Report to the 2009 General Assembly

November 10, 2009

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  And welcome to this General Assembly.  May God grant that our time together builds up the body of Christ and bears witness to the Spirit’s reconciling, yet unsettling, presence. 

The first thing I want to tell you is that the organizational health of the National Council of Churches is good. 

• I am blessed with an outstanding group of colleagues who remain inspired by a vision of the church united, renewed, and fully engaged with the world.
• Our five program commissions have high levels of participation and continue to produce valuable resources, from church school curricula to Faith and Order studies.
  Our work in such areas as ecojustice, immigration reform (about which we will hear more tomorrow), and health care reform seems to be widely appreciated; and, thanks to support from the United Church of Christ, we have a renewed emphasis on racial justice and human rights.  (Our new staff person in this area, NaKeisha Sylver Blount, will be on Thursday’s panel dealing with the elimination of gun violence.)
• We are developing new ways to communicate our work more affectively, including an online version of Eculinks.
• Past problems with administration seem to have been overcome as evidenced by the completely “clean” Management Letter we received in conjunction with the recent audit.
• And, while we did run a deficit for the last fiscal year, due to the fall in the stock market, we have greatly strengthened our development staff in order to increase revenue, especially from individual donors and foundations.

Having said all this about organizational health, I want to stress that the NCC is not, fundamentally, an organization.  According to our own self-understanding, set forth in the first paragraph of the Constitution, the National Council of Churches is a covenant that you, the communions, have made with one another to express the unity that is our gift in Jesus Christ, and to engage in common mission to the glory of God.  Thus, the real issue for us to confront is not the organizational health of the Council but the spiritual health of the churches in this country. 

In my worst moments, I fear that the existence of the NCC has simply given us a good conscience about our continued disobedience to the mandate of the gospel.  We give lip service to the importance of unity, and we cooperate when it seems expedient; but ecumenism remains an add-on to our “real” ministry as Methodists or Baptists or Orthodox or Presbyterians or Anglicans or Lutherans.  I will certainly never deny that God has worked through our communions in amazing ways; but I also insist that attitudes of unrepentant self-sufficiency make it more difficult for God to use us – and, thus, the world often does not see in us a sign of God’s reconciling power. 

This is one thing I hope will happen in this General Assembly:  that we, as churches, will truly assess our own commitment to the ecumenical vision that gave birth to the NCC and CWS. If you think my own assessment is too negative, then by all means push back – but please wrestle with the question:  Are we, as churches, passionate about growing, with the help of God, in knowledge and love of one another? 

There are four other things that I also hope will happen during our assembly here in Minneapolis: 

First, I hope that through this assembly a number of relationships will be strengthened.  The most important is the relationship of the churches to one another; but I also hope that we will strengthen the already-greatly-improved relationship between the National Council of Churches and Church World Service.  We may be distinct bodies, but we are, at the same time, inseparable parts of the one ecumenical movement – for which I give thanks to God. 

Then there is the relationship between the NCC and state and local councils of churches.  Even closer collaboration between national and local manifestations of ecumenism is surely called for in this age when networking is replacing centralized institutions.  And what about the relationship among generations?  If you are chronologically advantaged, make it a point to meet some of the stewards or New Fire participants – and vice versa. 

You get the idea.  Ecumenically-minded Christians are in the relationship business.  I urge you to see this assembly as an opportunity, an invitation, to deepen a number of them. 

Second, I hope that here in Minneapolis we, representatives of our communions, will rediscover our common outrage at the way neighbors continue to be treated, in this country and around the world.  Dr. King often declared that followers of Christ should be “maladjusted.”  You may remember his words:  “I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and discrimination…  I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.   I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that take necessities from the many and give luxuries to the few.  I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism…” 

At this General Assembly, I hope we will call upon ourselves not only to be maladjusted but genuinely outraged at the state of our society, at the state of our world. 

• Forty-six million Americans, 9 million of them children, have no health insurance.  Be outraged!
• Before the end of today, 276 people – 57 of them children and teens – will be shot by a gun.  Be outraged!
• There are about 3,000 homeless people in Hennepin County, the site of this assembly, and more than 9,200 in Minnesota, a third of them children.  Be outraged!
• Approximately 11 million people living in the United States are undocumented immigrants with uncertain futures, as the debate on immigration policy reform continues unabated.  Be outraged!
• The people of Cuba suffer under a 50-year economic embargo by the United States, which nevertheless engages in full economic relations with countries like China that have a record of human rights abuses exceeding Cuba’s.  Be outraged!
• While Americans debate the reality of global warming, the rise in sea level due to melting glaciers and thermal expansion of the ocean has forced the 11,000 inhabitants of Tuvalu – a tiny Pacific island between Hawaii and Australia – to abandon their homeland.  Be outraged!
• The World Bank estimates 1.4 billion people in developing countries live in extreme poverty.  Be outraged!
• In the developing world, every minute a woman dies of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.  Be outraged!
• And, in the face of such realities, the church of Jesus Christ is often more preoccupied with its own survival than with the survival of God’s good creation.  Be outraged!

Third, I hope that at this assembly we will begin to think “outside the box” about the future of the ecumenical movement.  Lean economic times have surely forced us to think in new ways about our life together; but it shouldn’t take a financial crisis to see the monumental shifts in church and society going on around us. 

I hope that conversation about the ecumenical future will take place here, at tables and in hallways, but that we will also anticipate next year’s special assembly in New Orleans when we will assess where we have come ecumenically, since the seminal Edinburgh mission conference of 1910, and where we might be headed.  Please mark that in your calendars – November 9-11, 2010 in New Orleans – where we will be joined by a host of ecumenical partners for celebration, assessment, and visioning. 

Finally, I hope that at this assembly, through God’s grace, we will reaffirm – rediscover – the spiritual foundation of the ecumenical movement which also means of CWS and the NCC.  In lean financial times, because we cannot revel in our institutional strength, we may actually see more clearly our dependence on the one Creator. 

The assembly’s theme: “Rejoice always…pray without ceasing… give thanks in all circumstances” – is a wonderful text for stimulating such reflections.  On first reading, this passage from I Thessalonians can sound human centered, as if the most important thing about our faith is what we do:  “We urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them…Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”  It doesn’t take much reading between the lines, however, to see Paul’s overwhelming God-centeredness.  He urges us to give thanks in all circumstances, for example, because life itself is a divine gift.  Remember his pointed questions to the Corinthians:  “What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?”  We are called to admonish, encourage, help, be patient, rejoice, pray, and give thanks as a response to the One who has created, called, and sustained us – the One who through Jesus Christ has bound us in a single body as a sign to the world of God’s coming Reign.  Can we, at this assembly, commit ourselves more fully to pray for one another, to share resources more fully with one another, as a response to what God has done in our lives? 

Sisters and brothers in Christ, all around us are signs not of reconciliation but of fragmentation – including a recent less-than-ecumenical overture to dissident Anglicans on the part of the Roman Catholic Church.  And in the face of such developments, the ecumenical church is openly mocked for its impotent witness.  One recent op-ed column in the New York Times noted that the ecumenical movement has borne real theological fruit, “but what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency – a dull round of interdenominational statements [on various topics] only tenuously connected to the gospel.” 

There is much about these words that offends, but much that also cuts to the quick.  For far too long, the church has been a visible witness to conflict, not reconciliation, a sign of division not oneness in Christ.  My deepest hope for this assembly is that we will show and proclaim to the world a more excellent way. 

Michael Kinnamon
General Secretary
National Council of Churches