Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Church: Towards a Common Vision

Participants in the Tenth Assembly of the World Council of Churches meeting in Busan, South Korea from October 30 through November 8 will have in their copies of the assembly Resource Book the new convergence text The Church: Towards a Common Vision (Faith and Order Paper No. 214; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2013). Their Programme Book will include the text of a draft statement on the unity of the church proposed to the assembly for action, "God's Gift and Call to Unity--and Our Commitment," that commends The Church: Towards a Common Vision for the study of the churches as a means of helping the churches better understand the nature of the visible unity that God calls the church to embody.

This is the first major ecumenical convergence text commended to the churches for study and response to be issued since the landmark 1982 document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 111; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982) [BEM]. The new text The Church: Towards a Common Vision has taken into account the responses of the churches to BEM and is rooted in twenty years of work that included the drafting of, responses to, and revision of the predecessor documents The Nature and Purpose of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order Paper No. 181; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998) and The Nature and Mission of the Church. A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order Paper No. 198; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005).

I represented the Baptist World Alliance as a member of the WCC Plenary Commission on Faith and Order that met in Crete in October 2009. One of our tasks during this meeting was to discuss the 2005 paper The Nature and Mission of the Church. A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement in working groups and plenary session and to offer feedback that was taken into account in the drafting of The Church: Towards a Common Vision. The paragraphs below from the preface of The Church: Towards a Common Vision explain the background, process, and goals of this new convergence text:
For twenty years, the delegated representatives of the Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican, Evangelical, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic churches in a World Conference on Faith and Order (1993), three Plenary Commissions on Faith and Order (1996, 2004, 2009), eighteen meetings of the Standing Commission, and countless drafting meetings have sought to uncover a global, multilateral and ecumenical vision of the nature, purpose, and mission of the Church. The churches have responded critically and constructively to two earlier stages on the way to a common statement. The Commission on Faith and Order responds to the churches with The Church: Towards a Common Vision, its common – or convergence – statement on ecclesiology. The convergence reached in The Church represents an extraordinary ecumenical achievement.
There are at least two distinct, but deeply interrelated, objectives in sending The Church to the churches for study and official response. The first is renewal. As a multilateral ecumenical text, The Church cannot be identified exclusively with any one ecclesiological tradition. In the long process from 1993-2012, the theological expressions and ecclesial experiences of many churches have been brought together in such a way that the churches reading this text may find themselves challenged to live more fully the ecclesial life; others may find in it aspects of ecclesial life and understanding which have been neglected or forgotten; others may find themselves strengthened and affirmed. As Christians experience life-long growth into Christ, they will find themselves drawing closer to one another, and living into the biblical image of the one body: “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
The second objective is theological agreement on the Church. As important as the convergence achieved by Faith and Order in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry was the official response process that followed. The six published volumes of responses manifested the varying levels of documented convergences among the churches themselves on the key questions around baptism, eucharist and ministry. The effects of the ecclesial convergence surfaced by Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry toward Christian unity are well-documented and ongoing. The responses to The Church: Towards a Common Vision will not only evaluate the convergence reached by Faith and Order but also reflect the level of convergence on ecclesiology among the churches. Just as the convergence on baptism in the responses to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry gave rise to a fresh impetus toward mutual recognition of baptism, similar ecclesial convergence on ecclesiology will play a vital role in the mutual recognition between the churches as they call one another to visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship.
“Ecclesial responses” for the Commission on Faith and Order includes the churches that are members of the Commission and the fellowship of churches in the World Council of Churches. It is also hoped that those churches that are new to the ecumenical movement will accept the invitation to study and comment on the text. The Commission also welcomes responses from ecclesial bodies, such as national and regional councils of churches and the Christian World Communions, whose official dialogues among themselves have contributed so much to the convergence reflected in The Church. The specific questions posed by Faith and Order to the churches to guide their response process are found at the end of the Introduction to The Church. The questions for study and response are theological, practical, and pastoral. The Commission requests that official responses be sent to the Faith and Order secretariat at the World Council of Churches no later than 31 December 2015.
I hope all readers of Ecclesial Theology will download and read The Church: Towards a Common Vision and contemplate how their churches might respond to the ecclesial vision proposed by this document.

