Imagine with Me: Global Ecumenism

Rev. Terri Hord Owens: Hello Disciples and welcome to another episode of imagine with me an opportunity that I have to meet and listen to so many creative and Innovative leaders across the life of our church today. I am excited to have with us two young adults, who recently attended along with me and others the World Council of Churches, 11th assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany.

They were both participating in to important ecumenical education initiatives, the Bossey Institute and the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute GETI.

I want to welcome to our stage now Allison Bright and Ross Allen. Well, welcome, Ross and Allison.

Thank you so much for agreeing to be here. I had so much fun talking and listening with you in Karlsruhe. That I thought it would be a great idea for the church to hear more about your experiences with both Bossey and GETI and the assembly. And just let folks know the impact that these programs can have on future leaders current leaders, such as yourselves. So, Let me ask you each to maybe introduce yourselves and say, little bit about who you are, where you’re from and what you’re currently doing in ministry. And so Alison, let us start with you.

Rev. Allison Bright: Hey, thanks so much. I am glad to be here. I am Rev. Allison Bright, I currently work in the Tennessee region for the Disciples of Christ. I grew up in the Mid-America region, I was ordained in the Greater Kansas City region and I went to seminary at Brite Divinity in the Southwest region. So in some ways I have gotten to see Disciples and from many spectrums, but I am really excited to be here with you today. I am the current Disciple student at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey and I am coming to you from Switzerland today.

THO: Excellent. Excellent. For Disciples, you should know that we have long-standing tradition of supporting in so many ways, the Bossey Institute and the work there. So Alison we’re really excited that you are there participating in that program this year and so Ross you want to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Ross Allen: Yeah you bet I am, my name is Ross Allen. I grew up in northeast Kansas in a different part of the stone Campbell movement, but I got involved with the Disciples through the work of ecumenical Campus Ministries, the Kansas State University, and I served as a campus Minister there for four years before making my way to Disciples Divinity House here at the University of Chicago and I just graduated. So I am a little bit behind Allison. I hope to get ordained here in the next couple of months in the Kansas region, but I am currently doing a research fellowship at the Christian Century magazine. Historically a denominational magazine of the Disciples but then, you know, independent and the last couple hundred years, but still a good friend of the family, and I am really glad to be there. Looking at the range of theology basically that’s coming out of mainline Protestant church and trying to figure out how we get that back into congregational settings and get people thinking theologically. 

THO: Amen. Well, what great representatives you are of both of your theological institutions, and I will not resist the urge to give a shout out to my fellow University of Chicago Alum there. People will tease me about that later, but I couldn’t resist and Brite Divinity School, as you said Allison, you have lived in and served in so many different regions. You have had very unique experiences and gotten to see the church from a wide perspective. I always say, I wish the whole church could see the whole church the way I see the whole church. So many of us don’t get to see the width and breadth of who we are as a church. 

And both of you were able to attend the World Council of Churches and you were involved in different programs. So Ross, let me start with you and talk about how you were participating in the assembly and the program that you were involved in GETI.

RA: Yeah. So GETI like you said is the global I can medical theological Institute and it’s a really interesting program that started actually with six weeks of online education. So, we had folks gathered from, literally, around the world, all sorts of different denominational and confessional backgrounds. And we were brought together around this core theme of how Christ’s love moves and removes orders in our world and it really expansive sense of what that could mean. They thought about it in terms of geopolitical type borders, but also, borders between us and ourselves and that kind of spiritual formational element. And so, we had these six weeks for partnered with colleagues from around the world who had also started recently their ministry, or we’re academics. And then we also got some world-class training from professors at different schools. And so we had that online portion and then it came together and kind of coincided with the rest of the general assembly gathering. And so we had some conference moments that were just for us where we were delivering papers and putting together the kind of heady ideas about what ecumenical theology can do in the world. And then we also got the chance to kind of tiptoe into the actual work of the assembly and connect with folks that way. So it was kind of like drinking from a fire hydrant. I have learned so much still that I think I have to kind of digest, but it was a really wonderful opportunity. And if nothing else I think I am walking away with just a broader sense of how people think differently about theology than I grew up thinking about theology, and the gift that that offers.

THO: I can concur with you. I think it is a gift at always, be no matter what space you walk into to recognize that everyone in the room has come from a different perspective or background than you have. That’s an important thing. So Allison talk to us a little bit about where you are and why you’re there.

AB: Yeah, so I am coming to you from near Geneva Switzerland which is the location of the boss an ecumenical Institute and I went to the assembly as part of the boss, a student body which I think made my experience a little bit different in a couple of ways.

