Grand Rapids destined to host the Uniting General Council
On a cold February day in 2006, eight people of faith changed the course of ecumenical history.
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Grand Rapids is the setting for history-making church event. (Photo courtesy of the Grand Rapids/Kent County Convention & Visitors Bureau) |
Representatives of two worldwide Reformed organizations met in Grand Rapids in the United States to discuss a closer relationship. They came on behalf of their respective organizations, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC).
What emerged was not two related groups but a proposal for one new Christian body: the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC).
Those who were there that day say a power greater than their own creativity was involved.
“It really was the Holy Spirit at work in Grand Rapids that started this movement,” says Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of WARC.
Fittingly – or perhaps providentially – Grand Rapids will be the site of the first meeting of the World Communion. The WCRC’s Uniting General Council will convene June 18-28, 2010 bringing together some 1,000 delegates, guests and volunteers to celebrate the historic merger.
WCRC will represent approximately 80 million members of 230 denominations from 107 countries, including Reformed, Congregational, Presbyterian and United churches.
Key leaders say the union makes sense for both theological and practical reasons.
“This is a hope and a dream of a very long time, that we really could be coming together as a Reformed community,” Kirkpatrick said. “The Reformed family has gotten this image of being a family that divides.”
The new Communion should inspire Christian unity beyond its own members, adds Setri Nyomi, WARC general secretary.
“In a world which is characterized by fragmentation and self-centered individualism, a Christian move towards convergence is a very powerful witness,” Nyomi said from his Geneva, Switzerland office, “and exposes the scandal of division.”
The union will be more efficient financially and exert greater influence globally, said REC President, Peter Borgdorff.
A unified church voice is needed more ever than in a world of conflict and injustice. “There is power in numbers, and (our) voices should be strengthened,” Borgdorff said. “It will be increasingly important for the voice of Reformed churches to be joined with the voice of Christian churches that represent other parts of the Christian family.”
Henriette Hutabarat Lebang, a WARC vice president from Indonesia, agrees. “We tend to forget that it is precisely in the midst of the darkness and the brokenness of the world that Jesus earnestly prayed to his Father, ‘that they may all be one,’ ” she notes.
The Communion unites WARC, a larger and older body of 214 churches, with REC and its 41 churches under one organisational umbrella. Historically more conservative and separatist, REC increasingly has cooperated with WARC on social concerns. About three-fourths of REC churches are also WARC members.
In recent years, “People started to wonder, ‘Why are there two organisations?’ “ said Richard van Houten, REC general secretary.
Leaders of the two groups began talking about closer cooperation more than a decade ago. In 2005, REC proposed becoming an entity within WARC while retaining its separate identity. Later that year, WARC executives meeting in France endorsed further discussion of possibilities including sharing projects and personnel.
Commitees of each group met in early 2006 for the momentous meeting in Grand Rapids. They explored what the organizations’ respective strengths had to offer the other, recalls Kirkpatrick, the WARC president.
REC members recognized that the strong presence of the Reformed church movement in the global South required a major commitment to justice, Kirkpatrick reports. For their part, WARC members realized their justice work only could be effective “if we reclaimed our gospel values and the strengths of our Reformed heritage,” he says.
“That was the moment we knew our strengths complemented one another and that we needed to be one,” says Kirkpatrick.
Subsequently approved by WARC and REC executives, the World Communion of Reformed Churches will benefit from both groups’ strengths, leaders agree.
REC’s historic emphasis on fellowship “nurture” will combine well with WARC’s justice advocacy, van Houten says: “Each of us brings something to the new body that wasn’t in the other. The combination will be stronger.”
WARC’s wide-ranging ecumenical relationships also will dovetail nicely with REC’s smaller faith family, says Nyomi.
“Although we will be bigger, the family-ties flavor of REC will keep us mindful of how we enagage and care for one another in the communion.”
Kirkpatrick succinctly sums up the union: “God intends for us to be one.”
