Abstract
The twentieth century was a time of great ecumenical progress. It was the century of Edinburgh 1910, of Faith and Order, Life and Work, the establishment of the World Council of Churches, and of the Second Vatican Council. It saw the development of international organisational structures for Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed, and, at a more local level, the growth of regional and national councils of churches. Alongside these “official” events and organisations there were also many smaller scale efforts to promote friendship and understanding, among which are communities such as Iona, Taizé and Grandchamp, the Focolare Movement, and societies like the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, which seeks to promote fellowship and understanding between Anglicans and Orthodox, and the International Ecumenical Fellowship.
One of these smaller ecumenical endeavours is the Anglican-Lutheran Society, an international organisation established in the early 1980s, with the aim of promoting a greater understanding at grassroots level between Anglican and Lutherans. In spite of developing separately since the Reformation, these two communions never anathematised each other, and, through such agreements as Porvoo and Meissen, have recently been drawing closer together. Under the joint patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the President of the Lutheran World Federation, the ALS publishes a quarterly magazine (The Window), holds an Annual General Meeting, organises an international conference every two years (during the last ten years in such different places as Liverpool, Tallinn, Dublin, Turku, and Salisbury), and, of course, builds up creative friendships among a membership which now extends across the continents.
This year, the Society is taking a great risk in trying something new. From 3rd-7th September 2012, it will be holding an ecumenical conference exploring what resources are available to those who seek to minister in “Tomorrow’s World”, in particular, recently ordained ministers, ordinands, theological students, and those involved in recognised lay ministries. Coming together from many different parts of the world, and across the denominational spectrum, participants will gather at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, site of the hundred year old Anglican religious community. Guest speakers will include Dr Christina Baxter, Principal of St John’s College, Nottingham (Anglican); Tamás Fabiny, bishop of the Northern Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Hungary; Dr Michael Jackson, Archbishop of Dublin (Anglican), Dr Martin Lind, recently retired as bishop of Linköping in the Church of Sweden (Lutheran), and Monica Schofield, a lay member of the Anglican church in Hamburg, who advises, inter alia, the European Commission on areas such as sustainability and wealth creation. Underpinning the conference will be regular worship, and daily Bible study led by Dr Margaret Barker, a Methodist preacher and former President of the Society for Old Testament Study.
A couple of months ago, I tried to explain to a very bright young friend of mine (16 years old, and my personal expert computer consultant) what a kaleidoscope is, and how it works. In spite of my stumbling efforts, he ended up understanding it, so, mission successful! Not that I managed to find him one for Christmas; are they still available in shops? A kaleidoscope is a thing of beauty and magic, and, when I was his age, easily available to all. A tube with a sealed end containing a collection of glittering and multi-coloured fragments and a juxtaposition of mirrors, the gentlest of taps or the fiercest of shakes changed the pattern beyond recognition; even though the fragments remained the same, their inter-relationship changed and produced an everlasting multitude of different patterns.
So far as I know, nobody has used the image of the kaleidoscope as the basis for a systematic ecclesiology. Our ways of describing the Christian church are biblical (the People of God, the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ), patristic (the City of God), or confessional (the Communion of Saints, the Priesthood of All Believers). Although each of these definitions carries with it the inherent possibility of growth and change, they are not so explicitly random as the image of the kaleidoscope. The Christian Church is, certainly, something ordained by God, but it consists of a myriad of very fallible human beings who are constantly coming up against each other. It is, as Martin Luther asserted, a community of sinners, who are, nevertheless, saints, because their lives have been touched by God.
In its visible forms, the Church has never been static, and it has always been in a state of change. Whether we describe that state of change in terms like Ecclesia semper reformanda, or as a continuous “cultural revolution”, change and division, death and re-birth, are a part of its being. Jesus prayed for his disciples that they might be one, but the New Testament is full of examples of division – the Council of Jerusalem, Peter v. Paul. Today, at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the visible church remains divided, and though old divisions may be healed, new ones always seem to be round the corner.
There have truly been great steps forward in visible unity, but pressures from both within and without mean that the church is constantly under the threat of further division. “What has happened will happen again, and what has been done will be done again” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). In the twentieth century the Christian churches had to minister in a world of rapid technological and social change that was darkened by financial insecurity, famine and other natural disasters, totalitarian dictatorships of left and right which cared little for the lives of some individuals and which persecuted Christians, and inhuman wars on a global scale. “There is nothing new under the sun”, goes on the writer of Ecclesiastes, and the twenty-first century seems set for more of the same. “Mirfield 2012” will try to explore how Christian ministers try to cope with such a kaleidoscopic world, when their different ministries, in different places and different situations, are jolted and jostled by the unforeseen effects of the world around them.
In an age of ever greater ecumenical co-operation, this international conference will consider some of the resources that our different traditions have to offer to people in the Christian ministry. It is especially designed for people from all Christian traditions who have recently begun a public ministry, lay or ordained, and for students preparing for ministry. For further information, please contact the conference registrar, Mrs Helen Harding, at