “To the Jews I became as a Jew… to the Greeks I became as a Greek… etc” in 1 Corinthians 9, he is not talking of a complete identity transplant. The one who becomes as a Jew and as a Greek remains the same Christian-Pharisaic-Jew or Jewish-Pharisaic-Christian. But that identity changes and develops as it is expressed in the different contexts.

To personalise it all, although I have not lived there for many years I am shaped by the fact that I come from a particular sort of setting in Lancashire. Similarly I shall always be shaped by the fact that I am a Methodist. But just as I can be a Lancastrian and live in other parts of the world, and be an ordained minister in the Church rather than a coal-miner, so I can be a Methodist within a wider expression of the Church. I admit that I am helped in that by the fact that Methodism’s origins (which set the parameters for its identity) were in being a movement inside another Church.

I therefore believe that a move into visible communion where what marks the Church of Christ is at least the highest common factor of our authentic identities as separate Churches (rather than the lowest common denominator of overlapping identity as in the first model above) and hopefully (in the theological sense of that term) more, and which can contain our differing identities in relationships which enrich us all, is possible.

So what is stopping us? At the recent joint meeting of the Methodist Council and the URC Mission Council people kept saying that there were things preventing them working together in worship and mission in local situations. When we asked them to say what they were, we had to keep saying “But you can already do that!”.

So is what is stopping us either a lack of confidence in our common identity as the Church of Christ, or our separate identities as Churches in Christ, or is it a lack of will?

Related articles

• The Ecumenical Landscape (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Christ's Body in Corinth (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Ecumenical Stakeholders Group (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)

Better Together

Now, I think of myself as an ecumenical person. As an Anglican working for the Methodist Church I'm a sort of embodiment of the covenant (though not always a very good one).

But as the lead media officer for the British Methodist Church, I'm well aware that the Church of England is not our only significant partnership. A significant amount of my work is with the Joint Public Issues Team - a team made up of Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Church colleagues working together on politics and social action. It's challenging, rewarding and exciting working with such a diverse team on the issues that really matter, and it's a real privilege to work with my Baptist and URC counterparts (Chris Hall and Gill Nichol).

Part of my job is to attend the Methodist Council three or four times a year so that I can help to communicate the decisions made by the Council to the wider Church. As a new Connexional year kicks off, our first Council of the year is something quite different to anything we've done before. This time, the Methodist Church and the URC have decided to hold a joint meeting of the URC Mission Council and the Methodist Council, so that we can better explore those areas in which our effectiveness in mission might be improved by working together.

URC Press & Media Offiicer Gill Nichol has written a fantastic overview of what this joint meeting (aka 'Better Together') is all about.

Yesterday our joint sessions kicked off with chance to explore a little of the histories and identities of the Methodist Church and the URC, expertly chaired by Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe, in which church members shared their thoughts on key elements of their traditions and the identity of their denominations. This was followed by a challenging bible study led by Lawrence Moore, Moderator-Elect of the URC General Assembly, entitled 'Peter, Paul and the Gentiles: Radical Inclusion in the Early Church'. In the evening we were visited by Rt Revd Graham Cray (aka the 'Fresh Expressions' Bishop) who shared with us the latest on that growing ecumenical initiative.

We're now in day two of our 3-day meeting, talking about decision-making procedures in the Churches before we'll soon launch into a discussion about how we use our buildings. This morning our General Secretaries (Revd Dr Martyn Atkins for the Methodist Church and Revd Roberta Rominger for the URC) shared what the different Churches' priorities are and how we are planning to move forward with them in the coming years. We also had the opportunity to hear about the huge range of youth and children's work that's being done by teams from both organisations. There was a clear focus for both on the participation of children and young people in all areas of church life and the participants broke into groups to discuss the challenges and opportunities in greater depth.

So, now on to buildings...watch this space for more info....

Better Together

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Better Together is a joint meeting of the Methodist Council and the United Reformed Church Mission Council.  It starts on Wednesday this week, 13 October, and continues until Friday.  Details of the agenda and papers can be found on the Methodist Church website. 

The following items will be discussed during the joint sessions:

• Exploring our history, context and characteristics within a framework of worship.  This item will include discussion of the Closer Working Consultation Resolution.
• The General Secretaries unpack the two Churches’ current major themes
• Groups explore the key challenges facing the Church locally and denominationally
• Fresh Expressions: presentation and discussion led by Bishop Graham Cray
• Bible Study led by Laurence Moore, Moderator-elect of the General Assembly
• Ways Ahead for Children & Youth Work
• Church Building Opportunities
• The Church in the World

Leave a comment if you would like more information about any of these items.  Associated papers can be found at the first link in this post.

Related articles

• Closer Working: Consultation Resolution (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Closer Working: A local response to the 2008 Joint Resolution (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• EMU Statement of Partnership for Scotland (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)

Closer Working: Consultation Resolution

Image via WikipediaI posted a series about the Closer Working Consultation during August.  There are eight earlier posts, starting with an account of the consultation, which you might like to visit if you have not seen this material before.  I promised to publish the consultation resolution as soon as the wording had been agreed.

This resolution is intended for local churches.  If you are a member of one of the churches mentioned, please leave a comment about whether or not you support the resolution, your reasons and ideas about how it might be rolled out.

The resolution will go to the first ever joint meeting of the Methodist Council and United Reformed Mission Council during October.  It will be one of several optional papers for group work.  Groups will be able to make recommendations to the final session.  The resolution will also be discussed at several other meetings over the next few months.

The Uniting Churches in Britain

The United Reformed/Methodist consultation “Closer Working” meeting at Woodbrooke Hall Birmingham in April 2010, affirms both the valuable ecumenical work taking place across Britain and the urgent mission imperative to more effectively empower this work. We call upon our two churches to work with the Church of England, the Episcopal Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales, to create a higher profile for a movement towards visible unity that brings into being “Uniting Churches in Britain”, The consultation therefore invites the appropriate bodies of our two churches (both “centrally” and locally) and any other interested churches to make the following affirmation:


We recognise that the Anglican/Methodist Covenant, the growing shared work between the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church and agreements between our two churches in Scotland and Wales mean that the three churches, Anglican, Methodist and United Reformed are on a journey together with a goal of full visible unity. We invite others who share this goal to join us on this journey. To aid the recognition of this journey together in the mission work we undertake, we commit ourselves to work together to become more visibly “Uniting Churches in Britain”.

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