wfn.org | Bernard Wilson Offers Pentecostal View of Ecumenism

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NCC11/16/2000  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DR. BERNARD WILSON OFFERS A PENTECOSTAL VIEW OF ECUMENISM

	November 16, 2000, ATLANTA – The Rev. Dr. Bernard Wilson used his own
family as a metaphor for the ecumenical movement in his address to the
National Council of Churches General Assembly today, “A Pentecostal
Vision for the Future of the Ecumenical Movement.”

	“My eight siblings and I have established a scholarship fund that
gives nine scholarships a year,” said Dr. Wilson, a minister of the
Church of God in Christ, “but getting the nine of us to the same
table, on the same day and at the same time, for our monthly board meetings
is a challenge.  Sometimes one is mad at another and submits a letter of
resignation.  What they really want is to resign from the family.  They
can’t, so they take it out on the board.”

	Similarly, he said, Christians – mainline Protestant, Orthodox,
Pentecostal, Evangelical, Roman Catholic and so forth -- make up one family,
as divided as we are.  And as much as we’d like to sometimes, we
can’t “resign” from our family, he said.

“All of us, individually and institutionally, are gifts of God to each
other,” Dr. Wilson continued.  “God posits in each of our
traditions an incompleteness, requiring us to be in communion with each
other in order to find completeness in faith.  My siblings and I can meet
without one or the other of us and operate the fund, but without all of us,
we are incomplete.”

	So how do we get everybody to the table?  “We can’t,” he
said, “but the Holy Spirit can and will, because the Holy Spirit has
the power to change lives, transform communities and breath new life into
institutions and organizations.”

Reality check time – these days “it’s challenging even to
have a reasonable, respectful conversation on those things on which we
disagree,” he acknowledged.

Should the hand count of ballots go forward in Florida?  Should we tolerate
people whose sexual orientation is different from ours?  Is abortion a
woman’s right to choose?  Do federally funded school vouchers hurt
public schools?

“Whatever you believe about anything, you can be sure someone else has
a completely opposite view – and can probably cite religious reasons
why you should go to hell for even thinking such a thing,” he said.

“Whoever wins this strangest of elections, there are those who will
feel left out, locked out, without anyone to hear their deepest
concerns….If ever we needed the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we need it
now,” he said.

	“Thank God for the day of Pentecost.  It served to unite the
believers.  They were all in one room – maybe all in the same hotel
– perhaps discussing how different their lives were because of this
man Jesus.  Something happened as they were all sitting … I venture
that it was the Holy Spirit.  It infused their lives, sent them forth,
changed their lives and changed the course of history on this planet.”

“As a Council of Churches, we must fight against exclusivity.  Every
believer ought to be able to lock hands and say, ‘We are one in the
Spirit, we are one in the Lord … and we pray that our unity will one
day be restored.’”

Dr. Wilson, serving as Executive Minister at The Riverside Church in New
York City, credited the Holy Spirit with moving, half a century ago,
“to bring about this institution, the National Council of Churches. 
Some of us were not included in that beginning.  But it’s all too easy
to use that exclusion as the basis for continued exclusion.  That ought not
to be the case.”

-end-