Jesus asked his disciple, "Who do you say that I am?"
This in a nutshell, is the question of faith. Each follower of Jesus must figure out how to answer this question for themselves.
But in our fractured world, this is not the only question of faith that Christians must answer. We must also answer a follow-up question related to Jesus' question: "Who do you say that you are?" If the first question is challenging (and it is after a certain point, depending on how much detail you provide), the second is fraught with peril. Whenever we seek words to define ourselves, we will, by definition, give a description of people who are not "us." Trying to balance "us" and "not us" is a precarious balancing act, especially for the Christian church. (And we've done a bang-up job over the years too, which is why there are so many different Christian identities (denominations) in the world.)
If this description seems too abstract, let me offer a couple of practical reasons why we need to learn to answer this question "Who are we?" 1) If we think we have an organization/congregation that we think other people might want to join, we need to know how to describe ourselves to these potential new members. 2) If we think we have the potential to lose our way on our Christian journey and focus on the unimportant things instead of the important (which we do), we can keep our focus by reminding ourselves "who we are."
To meet these goals (and many others, I'm sure), the Rev. Sharon Watkins, the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is leading the general church through a process of answering the question: "Who are we, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)?" A group of church members has developed an identity statement and a series of principles that attempt to answer this question generally.
Over the past several months, the statement and principles were openly considered by members throughout the church in the form of an online survey. The results of the survey have been posted (sort of -- at least the results of support have been posted) at disciples.org, as well as the new drafts of the identity statement and principles (which have been slightly amended to reflect the survey responses).
And the visioning team has invited a continued discussion of the identity statement and principles through an on-line discussion forum. So far, I see that I am the 40 registered participant in the forum (the general announcement of it was last week), but I imagine the number will grow. Evidently, there were about 1450 completed surveys, so there is some interest in this topic.
To read about the 21st Century Vision Team, the members, and their goals, click here.
To read the draft of the Disciples of Christ Identity Statement and Principles, click here.
If you have opinions, please join the online forum and share them. The Vision Team needs our support and our input.
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1 comment:
Good heavens, this is disturbing - I understand that some of my irreverence, doubt and frustration is seen as humor. The humorous part of that is, to me, that it's merely candor, perhaps sometimes perversely expressed.
I can argue the concept of mission statements, statements of principles, etc., both ways. I am minded of the "Declaration of Principles" found in the movie Citizen Kane, a high-minded statement of fearlessness and honesty that was perverted permanently about an hour and a half after it was printed.
The 12 points as they exist appeal to the [fallacious?] "being/doing" dichotomy. It is trendy to focus on "being," that is, spirituality, love, inwardness, peace, thought, intention, goodness and stuff like that there, rather than selfishly and judgmentally requiring physical world proof of actions consistent with the spirit. In other words, sometimes you're just good enough, and don't have to prove it any more. And that's true, we NEED to be "good enough" and accepted and loved.
We are humans. We struggle. Buddha was right in the premise, "There is suffering," but wrong in the conclusion, that "nirvana" comes from disconnection. We are human beings. But, darn it, we are also "human doings," we do things, we swing axe and shovel, pen and keyboard, we travel and follow (or should follow) Marley's advice to Scrooge, that mankind is our business. Ours (and perhaps it's cocky to include myself in that possessive pronoun) is an active faith, and includes service and struggle and sweat and tears and unpleasantness. Within the church are both endless spiritual needs and also endless physical world needs or barriers. And without the church are endlessly more. As I commented at the movie last night, we need only drive about 3 miles from the church to the community of Norway to find desperate poverty. And we no doubt can throw a stone from the sign and hit someone in personal crisis.
So - and this is rather raw writing, not something that I've studied on, outlined, honed, etc. - I suggest a 13th principle: We enter the arena, and we do, and when we fall short, we keep doing and keep sweating and keep accumulating tears and scars until Christ personally relieves us from duty.
So, how was your day?
Roger-the-Heretic
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