This seems to me to be sound advice for ANY denomination, or the Church at large.

U-C: What I See: On theological blindspots

Often, the “moderates” seem to call us to another place that I find equally unfulfilling. Somehow, moderate too often seems to mean that we simply agree not to talk about the things about which we disagree “for the sake of the church.” That seems unsatisfying to me, because the question it leads me to is “so what?”. If we all are expected to sell-out on what we believe, then what is the point of being together.

However, I believe that there is a “third way.” That would be to simply go about the work of being church as consistently and faithfully as we can – together. Some of my thinking on this has been shaped by rereading Stanley Hauerwas’ book “Resident Aliens” this summer. In other ways, my thinking is shaped by my training in conflict resolution work and peacemaking.

Carlos of Jesus Politics (from whom I got this link) asks, in his post pointing to this article: “Can you imagine the president of the Southern Baptist Convention writing like this?”.

No, I cannot. The time was, when that was what one expected.

Back to the gist of it: Peace in the Church is more than the absence of conflict. It has more to do, I think , with things like what Hauerwas calls “BEING” the Church (which is what he probably emphasizes in Resident Aliens, mentioned in the above article, which I ‘ll aslo have to add to my reading list). BEING the Church means being about being responsive to call. And there’s plenty for everybody to do. This is why there are Churches. To collaborate with God’s activity , all of us, and to offer up our own gifts to the cause.

I was just reading a WIRED article (Dec. 2004) on the “Gross National Happiness”, the point of which is that the measure of a country’s well-being may well be the sense of fulfillment and purpose experienced by its people. The same goes for the Church.