wfn.org | COCU Executive Committee Seeks "Way Forward"

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

25-March-1998 
98105 
 
    COCU Executive Committee Seeks "Way Forward" 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
ST. LOUIS-With finances dwindling and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
having rejected "covenanting" as originally proposed, the Consultation on 
Church Union (COCU) Executive Committee struggled at its meeting here March 
15-17 to find "a way forward" as it prepares for the next COCU plenary, 
less than a year from now. 
 
    The 18th COCU plenary is scheduled for Jan. 19-24 here, and the nine 
member denominations in the nearly 40-year-old consultation are scheduled 
to report the actions they have taken on "Churches in Covenant Communion," 
a proposal approved by the 17th COCU plenary in December 1988 and sent to 
the member churches for their endorsement. 
 
    The "covenanting" proposal calls not for structural union among the 
churches, but for "reconciliation" of ordained offices as the basis for 
closer cooperation. 
 
    Covenanting hit a seemingly fatal snag in the Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.) last year, however, when the church's presbyteries rejected 
enabling amendments to the "Book of Order" that would have created an 
office of "bishop" in the PC(USA) in order to parallel that office in 
several of the other COCU member churches. 
 
    None of the other churches has rejected the proposal, though not all 
have voted on it yet. 
 
    Assurances by the Presbyterian COCU Committee that a COCU bishop would 
have none of the power traditionally associated with bishops and a modified 
proposal creating a "corporate bishop" of ministers and elders rather than 
a single individual failed to convince the presbyteries to approve the 
covenanting proposal. 
 
                "Recognition" instead of "reconciliation" 
 
    Since the defeat of covenanting by the PC(USA), the Theology Commission 
of COCU has worked to find what COCU general secretary Daniell C. Hamby 
called "a determination [as to whether] there is a way forward for [COCU] 
and some ideas about what that way might be if indeed there is a way." 
 
    The Theology Commission, chaired by the Rev. Cynthia Campbell, a 
Presbyterian who is president of McCormick Theological Seminary, has 
prepared a paper for the plenary that borrows heavily from the successful 
Lutheran-Reformed dialogue that was approved by the presbyteries this year 
and proposes "recognition" rather than "reconciliation" among the churches. 
The Rev. Eugene Turner, ecumenical officer in the Office of the General 
Assembly of the PC(USA), thanked the commission "for hearing the message of 
the Presbyterian Church in the development of the paper." 
 
    "Reconciliation depended on forms of ministry [such as bishops] fitting 
and the forms don't and won't fit," Campbell said.  "Can we get around this 
and celebrate the Eucharist without reconciliation?" 
 
    Some said yes.  "This is a strategic moment," said Paul Crow of the 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and one of the strongest supporters 
of COCU since its inception.  "Let's say [to the plenary] that this is what 
we can do now while looking forward to something more later." 
 
    Open communion - which is already the practice in the PC(USA) and which 
"recognition" would create in the churches that restrict access to the 
table - is a good place to start, he continued.  "The more we do 
sacramentally, the more secure our future together is." 
 
    Dorothy Barnard, a former PC(USA) General Assembly moderator and 
longtime Presbyterian COCU Committee member, agreed.  "Can't we go to the 
plenary and say, `For the moment, this is where we are as the Church of 
Christ Uniting [an alternate name for COCU] - that we believe recognition 
is a way forward and that other ways forward may emerge later'?" 
 
    Others were not so sure.  Thomas Dipko of the United Church of Christ 
said a change from "reconciliation" to "recognition" is a significant 
enough change that the covenanting documents would have to be rewritten and 
resubmitted to the member denominations for further action. 
 
    The Rev. George Pike, a Presbyterian and former COCU president, argued 
for a less formal approach.  "I don't want to change the documents," he 
said.  "I want the plenary to say that this is the way forward and Christ 
will give us a fuller vision." 
 