So as for us was saying, there were lots of online activities and papers. They were working on prior to GETI, and to the assembly. But the Bossey students didn’t participate in any of that. So while that was happening, we were not so much thinking about ecumenism, but living it having meals together, waving to each other on the way to the shower house in the morning, right? Some of those are more intimate things that we did early on. But my experience with GETI and the Institute was really transformative and a lot of ways I have sort of lived in this progressive Disciples bubble my entire life and I think what I am learning at Bossey and from GETI and the assembly is that the world is so much bigger than my bubble.

THO: The world is so much bigger than my bubble. Amen. And amen. Can you each maybe share some of the highlights of the experience so far? I know you had a chance to meet with a group of theologians with bishop Hika and some other things. So maybe share as you intersected either with the assembly or with your group while you were there in Karlsruhe. What are some of the things that happened that really stayed with you? Besides writing papers.

AB: I think for me, one of the most formative experiences was actually the small groups which I know was a new addition to the assembly and GETI. And after the assembly actually I made a video that was about the Lord’s Prayer but it was featured in 14 different languages from my cohort here. And one of the things that I realized in that experience, is that these are not just people, these are not just traditions, and these are not just languages but these are my friends. 

And this language is an expression of their culture, right? One of the first things I learned when I was here is that there’s a big difference between saying my native tongue and my mother tongue. And to someone who doesn’t have because the global international and so might sound the same. But too many of our, our peers, the difference is my colonized language versus my indigenous language.

THO: Yeah, I think that’s I was just having that conversation with someone the other day about, even the places in which Spanish and French or spoken, it’s the colonized language it’s not the indigenous language. And we are so sheltered from that unnecessarily so I think in the United States. That we’re not exposed other than, you know what we might study in high school, we’re not really required to become fluent in other languages. We just have to study for maybe a couple of semesters to meet a particular grade element. But that’s a lovely thing.

I watched that video Allison, and I was I am always struck by hearing the other not on not only other linguistic languages but the language of liturgy, right? In symbols that people use and those are all different ways of expressing and getting to God.

And I am always appreciative of the many different ways in which, in which people do that. So, I am excited that you have had that particular experience of really exploring what it means to have different language and the different ways that people approach, God. Ross, you want to share a story or two about what you have experienced?

Yeah, you bet.

RA: So I will pick up where you left off on the idea of gathering with these theologians that was a really special lunch that we are able to have based on our connection to Dean Kris Kulp, who serves on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.

And they’re the folks who really do the hard work of kind of trying to work out the math, theologically of how we recognize each other’s Eucharistic celebrations, and get to this place of kind of fully embracing, each other’s both lived, theology, kind of sacramentally but also the ways we think can talk about what it means to be a Christian in the world. And she was able to kind of gather this cohort of folks, most dear to us and from Chicago. And some ways being the Reverend Bishop Springheart, who is in charge of the church in Baden and Germany and served as a visiting scholar at U Chicago a few years ago. But Basically just brought together this cohort of theologians, who gave us this kind of deep dive into what it really looks like to try and do the work of thinking together while also doing the work of serving together. And I found that particularly interesting that all the people represented in that group had also had some active ministry experience and they told lots of different stories about taken snowmobiles way up into the far, Northern regions of Canada to try and serve congregations, who needed a funeral and didn’t have any quality within a three-hour radius and lots of other stories like that.
 

And just that sense that, you know, for those of us who spend a lot of time thinking and reading in school that there’s this whole other world of lived ecumenism. Some of what Alison talked about the actually tells us a lot about how those ideas find traction and should be kind of brought back into the reflection process, you know, in adjacent to that to the corporate prayers that we did were huge, huge for me. And I would encourage anybody watching this to just go on YouTube and look up some of the recordings of this prayer times together. I mean, just an amazing and holy spirit coordinated, bricolage of different music styles and prayer styles all brought together around this one person, Jesus, and the different ways that he shows up in different places and cultures and mother tongues throughout the world. I mean, truly transformational experience that I won’t forget soon.

THO: That’s awesome. And just, to clarify those prayer times that you were talking about a really just worship services that’s what they called them at the assembly and each different communion, or religious family or tradition was invited to lead those. And so those were, I will have to say among one of my favorite experiences as part of the assembly, I remember being a student even just culture in the United States right, IN Bond Chapel University of Chicago’s a Hymnal that I think was an Anglican Hymnal, but was completely foreign to my own tradition. You guys know the hymnal, and I had to learn how to find worship space.

In a cultural expression, that was totally different from my own and everybody needs to have that experience, I think.

So why do you think it’s important for Disciples to either have the experience that you have had? In the second theological these institutes or at the world Assembly. Why should we send students to boss an Allison? Why is it important for people to be at Bossey?

