The Last Post?

Image by johnb/Derbys/uk via FlickrWith regret, this will be my last post for Methodist Ecumenical News.  I leave employment with the Methodist Church today and there will not be a successor until January at the earliest.  Even then there is no guarantee the blog will be continued.

Exploring Ecumenism

So, first of all thank you to everyone who has read posts on this blog.  There are very few blogs about ecumenism, even if you search globally, and so this has been an interesting experiment.  I have a personal blog, Exploring Ecumenism and you can follow my posts to EE on my Twitter account (@SissonsCJ).  I haven't posted since early August but these days I tend to work at it in fits and starts - I promise to start posting again soon!

I intend to review EE, so that it covers some of the ground on this blog.  EE is more theological and speculative, whilst Methodist Ecumenical News has covered events, often in a fairly clinical way.  So, I hope to pick up some of the ground covered on this blog but I will mix with comments and reflections, more than I have on this blog. 

Methodist Ecumenical News - a brief evaluation

So, what has Methodist Ecumenical News achieved?  I have been encouraged by the followers on Twitter who now number over 120, with a few joining each week.  Most of these are Methodists, which is encouraging.  (The blog was always seen as an experiment and my hope is to see its rebirth as 'Ecumenical Ecumenical News'!)  I expected establishing the blog to be slow because (broadly) ecumenists seem not to be much interested in blogging and bloggers don't seem to be terribly interested in ecumenism.  (This may be an age related phenomenon.)

For example, Methodist Ecumenical News has received very few comments, despite the number of visitors (about 20 000 over its life and 63 views yesterday (and 50 today (Thursday) by 12.30pm).  I was hoping for a community of readers but people read and don't comment (the same applies to EE, except for radical atheists on the topic of teapots).  My other disappointment is the planned community of writers never happened.  If a few other writers had joined in, the blog would not be closing.  A number of people expressed interest but it seems the technology defeated them and I never found out what the exact problem was.

The perils of success

Ecumenism has been immensely successful over the last few decades.  Formal conversations in particular have achieved a great deal in enabling the churches to recognise one another and to work together, sharing resources and, increasingly, worship.  Paradoxically, ecumenism's success is its main barrier to progress.  Here are three examples:

1. As churches move closer together, theologically and structurally, they often find progress becomes slower.  The reasons for this are not necessarily theological.  It is property, finance and most often organisational structures that form additional barriers, not accessible to analytical theologians.  At first sight, organisational problems may seem to be ecclesiological, indeed they are, but the barriers commonly experienced are entrenched deep in people's understanding of their own tradition.  A theological rationale to change ecclesiologies might be convincing on paper but in real life something more is needed.  The problem is, for many people ecumenism means loss of identity, being subsumed into some larger church.  We are in desperate need of models of church that allow the traditions to maintain their identity.  Ken Howcroft's post yesterday hinted at one example where this may be happening.
2. Whilst there has been significant success in formal conversations, analytical theologians are are not good at communicating their findings with the wider church.  Papers are often written in academic language and hidden away in journals.  They cover issues that are not relevant to most people's experiences and knowledge and understanding of arcane dimensions of ecclesiology is assumed.  We need a careful analysis of how this material is communicated.  The Methodist Church experienced this problem a few years ago when, despite previous decisions taken by Conference in principle to support bishops, the decision about what sort of bishops was rejected outright.  The problem is, a decision in principle might lead logically to a decision in practice but reality doesn't follow the laws of logic.
3. As the mainstream churches have moved closer together, we have witnessed, over the last 20 years, a large number of new churches appear, which do not participate in mainstream ecumenism.  To them the historic churches probably seem to be a monolithic block of outdated Christians, made more threatening by their mutual closeness.  The Evangelical Alliance has for a long time been an alternative to the formal ecumenical instruments and now it is arguable there is a third ecumenism of Christians who belong to informal churches and see themselves as Christians Together rather than Churches Together.

