Missional and Interfaith

One of the reasons why I chose to come to Michigan and pastor Central Woodward Christian Church is that they had been exploring the idea of becoming a missional congregation. This is a congregation that has been at it's present site for 30 years. Before that it had been a cathedral like church sitting on Detroit's piety row. But the present congregation is the product of a merger of earlier Detroit church's whose roots go back to about 1878. The most defining figure in it's life was Edgar DeWitt Jones, one of the Disciples of Christ pulpit giants of the first half of the 20th century and an important ecumenical leader as well (an early president of the Federal Council of Churches). In many ways his ghost hovers over us to this day, even though the church has long since moved from downtown to the suburbs. So, here we have a long standing Mainline congregation, with a significant heritage, but a church that has like many Mainline churches experienced significant decline from it's glory years. Now, a shadow of its former strength, the congregation has begun planting the missional seeds. The question we'll need to wrestle with is -- what does this mean?

To be missional means being rooted in the mission of Jesus Christ, with the assumption that it is in Jesus that lives and communities will be transformed. There is the assumption that in him we will find truth that will turn our lives upside down. It is an understanding of the Gospel that I affirm fully. At the same time, I am fully committed not only to ecumenism but interfaith engagement. I believe that truth can be found in the teachings of other faiths and trust in God's grace that this is sufficient for them. In my interfaith engagements I don't see myself needing to convert others to my faith (at least not in this context). I respect not only their rights and freedoms, but their commitment to faith.

One of the things our congregation will have to wrestle with is this: how do we be truly missional while at the same time being open to people of other faiths?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ah, that last question is VITAL. It's a tightrope. Fall off one way and become a dead congregation--the church either grows by making converts or dies. Fall off the other way and one lapses into fundamentalist exclusivism which fails to see that the Rule of God is larger than the Church and fails to see what God is doing outside the Church.

This is the vital question for all churches today.

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