AB: So I think something that’s unique to my experience at glass an as not only am I, the only disciple which is fairly typical under Only American and the only person from our continent, and I am the one of 35 in my cohort, which tells you what percentage we make up at least at the Bossey, a level.

And one of the things that I am learning, you know, last week, I sat through a lecture with guest speaker who is actually from, not far from Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is where I reside. She was about half an hour outside of that, but she presented on the Pentecostal tradition and what that looks like in the American landscape but also on the global scale. And I was shocked when I looked around the room because for so many people in that room, the idea of Pentecostalism was completely new and what you know when people ask in the first couple of weeks before and after the assembly what’s it like in America to be a Christian? I tried to talk about being a non-denominational Evangelical Christian, which is the majority of Christians in America and not only was it something I had to make accessible to them it was also a new idea. What is nondenominational Evangelical Church and why are there so many of them?

And so, what I have really noticed is that the way that I have to approach conversation is very removed from my own lived experience. I have to approach it and say, okay if most of the people in my context were Anglican, here’s how I might interpret that. But then it’s also my job as a Bossey, as a student, as a Disciple and as an American to say, and I am bringing context to our conversation. And I am wondering why none of you were talking about church decline because that’s all. I felt like I heard about and all you’re talking about is how much the church is growing. Yeah. I think that’s I know is wrestling with in our church and in our country and our context. 

THO: That you were the only person from your continent is both exciting for that experience, but it also says that we have some work to do with our North American communions to ensure that they’re supporting that program but it strikes out what’s happening? Even true in the U.S., right? People’s you say Christian people having their not thinking Mainline Protestant, they’re thinking non-denominational Evangelical even in this United States. We don’t necessarily understand what the differences are among the different ways in which we enter into faith.

AB: Interesting to see what happens at the next assembly because one of the things we want to free assembly, is that the location of the assembly. Kind of moves from place to place and assembly has never happened in the United States and our continent is expected to be if not the next assembly the one after that.

THO: Yeah, that will be interesting because I have heard conversations along those lines to and US Visa.There’re all sorts of things that will enter into how easy it will be together the world in any one country. But the first time in Europe in over 40 years, so that was interesting as well. So Ross, why do you know, why do you think it’s important for disciples to make sure that we have young adults engaged in these programs and GETI?

RA: Yeah, I think, I think it’s incredibly important not least because I think there’s a lot of kind of institutional history, but especially white Mainline Protestants, kind of need to do business with that. Historically, a lot of the missions work that previous generation and before did that kind of became part of what the World Council is didn’t do faithful work with other peoples across the world and a lot of ways.

It was actually contributing to the colonialism and these other projects that, you know, from one frame of reference felt important for kind of these liberal ideas. But in another way, I ended up doing a lot of bad things and racing a lot of cultures across the world. So in a way I think there’s some kind of reparative work that needs to be done, especially for folks who have progressive commitments as part of living in solidarity with folks across the world. And you know the Taize community is an ecumenical community that I have researched and gone to visit, and they were present at the World Council, and they start about Protestant but brought in lots of different folks and have a Catholic prior currently.

But one of the kind of endearing phrase for them, has been this mutual commitment to inner life that is spiritual formation and robust prayer and connection to God. But also solidarity and seeing those two as mutually kind of entwined and part of one whole And I think getting back to that sense of inner life and solidarity as the core of what it really means to live faithfully as Christians in this world is huge. And the World Council gives people that first person experience, with, with the ways, in which the world is an interconnected place, and the problems that we contribute to here, actually end up hurting people other places, you know, in the, in the last time that the World Council was in Europe, was in Ipsala, Sweden and at that Gathering of the World Council. James Baldwin came and talked about, I am covering a radical tradition within Christianity. And I sometimes know folks, get scared of that word radical, but it’s back to the roots, the roots of Christianity, right? That there is some good in the world and some kind of disruption of evil that God has called us to be in do and I think when we kind of recover that internationalist sense of cooperation and solidarity the World Council is going to do better at doing what it’s supposed to do and frankly, we’re going to do better at what we’re supposed to do as Christians.

THO: Ross, I think you just answered the question. What role does ecumenism playwright in the work that we believe we’re called to do and even imagining who we must be as a church in the new world.

I have been you know really embracing Bruggaman’s concept of the prophetic imagination not just to critique the Empire but the prophet has to make space and point the way to an alternative society and help people see and imagine it and these experiences I think fuel our imagination so as we close What is what’s something that you have learned that you think you’re going to be bringing into your own ministry?

Because I think, in many ways that’s a reflection of how your imagination is at work using these experiences, As you move forward, what will be different about or what will you bring to your ministry in a different way because you have had these experiences?