Exploring Ecumenism tries to identify how we can find a way out of the paradox that the progress we make actually creates barriers.  We desperately need a new paradigm for ecumenism, rooted in local experience, shared globally.  This is not a task for analytical theologians but for ordinary Christians everywhere.  After 8 years amongst theologians, I return to real life and it is from that perspective I will blog in the future.

PS I have added a comment to the post about the Global Digital Library on Theology and Ecumenism about its launch and its web address.

Related articles

• Methodist Church Website Ecumenical Section (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Ecumenical Formation (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• A Review of Intermediate Ecumenical Life in England (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Inclusion and Membership (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Strategic Planning: Mission Together (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• The Nature of Ecumenical Church (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Global Christian Forum Meets Next Week (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Global Digital Library for Theology and Ecumenism (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)

21st Century Evangelicals

The Evangelical Alliance and Christian Research have recently published a groundbreaking research report, 21st Century Evangelicals: a snapshot of the beliefs and habits of evangelical Christians in the UK.

Over 17 000 Christians, not all evangelicals, completed the questionnaire to inform this fascinating report.  The report explores the distinctive beliefs of evangelicals compared with other Christians.  The Evangelical Alliance on its website states:

This is the first in a series of groundbreaking reports which will paint a comprehensive and detailed picture of evangelicals in the UK at the beginning of the 21st century. This picture will be an invaluable asset to church leaders and Christian organisations as it provides encouragement, presents challenges, guides reflection and stimulates discussion. And it is critical as we look to the future. By presenting an accurate picture of evangelicals today, we can be much better equipped to make effective plans for tomorrow.

We're doing everything we can to make this report widely available. It can be viewed online, it can be downloaded and it's available as a printed booklet. If you're involved in church leadership, make sure everyone in your church's leadership team takes a look at this report and then spend some time discussing some of the questions this research raises. There are a few discussion questions in the report, and more are available online.

In the months to come we are going to delve deeper in order to understand more fully the beliefs of evangelical Christians and how these beliefs impact their lives. We'd be delighted if you were willing to be part of this exciting research.

Biblefresh

Biblefresh is a new initiative from a number of churches and Christian organisations, including the Methodist Church of Great Britain.  It's worth visiting their website for more information.  Below is an excerpt, about their purpose. 

Why does the Church need another new initiative? Surely Christians know and understand the Bible? These questions might easily be asked by many in the Church today. So why are we launching this new initiative?

In early 2006 some research was conducted by the Evangelical Alliance which revealed that low levels of biblical knowledge and understanding was becoming a significant and worrying issue in the Church.

Anecdotally, we had received evidence from some of the Bible colleges and theological institutions that new students were increasingly bible illiterate. More time needed to be spent giving students a basic grounding before they could tackle other subjects.

In March 2007 the Evangelical Alliance Council meeting approved the concept of a ‘biblicising the church’ campaign. Following this, various consultations were held with some of our current partner organisations and the outline of the Biblefresh initiative was formed.

Bible Society along with the Evangelical Alliance commissioned some research to explore levels of biblical literacy in the UK Church. 1731 church leaders and 1929 church attendees were surveyed. The findings underlined the anecdotal evidence: that the church as well as our culture has very low levels of biblical understanding and it is not only church members that struggle to read the Bible but church leaders also. In short, many are not familiar with the Bible; find it difficult to engage with it regularly and there is a real need for training and encouragement in how to do this. For the detailed summary report of the ‘Taking the Pulse’ survey, you can access it here.

It was decided that the Biblefresh initiative, as it was styled, would be focussed on the year 2011, which was also the 400th anniversary since the publication of the King James Version of the Bible. We would ask churches to join the movement by agreeing to increase their church’s level of biblical engagement in four ways: reading, training, translation and experience. Centrally we would encourage our partner organisations to respond to the need by providing access to relevant reading, audio, video, and training resources.

By asking churches to re-focus on the Bible for the year, we hoped that the fruit in the UK Church would be an increased hunger and desire for the Word of God which would result in more lives saved and transformed. That we would become ‘with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord… transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ (2 Cor. 3.18 NKJV)