Called to
Ecumenical Christian Community:
Testimonies
Living Our
Ecumenical Call
by Mary Rose Jordan
I don’t like the smell of hard boiled eggs. I
don’t think they would be the preferred lunch
choice of very many middle school students. But,
there I was, 12 years old, with my 2 hard-boiled
eggs and lentil soup for lunch. I didn’t like
Lent. I didn’t like having to get out my sulfuric
smelling snack and endure the stares and turned up
noses of my classmates. My saving grace though,
was Elissa- my best friend and fellow hard-boiled
egg unenthusiast. We were both growing up in
Community together and although she was Baptist
and I was Roman Catholic, our families had the
same Lenten practices. Because we had each other,
we embraced the 40 days of smelly lunches while we
proudly told our classmates of the cool
‘gatherings’ our families attended and the
different youth group we were in. My friendship
with Elissa is one of the greatest treasures of my
childhood.
Fast forward almost 20 years. I still am not a fan
of hard boiled eggs. I do, however, realize the
gift it was to have a friend who shared the same
spiritual practices. It was an especially
significant blessing considering our
denominational differences. That friendship set a
precedent in my life: I learned to be open to and
appreciate friendships with people from other
denominations, I learned that what I had in common
with them outweighed the differences, I learned
that other denominations had strengths that I
could learn from, I learned that the ecumenical
life we have in the Sword of the Spirit is unique
and challenging and worth striving for.
In a time when our culture, even within
Christianity, seems incredibly divided and focused
on differences, I am overwhelmed with gratitude
because I have grown up in an ecumenical
environment. From a young age I have experienced
the richness of ecumenism and have been blessed to
have many relationships with brothers and sisters
from other denominations that have played a
significant role in my walk with Christ. The
common way of life and shared spirituality I was a
part of in my home community have given me a
common witness along with my brothers and sisters,
regardless of our denominational, racial or
political backgrounds.
Our ecumenical witness is amazing and fills my
heart with joy at the goodness of our Lord and his
provision for us. Our friendship with each other,
in my eyes at least, is a small taste of heaven.
[Mary Rose Jordan lives in the
Community of the Risen Christ in Glasgow,
Scotland. She is the executive director for The
Lovely Commission, a website encouraging young
women to follow the Lord.]
Good Soil and Open
Doors
by Miguel Vargas
Latin America is not the most fertile soil to work
for Christian unity. The historical background is
grim and can be painful in many ways. Many good
Christians have resentment against Christians of
other traditions around them. There is, however,
also much hope and opportunities where we see
growth in ecumenism.
Starting in 2008, in the context of our Summer
Mission Program, we began giving a talk on
ecumenism to pass on more vision to the youth
coming from communities that have only one
Christian tradition. In 2012 this evolved into a
four-session course that we would teach every
summer to groups of young people gathered together
from Central America. My main experience talking
to young people from all-Catholic communities was
finding a big lack of information but at the same
time a significant desire to make a change in
their hearts and work towards Christian unity.
Many of these young people had never heard about
the painful stories of division in the Body of
Christ. Neither had they ever heard about the
important steps towards unity that many Christians
have taken in the past 150 years. However, as we
call them on to understand and embrace the reality
of historical division and to be convicted about
the importance of working for Christian unity, I
was struck by the great desire and openness they
have to foster Christian unity even in contexts
that are hostile towards ecumenism. The mission
and way of life of our communities provide an
excellent context for our youth to promote
Christian unity as we evangelize and work for the
needy.
Another experience I’ve had in recent years is
working alongside my father teaching the same
ecumenism course in the Central Seminary in San
José. We give future priests four lectures about
unity and provide opportunities to spend time with
leaders of other Christian traditions including an
Anglican Bishop, an Orthodox priest and an
Evangelical Pastor. This is a very significant
experience for future Catholic priests in Costa
Rica but also for the leaders of these other
traditions as it opens friendly channels of
dialogue and fellowship.
We can feel a limitation from our contexts and
feel like we don’t have much to contribute to
ecumenism. However, we can ask the Lord to open
unexpected doors to us and to give us the grace to
enter then so that we can keep building unity in
the Body of Christ.
[Miguel Vargas is a member of the
Servants of the Word. He lives in “Arbol de
Vida” community in San Jose, Costa Rica and
serves in mission to young people throughout
Central America.]
Back to My Roots
by Rami Abou Haidar
I was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church as an
infant, following my family’s tradition. As a
young student I attended a Catholic school and I
regularly attended their liturgy on Sundays and on
special seasons. Yet in all that time, I never
participated in a Greek Orthodox liturgy.
When I joined the People of God, an ecumenical
Christian community in Lebanon [composed of
Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant members, I
began a journey of discovering with my Orthodox
roots. Ecumenism is one of the core pillars of our
common identity in the People of God community,
along with the importance of being faithful
members of our respective churches and Christian
traditions. But at that time I did not have the
understanding nor the courage to return to my
Christian origins. Until one day, while leading a
household of university Christian men, I was
challenged and encouraged by one of the community
leaders to discover my original church roots.
