wfn.org | ABCUSA: GENERAL SECRETARY AFFIRMS DENOMINATIONS

[RICH.SCHRAMM@ecunet.org]

AMERICAN BAPTIST NEWS SERVICE 
Office of Communication  
American Baptist Churches USA 
P.O. Box 851, Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851 
Phone: (610)768-2077 / Fax: (610)768-2320 
Web: www.abc-usa.org
Richard W. Schramm, Director 
 E-mail: richard.schramm@abc-usa.org

GENERAL SECRETARY AFFIRMS VIABILITY OF 
DENOMINATIONS AS `EXPRESSION
OF ORGANIC UNITY GIVEN BY OUR COMMON 
CONFESSION THAT JESUS IS LORD'
 American Baptist Churches USA General Secretary 
A. Roy Medley has strongly affirmed the role of 
denominations as expressions "of that organic unity given 
by our common confession that Jesus is Lord."
 In an interview to be printed in the March/April 
issue of American Baptists In Mission, Medley rejected the 
charge by some that we are in a "post-denominational" 
era in which effectiveness in Christian witness can best be 
realized in parachurch and nontraditional religious 
organizations. 
 "I think it's fair to say that I wouldn't have 
accepted this position if I didn't feel that denominations 
were relevant to the life of the church today," he said.  
"That is not to say that denominations are exactly where 
God wants us to be, but I believe that our organic unity as 
the church is something that is a given...by the fact that 
we are called to serve the same Lord and be a part of the 
same Body.   Denominations, for all of their faults, are the 
expression of that organic unity given by our common 
confession that Jesus is Lord. They have been very 
effective as organizations for mission." 
 He maintained that denominations need to be 
open to renewal and change:  "I think there are areas 
where denominations in the U.S. have to reassess their 
ministry and how they do things.   Every denomination in 
its history has primarily been a vehicle for the funding of 
mission work in other places.  One of the great paradigm 
shifts of the last part of the last century--and certainly 
going into this century--is that the U.S. has once again 
become a major mission field.  So the challenge is how do 
we help churches understand their roles as mission 
outposts in their community and help them with the 
resources they need to be strong in that ministry."  
 "We also now are global communities," he added. 
"My experience in New Jersey as executive minister was 
that our congregations were becoming not only merely 
multiethnic and multicultural, they also were becoming 
multinational in makeup.  The easy division between home 
mission and overseas mission did not necessarily pertain 
to our life in New Jersey.  We had large waves of new 
immigrant groups coming in who we wanted to reach and 
who we wanted to join our churches.  But they also were 
reaching back to their homelands as members of local 
congregations, connecting with their churches in their 
home country in mission and ministry in ways that we 
could never orchestrate as a denomination or as ABC of 
New Jersey.  But what we could do was to help embrace 
those ministries, provide some of the resources they 
needed to do them effectively, and free people up to do 
ministry instead of trying to control ministry." 
 Medley noted "how denominations began as 
mission organizations, then tended to evolve into 
bureaucracies and then into regulatory agencies.   The 
challenge for us is to come back full circle again with our 
primary identity being that of a mission enterprise where 
the local church is at the very heart." 
 "These are challenging times for us as 
denominations, with some people seeing us as dinosaurs," 
he acknowledged.  "But I see a rich fabric of 
connectedness, a rich history of mission, and rich 
distinctives that each of those families bring to the church 
universal--and also to the world--as a gift.  I'm not ready 
to give up on those things.  I am heavily invested in 
seeing us become more effective in supporting the mission 
of the church both within the North American context and 
the world."

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