Other Links

74 All three churches believe that the calling of the Church to be one is a Gospel imperative. Christian obedience demands that the Church continues to strive for that unity of the followers of Christ for which he prayed so earnestly on the day before he was crucified. The urgent missionary situation in which the churches find themselves today also calls for a united witness.

Many of God's gracious gifts of unity have already been received in shared local congregational life, in joint training of ordinands, in the sharing of resources, in the convergences discovered in these conversations and, not least, in the oneness in Christ we have experienced in worship together.

In gratitude for the gifts of unity already received and in obedience to the continuing call to seek the unity for which Christ prayed we bring the following recommendations.

I. We give thanks for

- the bi-lateral initiatives which have flowed at every level and in many places from the Formal Conversations between the Church of England and the Methodist Church, some of which are described in the publication Releasing Energy.

 

- the long-standing and wide-ranging bi-lateral ecumenical life which exists between the United Reformed Church and the Methodist Church and which manifests itself, for example, in nearly 200 joint churches, three United Areas and a national Liaison Committee.

 

and recommend that appropriate tri-lateral structures be set up to enable these bi-lateral relations to become, where appropriate, fully tri-lateral

 

II. We recommend that the three churches, together, carry forward study of the ecclesiological issues identified as needing further work in order that progress may be made in the search for the full visible unity of the Church.

III. We recommend that, given the commitment of all three churches to the full visible unity of the Church of Christ, our three churches explore together (but with an openness to other partners) what further steps would be necessary to make an English covenantal relationship between them.

Ecumenical participation

The valued presence of an ecumenical participant was a reminder that, through Churches Together in England, all three churches were Ôpilgrims together' with many others, including those with whom one or more of the conversation partners had a particular bi-lateral relationship - the Baptist Union, the Roman Catholic Church, the Moravian Church.

These deep and fruitful conversations were fully three-way. In other words they were not a matter of the United Reformed Church on one side and the other two on the other. Rather, as in a country dance, there was a forward and backward movement of agreement and disagreement between the churches and among the representatives of each church. Partners changed according to the issue and as fresh light was shed on the matter under discussion. From time to time a harmonious circle was formed, foretaste of things to come.