wfn.org | Cooperative parish event offers ideas, inspiration

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TITLE:Cooperative parish event offers ideas, inspiration

Nov. 22, 1999	Media contact: Joretta Purdue·(202)546-8722·Washington
10-24-71B{628}

IRVING, Texas (UMNS) - Better ministry through congregations' working
together in a variety of forms was at the heart of a gathering that drew
almost 500 people from across the country and the world.

The Fifth Consultation on Cooperative Parish Ministry, Nov. 18-21, was a
smorgasbord of seminars and workshops offering information on specific
issues and models for cooperative ministry laced with several speakers on
the theme, "Congregations Living the Gospel: Working Together, Making
Disciples, Shaping Communities."

Consultation participants attended briefings chosen from about two dozen
topics such as rural regional ministries; cluster ministries; United
Methodist Urban Services in Boston, a cooperative program of church, police
and schools; and ministry in the face of hate groups. A set of "helpshops"
looked at approaches to evangelism, youth work, laity leadership, legal
questions, finances and other concerns.

Those who attended represented many faith groups as cooperative parishes may
join congregations of the same denomination or of different denominations.
Also present were participants from Australia, England, Northern Ireland,
Zimbabwe, Mozambique, the Philippines and Russia.

"God is just full of surprises!" United Methodist Bishop Kenneth L. Carder
of the Nashville Area, said. "A young peasant woman was chosen to be the
mother of the savior," and the birth took place in a smelly barn, Carder
elaborated. Jesus was an executed criminal, nailed to a cross that became
the symbol of his defeat of the principalities of the world, he said.

Sometimes God's surprises feel like joy and grace, and sometimes they feel
like judgment, he acknowledged. "When Christ is the king, we're not," he
said, adding, "To those who are used to being in charge, that feels like
judgment." 

Christians have no claim on grace, he said. "It's purely the gift of the
sovereign redeemer." Too often church members assume God wants to get more
people just like them into the church, he cautioned. But, "he is sovereign
of an all-new creation so that the whole world is a cooperative parish." He
urged church groups to link with any secular as well as religious
organizations or individuals because in every community there are people in
need.

The Rev. Edward A. Kail, professor of town and country ministries at the
Saint. Paul School of Theology, KansasCity, Mo., encouraged those engaged in
cooperative parish to use polarities or opposites in their efforts. "The
temptation is to think 'either or'," he said but he encouraged them to not
choose between servanthood and discipleship or evangelism.

Nancy T. Foltz, an adjunct professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and
head of her own consulting firm, encouraged participants to work together to
repair the world where they are.

"There's a lot of good ministry around that doesn't fit what we should be
doing," she observed. She warned, however, that efforts to make changes meet
with resistance or strategic sabotage. "Excellence is a form of deviance,"
Foltz said. Performing better than the norm disrupts all the systems, Foltz
explained, but innovation originates out of the instability of
organizations.

The Rev. David Kerr, past president of the Irish Methodist Conference, said
the call to partnership takes people beyond themselves. He observed that
people are eager "to put each other in boxes with labels" and after that
only see each other as caricatures of the label, not as real individuals.
People opt for conflict and competition, he asserted.

"We cannot say we are partners with God if we are not partners with one
another," Kerr said. The task of the church is to model partnership and
cooperation for the world, he explained.

United Methodist Bishop Ernest Shaw Lyght of the New York Area stated, "A
cooperative parish is a parish where people act together with God to shape a
community." He asked people to consider whether they are open to God's
shaping of them and their community every day.

The Rev. Minerva G. Carcano, director of the Mexican American Program at
Perkins School of Theology, led Bible study. Terry Heislen, minister of
music at First United Methodist Church of Lancaster, Texas, was music
leader. Cynthia Ann Kent, an executive with the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries, hosted a multi-cultural program.

The consultation was sponsored by the National Cooperative Parish Ministry
Leadership Team of the General Board of Ministries of the United Methodist
Church in cooperation with the denomination's General Board of Discipleship
and General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns.

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United Methodist News Service
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