Editor’s Note: This challenge to Reformed churches is included in a report to representatives in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) by its president, Clifton Kirkpatrick. It references the 2004 WARC meeting in Accra, Ghana, at which Kirkpatrick was elected president.
The Book of Proverbs in the King James Version has a wonderful phrase, “Where there is not vision, the people perish.” The most important thing we will do at this meeting is set a vision, purpose, and priorities for the Alliance and begin to shape our life around them. What we need to recapture the hearts of our churches is a compelling vision, purpose, and program so that the message of Accra can renew our churches and through them our world.
The core callings that we are proposing for your consideration for WARC are:
· To covenant for justice in the economy and the earth.
· To search for spiritual renewal and renewal of Reformed worship.
· To foster communion within the Reformed family and unity within the church ecumenical.
· To interpret and re-interpret the Reformed tradition and theology for contemporary witness.
· To foster mission in unity, mission renewal and mission empowerment.
· To build churches that are truly inclusive of all the people of God.
· To enable Reformed churches to witness for justice and peace.
… We believe these core callings are not only the basis on which we should organize the Alliance but also are the core callings that should be at the heart of every Reformed Church so that WARC becomes a corporate expression of our shared values and our common movement to transform the world to the purposes of God.
A few years ago, Stephen Covey wrote a book that became a best seller in North America: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey listed seven traits or life patterns that he thought made people effective in their interpersonal relations and sense of wellbeing. For Christians the issue is not effectiveness but faithfulness to Christ and his purposes in the world. Our challenge in WARC is not only to agree on these purposes or core callings just for the Alliance, but also to be able to proclaim them as the habits all Reformed Christians and Reformed churches need to make central in their lives. …
Justice in the Economy and the Earth
The first priority on our list, by intention and not by accident, is for WARC “to covenant for justice in the economy and the earth.” This is the fundamental calling for the Alliance and for our churches coming out of Accra and the distinct contribution that WARC has to offer to the church ecumenical and to the world. We must do this one well!
The calling to justice in the economy and the earth is not only a social justice concern but is rather a concern around which the very integrity of our faith is at stake. The very fabric of our world and of our churches is being ripped apart by a global economic system that makes a mockery of the great promise of Genesis 1 that all people are created in the image of God and should be treated with the dignity and respect God intends for humanity. It is our core calling to enable Reformed churches everywhere to confess our faith in terms of the fullness of life God intends for humanity; to call our world to repent of the injustice that is creating massive poverty and environmental degradation; and to find a new way where all can live together in dignity and justice.
It is also a calling we Reformed Christians dare not claim as our exclusive domain but one that we must share gladly with the church ecumenical. I am pleased that the World Council of Churches is giving major attention to the call for justice in the economy and the earth through the AGAPE process that will be a major focus of the forthcoming WCC Assembly in Porto Alegre. As churches and as an Alliance we need to take the lead in helping this call for justice in the economy and the earth to become a rallying cry for all churches.
Implementing this priority will not be easy, and there will be huge forces of opposition. That is certainly true in my context. But there will also be surprising moments of grace and surprise. That happened this spring in a venture related to our commitment to economic justice in which my church, the United Church of Christ, and others in the U.S.A. have shared — a campaign to boycott the fast food chain, Taco Bell. This chain is owned by YUM Brands.
This effort began for my church when our Presbytery of Tampa Bay sent an overture to our Assembly three years ago to join this boycott because of the oppressive conditions under which the migrant farm workers, who supplied Taco Bell with tomatoes, were working in South Florida. So we joined the workers’ organization, the Coalition of Immokolee Workers, in urging our church members not to eat at Taco Bell until the company worked in good faith to end the slave-labor-like conditions in which so many of the farm workers were living and working in South Florida. … In church after church, pastors and church leaders stood firm that this was a moral issue — an issue that if not resolved fairly would be an affront to Christ — and that moral and faith-based stance of the church is what caused the company to change, to agree to work with the Coalition of Immokolee Workers, to double the wages for each bucket of tomatoes, and to work with the churches in helping these reforms to become the norm in the fast food industry.