Monday, October 28, 2013

10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches: you, too, can participate

The Tenth Assembly of the World Council of Churches gets under way this week, meeting in Busan, South Korea from October 30 through November 8, 2013. WCC assemblies have been held once every seven years since the inaugural 1948 Amsterdam assembly. The explosion in social media and live streaming technologies since the last assembly (in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2006) will make it possible for interested persons globally to follow and have forms of participation in the Tenth Assembly as it happens. Below is a WCC press release providing information on the Assembly, social media forums connecting people with the Assembly via Twitter and Facebook, downloadable mobile applications, and a link to the official WCC web site for the Tenth Assembly that in turn makes available program books and other resources in PDF, press releases, and live video streaming of worship services and plenary sessions.

WCC assembly ready to open, watch from afar

25 October 2013

Final preparations are underway for the opening of the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), to be held in Busan, Republic of Korea.

At the Sansung Presbyterian Church in Busan, more than 50 volunteers gathered Thursday and Friday, 24 to 25 October, to pack the welcome bags for assembly delegates and several thousand other participants who are expected to attend the 10-day assembly.

The bags include an array of assembly publications including worship and Bible study materials, programme and resource book and information about the work of the WCC since the last assembly, held in 2006 at Porto Alegre, Brazil.

During the two days of work, the volunteers individually filled some 3,000 bags with books and other gifts for the assembly participants.

The assembly, which has the theme “God of Life, lead us to justice and peace”, opens 30 October with an opening prayer service in which some 5,000 people, including 2,500 Koreans, will participate.

The opening service will be broadcast through an online live stream from the Christian Broadcast System in Korea, the oldest Christian television network in Korea.

The live stream will broadcast several other events from the WCC assembly. A schedule of programming is now available on the WCC assembly website.

In addition to a number of live stream broadcasts throughout the assembly, access to the assembly from afar will be facilitated through a number of other sources.

The WCC Assembly website will feature daily news stories and updates about the assembly.

For tablets and mobile phones, a downloadable free mobile application that will feature daily stories, photos and links to videos from the assembly is available through the iTunes Store and Google Market.

Each day a 15-minute video broadcast, Madang Live, will be available on You Tube and show highlights and feature stories from the assembly.

And the assembly will be trending through social media networks such as the WCC Twitter site, @oikoumene, @OlavTveit and the assembly Twitter site, @wcc2013.

The WCC Assembly Facebook event is now a running space on social media, engaging some 600 people from around the world through sharing of information, articles and links about the assembly. Information on the visitors’ programme organized by the Korean Host Committee of the WCC has also been made accessible through wcc2013.kr (in Korean).
 

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Ecumenical theology in 140 characters or less (updated)


To encourage reading and reception of The Word of God in the Life of the Church: A Report of International Conversations between The Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006-2010, I've launched a series of occasional Twitter tweets on what #baptistsandcatholics affirm together, drawn from the bold type sections of the report that summarize Baptist-Catholic agreement (section numbers in parentheses). To keep up with this series, follow @srharmon on Twitter. Tweets in the series are searchable by hashtag #baptistsandcatholics. Tweets in the series are searchable by hashtag #BaptistsCatholics. (The first six tweets in the series were hashtagged #baptistsandcatholics; the new hashtag #BaptistsCatholics saves three precious characters for tweet text.)

Monday, October 14, 2013

Trio of articles on Baptist ecumenical dialogue

The current issue of Baptist World: A Magazine of the Baptist World Alliance (vol. 60, no. 4; October/December 2013) includes a trio of articles on Baptist World Alliance participation in ecumenical dialogue: my article "Gathering Discusses Baptist-Catholic Dialogue Report" on the presentation and discussion of the report from the 2006-2010 conversations between the BWA and the Catholic Church during the BWA annual gathering in Ocho Rios, Jamaica in July 2013 (p. 22); "BWA to Dialogue with Methodists" on plans for an upcoming series of conversations between the BWA and the World Methodist Council (pp. 22-23); and "Why Theological Dialogues Are Challenging" reporting BWA General Secretary Neville Callam's perspective on four major challenges facing Baptists when they participate in international theological dialogues with other Christian communions, shared during the 8th Baptist International Conference on Theological Education that preceded the BWA annual gathering in Jamaica (p. 23). The complete contents of this issue of Baptist World are viewable online by clicking on the hyperlink above.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Ecumenical theology in 140 characters or less