AB: I am thinking about my contacts in Tennessee and how I am very new to that region of the country to the region of disciples to full-time ministry. And I am thinking a lot about a presentation I gave was someone in my cohort from the Church of Christ background. And what happened is we got to the end of session and the professor Is there anyone whose tradition has not already been named to give a presentation on? And we both raised our hands. And I am thinking about how in that room, most of our cohort didn’t know the difference between the two of us, but certainly where I am in Chattanooga Tennessee, that difference could not be more stark. And, so I think I am taking forward the ability to both zoom in and zoom out. To say this is who we are and this particular place and in this context but also here’s who we are. In the grand scheme to remind American Christians who happened to be Disciples of Christ for us. That we are an important part of our story, but we are also not the only story. 

THO: Ross, your thoughts?

RA: Well, I mean to say it briefly and maybe provocatively. I think I want my ideology to get a little dirtier if that makes sense.

And what I mean specifically by that is in reference to this talk. That was given by, and he is the principle of Pacific theological College in Fiji. And he came and gave this talk about dirt and how central dirt is to how regions think about their culture and think about their origin story and their culture, their thinking a lot, more of how we come from dirt and stay there and are never actually separable from the dirt and that, you know, and a lot of Western contexts we like the thought of everything, being clean and tidy, and we imagine ourselves as separate from, you know, the created environment. And even though we say, you know, the Adam was formed out of the dust are, was briefed in to him and, you know, once in a while maybe on Ash Wednesday, will we be reminded that we came from dust to return to it. Most of our Sundays we imagine, we felt as clean put together and in a church somewhere, you know?

And so getting back to that embeddedness That we are inseparable from the creative nature that God is in the world that once we kind of get our heads around that, we change everything with how we treat the Earth and whether we think of it as a dead thing to claim, or fight over or protect, or whether we really see it as an extension of ourselves and it’s health is kind of tied up in our health that seems really powerful to me. And I want to get better thought around how to kind of put feet on that in a local context. And that’s the work I still have to do. But that core image change that I am not separate from the creative environment, but I am actually embedded in, it was really powerful and something that’s sticking with me.

AB: Ross, while the entire conversation was happening I was thinking about one of my professors at Brite Divinity School The Right Reverend Dr. Will Gaffney’s book Womanist Midrash, ore of the first chapters about a savior with skin is brown as the soil and I grew up in rural America in farm country. I know what rich soil looks like and it does not look like my skin, and I think that’s a powerful message for us to move forward as a church that focuses on anti-racism and pro reconciliation endeavors.
 

THO: Amen. My soul has been refreshed today. The future of the church is bright because of your spirits, your minds, your willingness to share, and you are great examples of why so many more people need to have the experience not just of Bossey and GETI but if being around people who are different from, they are even in the United States and around the world.

My good friend Julia Middleton, who’s the author of a great book called Cultural Intelligence whose work I use a lot in my own work. She says, ‘you are not the benchmark of all people.’ That’s not a Biblical quote, but that’s something that she reminds us, no matter what space we move into in church, in National World Council of Churches in the world, as we move into space, we are individually not the benchmark. We as a group, no matter how we define that or not the benchmark, for all people.

And I am so grateful that you have spent some time with us this afternoon to share your experiences with the World Council of Churches assembly with GETI and the Bossey Ecumenical Institute and again, so excited and so proud that the two of you are associated with the church that I love so dearly and so grateful for all I know that you will bring to our collective work together as church in the future. So thanks for being with me Alison Bright and Ross Allen. It’s just been an utter delight to chat with you 

RA: Likewise.

AB: Thank you so much. 

THO: Thank you. Disciples if you’re not encouraged by that conversation, and I am always saying, let us be the church we say we are and in order to do that, we have to really open ourselves to recognize that the world is different beyond us and beyond what we know, and open our hearts and minds that there are so many ways in which people approach this work that God has given to us. So many ways in which people honor and worship God, so many languages, so many practices so many understandings that would enrich our lives if we were about to open our own hearts and minds.

So thanks to Allison Bright and Ross Allen for sharing their experiences not only at the World Council of Churches assembly but at the Bossey Institute and GETI. I hope that you will be supportive of our ministry, the Christian Unity and Interfaith Ministries which provides financial support for students to go to Bossey and Week of  Compassion has also participated in supporting students in large part because Week of Compassion as work is global in and of itself. And we need students who understand the global context in order to do all the work that we do. We will be talking with our leaders from Week of Compassion soon so stay tuned for that episode. But in the meantime, it’s been a great day, great conversation as always and remember that God loves you and so do I, and we will see you next time.