We still have a long way to go in the “Fair Food Campaign,” but this victory is a major source of encouragement that even if we are in the position of having only five loaves and two fishes in relation to powerful economic interests, there is a huge power in the gospel and in the moral witness of the churches that we should never underestimate. …
Spiritual and Worship Renewal
The second priority, “to search for spiritual renewal and the renewal of Reformed worship,” in many ways grew out of the first in Accra. It was clear to all of us that in covenanting for justice in the economy and the earth, we were taking on the “principalities and powers” of the present age. That will only be possible in the power of the Holy Spirit, which the churches must find through spiritual renewal and the renewal of worship. Especially in the setting in which we found ourselves in Africa, it was also abundantly clear to all of us that it was time to quit being “God’s frozen chosen” and to be open to the renewing winds of the Spirit that were so evident in the enthusiasm, joyful singing, powerful praying and even dancing of our African Christian hosts.
This focus on spiritual and worship renewal is in many ways a new venture for WARC, but there was a clear cry in Accra from churches all over the world that renewal by the power of the Holy Spirit is an urgent priority if Reformed churches are to grow, to reach out to new generations, and to have power to engage in the prophetic witness to which Christ is calling us. If WARC can find a way to contribute substantively to spiritually-renewed congregations in our diverse situations, it will be a huge blessing to the Reformed movement.
Unity and Communion
The third core calling is “to foster communion within the Reformed family and unity within the church ecumenical.” Robert McAfee Brown once remarked, “To be Reformed is to be ecumenical.” He was reflecting on the natural proclivity of Reformed Christians to be leaders in the ecumenical movement because we know that we are not, in and of ourselves, the church of Jesus Christ, but only a part of it that can never be whole until we have achieved the unity of the church. Calvin reflected that same passion when he told Archbishop Cranmer that he “would cross ten seas” for the cause of Christian unity. In this age of fragmentation and unraveling both in society and the churches, the ecumenical calling is precious, and WARC needs to continue to take the lead in reaching out to other Christian communions and traditions for the unity of Christ’s Church.
While Reformed churches have usually been ecumenical leaders, we have often done less well in our own family. … We have multiple Reformed churches in almost every nation, and our solution to serious disagreements in our churches is very often to split. These divisions are an affront to Christ and greatly weaken our witness as Reformed Christians.
A few years ago, Martin Chesney remarked in The Ecumenical Review that Reformed polity has a global blind spot. We have a model of interdependent governing bodies where congregations, presbyteries, synods, and General Assembly are mutually accountable to one another and act together as one church. However, all of that stops at national boundaries, and while a church like mine may seek to work in harmony and seek the advice of Reformed churches in other lands, we are not bound to one another in one church. In fact the very name of our global body, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (in contrast to the Anglican Communion), reflects this sense of autonomy that we seem to treasure as Reformed Christians. How different that is from the biblical image of the Church as the body of Christ, where all are organically connected to one another under the leadership of Jesus Christ, who is the head of the Church.
One of the commitments made in Accra I believe is very important is that during this period we are called to move from being an alliance to being a true communion of churches. We have much work to do to get there, but I believe it is crucial for the future of WARC and the strength of our Reformed witness.
Interpreting the Reformed Tradition
Doing theology together has been one of the classical functions of WARC, and it is desperately needed — but in a new key — in our day. The fourth priority is related to this task: “to interpret and re-interpret the Reformed tradition and theology for contemporary witness.” The world and the church are in need of a clear articulation of what traditional Reformed themes (the sovereignty of God, sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura, the church as a covenant community, election for service as well as salvation, etc.) for the issues of our time. …
Mission
The fifth priority, “to foster mission in unity, mission renewal, and mission empowerment,“ reflects a growing emphasis in the Reformed movement about the centrality of mission. For those of us who talk about “marks of the church,” mission has become the fourth mark of Reformed Christianity. Calvin began with two marks of the true church, the gospel rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. For those of us in the Presbyterian side of this tradition, John Knox added a third, the mark of discipline or nurture. But in church after church, including my own, mission became the fourth mark to the church in the 20th century. This move is based on a classical Reformed conviction that we have been chosen not for ourselves but to be used by God for the blessing of the world — to be agents of God’s mission.