To encourage reading and reception of The Word of God in the Life of the Church: A Report of International Conversations between The Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006-2010, I've launched a series of occasional Twitter tweets on what #baptistsandcatholics affirm together, drawn from the bold type sections of the report that summarize Baptist-Catholic agreement (section numbers in parentheses). To keep up with this series, follow @srharmon on Twitter. Tweets in the series are searchable by hashtag #baptistsandcatholics.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Baptist-Catholic dialogue report (2006-2010) now online


Baptist-Catholic joint commission in Rome, December 2009
The report from the 2006-2010 series of conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church, The Word of God in the Life of the Church, is now available online.

The full text of The Word of God in the Life of the Church: A Report of International Conversations between the Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006-2010 is linked from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity page on the Vatican web site (click on hyperlinked title), along with the official Catholic commentary on the report by Thomas A. Baima, "Commentary on The Word of God in the Life of the Church: A Catholic Reflection on the Report of the International Conversations between the Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006-2010."

The report from the first series of conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church (1984-1988), Summons to Witness to Christ in Today's World: A Report on the Baptist-Roman Catholic International Conversations, is also linked from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity page along with an official Catholic commentary on the report by Thomas A. Stransky.

The Word of God in the Life of the Church had its initial print publication in a special issue of the American Baptist Quarterly (vol. 31, no. 1) that includes the full text of the 95-page report along with introductions and commentaries. An editorial introduction by Curtis W. Freeman, who is co-editor of the American Baptist Quarterly as well as Research Professor of Theology and Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School, makes connections between these recent international conversations and the national-level conversations that began in 1967 soon after the Second Vatican Council between representatives of the American Baptist Churches USA and the United States Catholic Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Baptist-Catholic dialogue commission co-chair and report co-editor Paul S. Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology at Oxford University, provides an extensive introduction to the report that contextualizes the themes of the report in relation to other ecumenical dialogues the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church have held with other Christian communions. The text of the report itself is followed by a pair of responses to the report by two Baptist theologians of note who were not members of the Baptist delegation to these conversations: a commentary by Josué Fonseca, who was Professor and Academic Dean at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Santiago, Chile from 1978 to 2008 before his current service as pastor of First Baptist Church in Concepcion, Chile, and a commentary by Stephen R. Holmes, Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who is also a minister in the Baptist Union of Scotland. Single copies of the American Baptist Quarterly issue with the report may be ordered for $5.00 plus $3.00 shipping (in the continental United States) from Callie Davis at Duke University Divinity School: cdavis@div.duke.edu.

At some point the text of The Word of God in the Life of the Church will also be posted on the Baptist World Alliance web site and issued by the BWA as an e-book on Amazon.com. When the text is available in those ways, notice will be given here at Ecclesial Theology.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Baptists and Classical Christian Worship--podcast interview

Previous posts on Ecclesial Theology have called attention to the new book Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship edited by Rodney Wallace Kennedy and Derek C. Hatch and an Associated Baptist Press story exploring issues raised by the book. Yesterday (October 3, 2013) the talk radio program Issues, Etc. (with Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod associations) posted an hour-long podcast interview with book editors Kennedy and Hatch. It's fascinating and informative listening that provides insight beyond the book into what it means to implement worship grounded in liturgical catholicity in flesh-and-blood Baptist communities.

Listen to the interview "Baptists and Classical Christian Worship" either in online streaming format or as an mp3 download. (Disclaimer: my recommendation of this interview in no way constitutes an endorsement of any of the commentaries or advertisements in the interludes between segments of the interview.)

For what it's worth, a couple of delightful features of the interview with differing levels of significance: my gratifying discovery that Dr. Hatch is opening many of his classes at Howard Payne University--my undergraduate alma mater and the place where my academic theological pilgrimage that led to my present work began--with acts of worship from the Daily Office and structuring his Christian Doctrines course around the framework of the Apostles' Creed (and that First Baptist Church in Brownwood, Texas where he is a member has engaged in a congregational study of the Apostles' Creed and has recited it in worship), and the use of a little Coldplay as bumper music in the interview.

Related posts;

Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship

Associated Baptist Press on Baptist reception of the liturgical riches of the whole church