    Others refused to give up on "reconciliation" - at least permanently. 
"Reconciliation must remain our goal," insisted Bruce Robbins, the 
ecumenical officer for the United Methodist Church.  "We're moving quickly 
to recognition, but we cannot stop there." 
 
    Campbell, while conceding that recognition is "a step back" from 
reconciliation, insisted the two are not mutually exclusive.  "We are 
separating recognition from reconciliation for a while only so we can move 
closer together in other matters." 
 
    The Executive Committee suggested some modifications in the paper, 
which it will revisit at its final pre-plenary meeting in October. 
 
                  Iffy future clouds financial planning 
 
    Though COCU finished 1997 with a $3,000 surplus, "we are living off our 
reserves," reported Pike, who is chair of the consultation's Financial 
Resources Committee.  In the face of the uncertainty as to whether "the 
churches decide 35 years is enough and they are going to fund ecumenical 
relationships a different way," Pike said the committee had asked Hamby to 
devise several different funding scenarios for COCU after the January 1999 
plenary. 
 
    COCU currently operates on an annual budget of about $230,000. At 
$42,000, the PC(USA) is the second largest contributor, behind the United 
Methodist Church ($58,000).  Every member church paid its pledge in full in 
1997. 
 
    The committee discussed in general terms scenarios - based on decisions 
to be made at the 18th plenary - ranging all the way from disbanding COCU 
to expanding the office and staff, which would include the hiring of a 
long-envisioned associate general secretary. 
 
    Crow, predictably, was the strongest supporter of the latter course. 
"We live in a doom-saying world, which inevitably produces doomsday," he 
noted.  "I hope our churches will be advocates - we cannot walk away from 
this table without dishonoring ourselves - which we could do, of course," 
he added. 
 
    William Grove of the United Methodist Church said financial decisions 
should follow strategic ones.  "The issue is what is the best way to move 
COCU forward," he said. 
 
              Small groups will be hallmark of plenary 
 
    Planning for the plenary has focused around the desire to have 
delegates spend a considerable amount of time in small "discerning groups," 
said Program and Planning Committee chair Diane Kessler of the United 
Church of Christ. 
 
    "The churches have changed and many persons who represented their 
churches 10 years ago [at the last plenary] are no longer delegates," she 
explained, "so the persons around the tables will be very different and may 
have very different outlooks on the issues at hand."  By doing much of the 
plenary's work in small groups, she said, "we hope to fully engage all 
delegates and maximize the likelihood of positive outcomes." 
 
    The Executive Committee welcomed the inclusion of participants in 
Ecumenical Shared Ministries (ESM) in the "discerning groups" at the 
plenary.  ESM is a network of pastors and lay persons who work in 
multidenominational congregations at the grass roots.  The Rev. Sarai Beck, 
co-pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Ames, Iowa, said such 
churches - union or federated churches, yoked pastorates, shared pastorates 
- "feel like they're neither fish nor fowl." 
 
    Beck and the Rev. Katharine Reeves, associate for ecumenical 
programming and education in Louisville, pressed for the group's inclusion 
in the plenary's small groups as "a way to build a stronger network of 
these congregations and minimize their isolation." 
 
              Plenary focus to be on racism in America 
 
    As a concrete demonstration of its commitment to unity and justice, 
plenary participants will also address the issue of racism in America. 
Three of COCU's nine member churches are predominantly African American - 
the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal 
Zion Church and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church - and they have 
long pushed COCU to give more attention to the issue of racism. 
 
    A paper has been prepared for the plenary by James A. Nash, a 
Washington-based Christian social ethicist. The paper, which was reviewed 
and critiqued and which will be further refined before the plenary, is 
designed to produce discussion and action by the plenary, and a companion 
paper, produced by the Policy and Planning Committee, will propose 
follow-up activities by the churches following the plenary. 
 
    "There are common threads in the denominations," noted Kessler.  "The 
challenge is to concretize those threads into a common witness and 
commitment to eradicate racism." 

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