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Three ecumenical principles for a missionary church in today’s world
Three Ecumenical Principles
A. To expand the range and deepen the nature of the Christian common life and witness in each local community
What might this mean?
1. Developing relationships locally with new partners – house churches, the churches of African and Caribbean origin, Pentecostal and Independent Evangelical churches, the churches of new immigrants, including those not worshipping in English – and also with the spiritual seekers outside the church.
2. Pressing for deeper relations with old partners in Local Ecumenical Partnerships and in local Churches Together groups – the Anglicans in all three nations, the Methodists, Baptists, Moravians, Congregational Federation, Roman Catholic Church, Church of Scotland, Presbyterian Church of Wales ….
B. To proclaim more clearly, in word and deed, that in Christ we are one World Church family living in a world which God loves, and to celebrate the rich diversity of cultures, languages and church traditions, and to seek, as appropriate, to work with members of other faith communities for the promotion of biblical values of love, peace and justice.
What might this mean?
1. Welcoming into our local communities new immigrants, international students and workers, and asylum seekers and thus receiving their God-given gifts.
2. Establishing special local links with groups of Reformed Christians who come from our partner churches in the Council for World Mission or the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, such as Ghanaians, Pakistanis, Taiwanese, Koreans.
3. Making connections, where they exist, between town/regional or diocesan twinnings and the United Reformed Church’s special European partners such as the German churches of the Pfalz and Lippe, the Church of the Czech Brethren, the Reformed Church of Hungary, the Waldensian Church and the French Reformed Church.
4. Seeking to build relationships with individuals and communities from the other faiths.
C. To persevere in the search for the visible and organic unity of the Church through church-to-church conversations on matters of faith and church order so that sinful, and sometimes death-dealing, divisions may be healed and the Christian message of reconciliation be proclaimed with integrity.
What might this mean?
1. Engaging locally and in all our councils, and with our ecumenical partners, in honest and open discussion about the nature and purpose of the Church in order to articulate afresh in this generation who we are, as United Reformed Church Christians, and to what new purpose God is calling us.
2. Refusing some church-to-church conversations about unity and initiating others, recognising that such conversations may need to transcend class and cultural barriers as well as doctrinal ones.
The United Reformed Church Ecumenical Commitment
The Basis of Union (1972, 1981, 2000) states that:
“as a united church (we) will take, wherever possible and with all speed, further steps towards the unity of all God’s people.”
At the 1996 General Assembly that commitment was reaffirmed and its implications for the life of the United Reformed Church at that time were then spelled out.
It was agreed that our commitment to unity would be expressed through:
a. resource sharing of theological insights, people, buildings and money
b. identifying and offering the rich insights of our tradition to others and being open to receive theirs
c. active involvement in ecumenical bodies locally, regionally, nationally and internationally
d. the development of and support for Local Ecumenical Partnerships and United Areas
e. active participation in initiatives leading towards organic union
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