NWCU Day 3

Your sleep deprived seminarian had another wonderful day here at the National Workshop on Christian Unity, but this time it wasn’t for all the reasons you might expect! I began my day with a near-disaster. When you haven’t had much sleep in several days, your mind just begins to sort of lose focus, sometimes even on the most obvious things, like charging your phone or tying your shoes for example. Well, this morning I was so excited for our UMEIT training session because I knew we were going to get the hot off the presses “Ecumenical and Interreligious Handbook: A Resource for Annual Conference Committees on Christian Unity and Interreligious Relationships” which is being put out by the Council of Bishops….that I forgot to grab my Monster on the way out. There was another clergy person in the elevator and he looked rather surprised when I got on, then proceeded to race back out of there before the doors even closed as if my life depended on it because, well, it kind of did.

We spent roughly a half an hour discussing its content. The handbook is 53 pages and I want to make it available as a resource to any and all in the MTSO community. They will be printing more copies of it soon, but in the meantime I have a PDF copy, so if you’re interested in reading it just drop a comment on here or on Facebook, or private message me your email address and I’d be happy to send it to you. As a group, we talked about a number of things but there were a couple of significant points that really stood out to me. First, it was pointed out that much of the book focuses on Christian Ecumenism to the exclusion of interreligious dialogue. The representatives from the Council of Bishops also recognized this and stated that they would be working more on that with future editions of the work. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it was pointed out by the representatives that our Book of Discipline states that each annual conference is “required to have a committee, team or group which is responsible for assisting their resident bishop with the living out of ecumenical and interreligious ministries” (p. 33, Ecumenical and Interreligious Handbook). But sadly, this is not a reality. The Council of Bishops contacted each of our Annual Conferences and Central Conference Episcopal Areas…and as you would see in the back of the book, less than half of them responded or simply reported that they did not have one.

It reminded me of a conversation that I had with an Episcopal priest yesterday in our dialogue session. She had wanted to start a dialogue group with United Methodist clergy local to her area to discuss recent joint documents and where we’re at in our Ecumenical relations with one another so she contacted our Bishop from that annual conference. The Bishop put the word out…and not one United Methodist clergy person responded. She was told that all of our ministers were “just too busy for that.” This is my second year here and this is a frequent lament coming from all the participants…it can be very hard to find people who have a passion for this work.

The second half of the day was just awesome, but for an entirely different reason. Here’s a tip: if you come to a conference like this, always check the schedule for events outside of the conference itself. There will usually be something designed to give participants a taste of the hosting city and it’s a great way to unwind after attending so many sessions. In this case, it was a walking tour of historic churches in downtown Minneapolis. It was actually in the 60s this afternoon and a perfect day for walking. I must confess, I had another major reason for going.

As many of you know, my father was recently diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer. It has been a very difficult time for my family and I left Columbus with a heavy heart. But just a few days before the trip, my Dad asked me to go check out Hennepin Avenue and to take pictures of it if I got the chance. You see, he’d lived on Hennepin Avenue decades ago when he was doing training for the railroad company that he worked for. So this was a rare opportunity to see a place where my Dad had lived as a young man. He will be so happy to see my pictures!!

The walking tour was wonderful and the churches we visited were simply breathtaking. We went to Westminster Presbyterian Church, the Basilica of St. Mary, and Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church. When the sign for Hennepin Avenue came into view, I must confess that I got chills standing in a place he once called home. It was another kind of homecoming when we arrived at the historic Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, a beautiful church that my dad probably walked by hundreds of times so many years ago. Stay tuned for the pictures; there are too many to post on my blog so I’ll be uploading them onto my personal Facebook page when I get back home.

After the tour, I went with my new friend, Father Scott, a Parochial Vicar up in Toledo, and a couple other priests to a nearby Brittish pub to take a break and relax. It was a wonderful and often times hilarious conversation and I was blessed to spend the afternoon with them. Indeed, as Father Scott himself said, “Some of the best ecumenical work is done at a pub.”

So I have one more session tomorrow and then your sleep deprived seminarian is off to make the journey home, where he will be locked inside his study for the next week working on finals. Blessings to all my readers and thank you for following along.