Drums to signal world unity at Uniting General Council
For a Native American minister from Grand Rapids, next June’s Uniting General Council (UGC) will do more than launch a new ecumenical organization.
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Host committee member Anne Weirich and Native American pastor Mike Peters are preparing for celebrations with American
indigenous peoples in an historic park on the banks of the Grand River. (Photo: Paul Stoub) |
by Charles Honey
Mike Peters says it also will bring back an old teaching about a Lakota Sioux girl who was taken up to the heavens and taught a drum dance of healing between American Indians and whites.
Peters hopes 1,000 dancers winding through Grand Rapids’ Ah-Nab-Awen Park will do just that for UGC native peoples and church leaders from all corners of the globe.
“We’re bringing the drum back with one purpose: to signal unity to the world,” says Peters, who is helping plan the event. “It could be the start of a spiritual awakening.”
It certainly will be the start of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), a union of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC). Some 1,000 church members and visitors are expected to come to this bastion of Dutch Reformed faith to officially launch the new ecumenical body.
The Pow Wow in the park will be a highlight of the 10-day gathering where delegates will elect offcers, adopt a constitution, hold worship and attend workshops.
The Uniting General Council’s theme is “Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace.” Organizers are working to ensure that theme resonates with the delegates’ experience in Grand Rapids.
“The main thing here is the experience of unity – for people to gather the sense that we have put some of our disunity behind us,” said Richard van Houten, local conference coordinator and REC general secretary.
Delegates may sense unity by worshipping in local congregations and dining in church members’ homes. Host committee member Anne Weirich wants to provide the same kind of welcome WARC delegates received in Ghana in 2004.
“It really brings to life this oneness in Christ we have in a remarkable way,” said Weirich, a Presbyterian pastor. She also is recruiting congregations to help pay expenses of delegates from the global South.
West Michigan was a logical site for the UGC, organizers say. The Grand Rapids-based Christian Reformed Church is the only North American denomination in both WARC and the REC, and the proposal to unite was born at Calvin College.
“I can’t imagine a better place to have it in the United States than Grand Rapids,” says Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of WARC.
Delegates will find a city bustling with cultural and business activity despite Michigan’s depressed economy. It recently hosted a $450,000 art competition that attracted national notice. UGC site Calvin College is part of a strong religious heritage that includes the Reformed Church in America and socially active Presbyterian and United Church of Christ congregations.
Several committees are arranging everything from lodging and meals to medical services and a closing banquet. About 500 volunteers will help run a conference budgeted to cost $2.2 million.
“It just amazes me the number of logistics involved in hosting that many people,” says Peter Borgdorff, host committee chairman. “It will truly be a global event.”
He has invited leaders from the Vatican, World Council of Churches and other ecumenical bodies as well as state and federal officials.
But the UGC will pay special attention to the poor and dispossessed. A top agenda item will be the Accra Confession, a WARC statement of justice that rejects “profits before people.”
A strong Native American presence will provide a reminder of the church’s historic role in marginalizing Indian culture, Peters says.
“This whole 10 days is about healing and reconciliation,” he notes. “I’m really believing this is a God moment.”
