Friday, January 29, 2010

Post-Ecumenical Blahs

Well, last week we finished the annual Ecumenical/Unity activities. These included:
-co-leading a prayer service at the local downtown parish with Don Elio
-participating in the big Saturday evening ecumenical Mass in nearby Osimo with the representatives of the Catholic church (the Archbishop himself), the Adventist church, the Apostolic church, the Anglican church, the Methodist church, the Romanian Orthodox church and the Coptic church
-attending the final closing ceremony

There is quite a range of opinions on our team as to the benefit/fruit of our involvement in this group. Usually it means merely attending a monthly planning meeting where we share thoughts on a passage and pray. We've also done a public reading of Scripture event and are planning to publish a calendar this year with a description of each of our churches.

I'm feeling a bit blah - partially because of the extra activities and meetings (we also were out of town for most of four days for our annual retreat) - but partially out of frustration. I know that we all have things in common - the most important being our belief in Jesus as Christ. But there's always this underlying tension that if anyone were really honest, just for a second, they would be walking around with a red-hot branding iron that reads H-E-R-E-T-I-C.

Out of all of it, as interesting, challenging and thought-provoking as it is - it makes me ask - What does true unity look like?