Looking back now, I am certain that his advice was
inspired by the Holy Spirit. His words touched my
heart and soul in a remarkable way, and enflamed
my heart with a zeal and passion to discover what
I had been missing for years.
So, the following Sunday, I started to attend
Divine Liturgy at a nearby Greek Orthodox Church.
Although everything seemed different, I knew I was
home. At the beginning, I put a lot of effort into
understanding the prayers, reading different
books, and asking many brothers for guidance.
Little by little, and with each Sunday, a love
towards my Church grew. Each word in the liturgy
began to touch my heart, mind and soul. I grew to
discover the Lord’s work in a new, marvelous way!
Contemplating this experience, I can assert that
it has led me to a deeper understanding of
ecumenism. I see more clearly how our faithfulness
to our individual churches and traditions
fortifies our collective unity. I now recognize
the work of the Holy Spirit to draw us together,
discern the richness that lies both within my
Church and within other Churches, and praise the
Lord for his stunning work of bringing us
together. Indeed, I now see better than ever how
the Lord’s work in our community is a contribution
to the life of all his Churches.
Rami Abou Haidar lives and serves as
a leader in the People of God community in
Beirut, Lebanon
Why I Joined Ecumenical Christian Community
by Arthur Delargy
I've been a member of Antioch
Community for over 25 years now, having
first come into contact with community through
one of its outreaches based at the University of
London, where I was studying.
I can think of many reasons why I
decided to join Antioch, not least the blessing
of being able to find “a place to stand” with
men and women who were, and are, constant in
faith, hope, and love, having a vision to be a
bulwark and a place of refuge, and a desire to
make Jesus known in this generation. But, I
always come back to one thing, something that
makes Antioch, though numerically a small
community, a significant, unique, and prophetic
expression of God's love for his people, and
that's our ecumenical call – a call to live out
Christian unity with integrity.
I was born in 1968, in Ballymena,
Northern Ireland – the year the modern-day
“troubles,” as they are euphemistically called,
began. I was brought up in a strong Catholic
family, in a small farming community. All the
other villages around us were all Catholic, and
also quite strongly believed that Northern
Ireland should become part of the Republic of
Ireland, not the United Kingdom. To say that I
had a parochial upbringing would be true in its
fullest sense. Anti-Protestant feeling was very
strong in our local community. The sense of
mistrust, suspicion, and hostility was not
helped by the segregation of the Protestant and
Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. In my
case, I was 17 years old when I met my first
Protestant. In many ways this was a watershed,
the guy was perfectly normal (we went on to be
close friends when we went to college in London)
so my worldview, such as it was at the age of
17, was challenged for the first time.
A year later, when I left home to
study in London, the Lord started to stretch my
perspective even further. I became involved in
University Christian Outreach (UCO), a student
Christian group at the University of London (now
called Koinonia),
mainly
through the persistence and faithfulness of a
few men. Even back in 1986 the university
environment was a hostile place for Christians.
This group was unique among the student
Christian societies in providing a place for
Protestants and Catholics to serve and worship
together, a place where I quickly felt
spiritually at home.
Later on I discovered that UCO was
an outreach of the West London Community (now
called Antioch), a group of Christians of all
denominations, including families and single
people, as well as a lay brotherhood of celibate
men who were seeking to live out the call to
Christian unity in their day-to-day lives. The
theologians call this grassroots evangelism –
it's a precious thing, which comes from the
recognition that as fellow members of the Body
of Christ we have a relationship with and an
obligation to each other. In 1988, I made a
public commitment to join the West London
Community. That night was significant for me and
for the community too – at the time the senior
leader of the community was a Protestant from
Northern Ireland, and I was the first Northern
Irish Catholic to join. On the same evening a
Singhalese from Sri Lanka joined, crossing
another divide, and taking his place worshipping
side by side with several Sri Lankan Tamils, who
at that time formed a significant contingent of
the West London Community.
Regarding reconciliation of Jew and Gentile,
the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians
(2:14-16) wrote:
For [Christ] himself is our peace,
who has made the two one and has destroyed the
barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by
abolishing in his flesh the law with its
commandments and regulations. His purpose was
to create in himself one new man out of the
two, thus making peace, and in this one body
to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their
hostility.
In Antioch we attempt to live out our life
together because of what we've got in common –
what we have received from the same person – the
Lord Jesus. At the same time we try to
understand our differences, showing charity and
humility in our dealings with one another, and
supporting each other in being faithful members
of our own churches and traditions. This is not
cheap and not always easy, but as Psalm 133
says, when we dwell in unity, God commands a
blessing, and this is my experience of 25 years
living in this ecumenical, charismatic, covenant
Christian community called Antioch.
[Arthur and his wife Rebecca live in
London, United Kingdom with their two children.]
illustration
credit from Bigstock.com
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