In recent years, mission has been dealt with segmentally in WARC. The Mission in Unity project has focused on how to overcome the ways that mission has been used to create divisions in the Reformed family. The Theology Department has focused on new understandings of mission for an age of empire and a contemporary world. The Partnership and Youth Programs have focused on empowering those who have often been excluded from leadership in mission. Accra has called the Alliance and the churches to pull these various strands together with a holistic mission emphasis based on missiologies of life that will empower the Reformed movement in unity and with the inclusion of all of God’s people to engage in Christ’s mission for life in fullness in our time. …
Inclusive Churches
The sixth theme, “to build churches that are truly inclusive of all the people of God,” is a priority that ought not be necessary for WARC and its churches at the beginning of the 21st century, but it is! This must be the time when women, youth, people from minority backgrounds in different cultures, new immigrants, people of disabilities and all others are welcomed into full participation and leadership in all of our churches. There are no second-class citizens in the Church of Jesus Christ!
The biblical image central for Reformed ecclesiology is that of the body of Christ, which is most fully developed in I Corinthians 12. There is no way the body of Christ can be faithful and effective if only the arms, but not the legs, are allowed to participate and to lead, or if only the eyes and not the ears. That image is so clear: every part of the body is to be honored and asked to contribute its gifts for the upbuilding of the whole. This biblical imperative is why efforts such as those of our Partnership Program, our gender justice events, our Youth Office, are so vital for the Alliance and the churches. During our years in the Executive, we need to take major leadership so that our movement and all of our churches become truly inclusive and welcome all the gifts of the diverse people that make up our movement and our churches.
Witnessing for Justice and Peace
Last is the calling “to enable Reformed churches to witness for justice and peace.” This has been one of the great strengths of the Alliance over the years, and nowhere has this priority been more evident than in the powerful witness of WARC and its member churches against the injustice and the heresy of apartheid. While the apartheid regime has blessedly come to an end, the world is filled with many forms of injustice, and our member churches are often on the front line in the struggle for justice. (They) need and deserve our solidarity. In addition to our strong stand for economic and ecological justice, we are called to find ways to stand strongly with our churches:
· in the struggle for human rights in Colombia
· in the search for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East
· in the effort to end the death penalty throughout the world
· in the struggle for freedom and self determination in Irian Jaya
· in ending discrimination against Reformed Christians in Romania and Serbia
· in ensuring peace and self determination in Taiwan
· in promoting a peaceful transition for Southern Sudan while vehemently opposing the movement of the oppression to Darfur
The list could go on and on, but one of the core callings of the Alliance is to enable all of our churches to stand in solidarity with one another on the frontiers of the search for human rights, justice and peace. WARC is both an instrument for facilitating that solidarity and a corporate voice for Reformed churches in global ecumenical bodies and at the United Nations.
Conclusion
As I think of the challenge before the Alliance and its member churches, I am reminded of the calling of Abraham and Sarah. Like Abraham and Sarah, the Alliance has been around a long time. Some think that it is time for us to retire and to focus on the glory days of our past. … But like Sarah and Abraham, I believe that God has surprises ahead for us and is giving us a dramatic new call even in our mature years. Like Sarah and Abraham, God is calling the Alliance to set out in some strange directions and against great odds, but with a promise that if we are faithful to Christ’s call to seek life in fullness for all of God’s people, we too will be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Like Sarah and Abraham, God’s blessings don’t come to us without disrupting our lives and they are never meant just for us. But the promise is real that God intends life in fullness for all people and the creation, and God will bless us if we are faithful to that calling. …
Clifton Kirkpatrick is stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and is president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC).
