wfn.org | Ecumenist's Job Description Includes Pain

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28-January-1999 
99038 
 
    Ecumenist's Job Description Includes Pain, 
    COCU Veteran Observes 
 
    by Jean Caffey Lyles 
 
ST. LOUIS - If you want to be an ecumenist, get ready to suffer, a 
long-time Christian-unity advocate told representatives of nine Christian 
churches during the recent 18th Plenary meeting of the Consultation on 
Church Union (COCU). 
 
    The advice the Rev. Paul A. Crow Jr. of Indianapolis offered to 
participants in the Jan. 20-24 meeting came during a luncheon focusing on 
"ecumenical formation" of a new generation, on which COCU's future depends. 
In a speech part tongue-in-cheek and part dead-serious, Crow ticked off 
prerequisites for anyone aspiring to become a "world-famous ecumenist." 
 
    Crow, who retired on Jan.1 as the chief ecumenical officer of the 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is regarded as an expert on the 
subject after more than 35 years of leadership of regional, national and 
international Christian-unity organizations. 
 
    His own ecumenical spirit, Crow said, began in the small town of 
Lanett, Ala., where he grew up, and is owed to three formative factors: 
 
    *  "Pastors and congregations who taught me that the unity of the 
       church was God's gift." 
    *  Ecumenical youth fellowships that brought together young people of 
       many Christian traditions. 
    *  "Seminary professors who taught me that my ministerial preparation 
       was not for one tradition, but for the whole church of God." 
 
    If today's youth are to be infused with a passion for Christian unity, 
Crow said, key roles will be played by seminary professors, parish pastors 
and sponsors of inter-church youth work. 
 
    "We know the struggle of what it means to bring the unity of the church 
anywhere within 10 miles of the seminary campus - not because of ill will, 
but because of preoccupation with other things," he said. 
 
    Crow offered the following advice to would-be world ecumenists: 
 
    *  "Select a sectarian person and engage in dialogue with that person 
       for a year. Then write a brief paragraph on what it means to be an 
       ecumenist." 
    *  "Select an ongoing list of readings" and commit to a long-term plan 
       to finish them.. 
    *  "Take deliberate time for [interpretive] work in the Scripture, and 
       what it says to you about the unity of the church." 
    *  "Read biographies and study the primary ecumenical documents ... and 
       ask what they would mean if put into practice." 
    *  "Learn to be a good drafter," because the teams that write drafts of 
       ecumenical documents "control the body" and facilitate 
       communication. 
    *  "Decide to learn more intimately about some church that seems 
       distant from yours." 
 
    Crow also offered what he called "three major dimensions of ecumenical 
formation": 
 
    *  The unity of the church often grows out of personal friendships. ... 
       When two become friends, they change the relationship of the group." 
    *  "Ecumenical formation is tied up with ecumenical spirituality. ...We 
       cannot have communion with each other until we have communion with 
       the triune God." 
    *  Ecumenical spirituality "leads us to the cross." 
 
    "If you are an ecumenist long enough ... you will experience deep 
suffering and deep disappointment," he warned. 

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