The Address of the Conference Minister

Connecticut Conference, United Church of Christ

October 20, 2000

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you…

Ephesians 1:17-18

Davida Foy Crabtree

We gather this weekend under the theme With the Eyes of Your Heart Enlightened, hungry for an experience of God’s presence, yearning not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed so we can know God’s hope for us, God’s will in our lives.

In this address as we begin, I am using our theme to speak to you about several challenges we must step up to if our witness to Christ would be faithful and bold for our time.

Theological education: generations of enlightened eyes

First, I wish to expand on the concern Dr. Ansley Coe Throckmorton has spoken to this evening: the matter of our support of our seminaries. Andover Newton and Bangor are our responsibility, my friends. Yes, we have other relationships with other seminaries as well. Yet Bangor and Andover Newton are the two seminaries in New England that have chosen to be institutionally related to the United Church of Christ. Not only did we found them, but they have continued to claim that relationship as important to their identity and mission. Across this Conference, almost all of our churches have been served by a graduate of one of these institutions within the past thirty or so years. In many cases, every pastor in that time period has benefited from an education earned at one of these two institutions.

In other denominations, the national church provides funding to denominational seminaries, or mandates that local churches do so. We don’t operate that way in the UCC. Bangor and Andover Newton were made our responsibility in New England by the General Synod more than 20 years ago. The truth is, however, that we in Connecticut have largely relied on Massachusetts to support Andover Newton and Maine to support Bangor. That simply isn’t fair.

Fifteen years ago we conducted a capital campaign called Focus Five in which we raised almost $1,500,000 for five seminaries related to our region. The hope at the time was that our churches would begin to understand their responsibility. Yet the dollars, if they go at all, seem to go based only on the alma mater of the present pastor, and seldom on the commitment of the local church to support these two seminaries that shape our life in so many ways.

I’ve been told this is a losing battle; that there is no way to get the agenda of seminary support on the front burner of the life of the church. Stubborn Yankee that I am, I refuse to believe it.

These are difficult days for seminaries. Dollars are short, in part because enrollments have been down compared to twenty years ago. That impacts our churches directly. In some Conferences already today a local church seeking a pastor receives no more than twelve (12!) profiles in a one or two year search. Connecticut is much more fortunate, with an average of over 80 profiles going to each search committee that was open last spring. However, where once there were 400 ministers seeking placement here at any given time, now there are 260.

Not too long ago, I received a letter from a pastor who serves one of our churches and who is struggling with $50,000 in debt dating from his years in one of these two seminaries. He is now struggling with the question of whether he can continue in ministry because of that debt burden, and he is not alone. We do not want to lose him, and we’re working with him to see what might be done. Just think – if your church had been supporting these two seminaries in a substantial way, not just the token $150, perhaps his debt would have been less than half what it now is! And one of our churches would be stronger as a result.

There is no question that it is in the best interest of the churches of Connecticut that there be strong support for Bangor and Andover Newton. The eyes of the hearts of people all over Connecticut have been enlightened for generations by clergy educated at these two institutions. Now, in these days of great challenge financially to seminaries everywhere, we must step up and be counted. With our 2001 budget, if you adopt it, your Conference will take its own small step in giving to these two seminaries. Do not, however, expect the Conference to do for you what you must do yourselves as churches. The responsibility to care for the future of the educated clergy belongs especially to the churches: to encourage the brightest young people toward ordained ministry, to recruit students for Andover Newton and Bangor, and to provide the financial support that will ensure the best seminary education possible at our institutions. The very future of the churches hangs on this commitment.

Progress in our life together: eyes wide open

Secondly, last year I spoke to you of the challenges we have faced as we have tried to implement the new design. The impact of so much change all at once has made implementation especially difficult. You will remember that we had had an outside evaluation done to help us assess strengths and weaknesses. During this year, the Board of Directors has focused much of its energy on further study and understanding of the challenges and opportunities. What they are presenting to you grows out of their commitment to turn challenges into opportunities. Let me give you my perspective.

I am convinced that there are substantial gains in the “new” design -- most notably in moving us toward being a community of churches that is learning together, and in deploying regional ministers into their geographical locales. I think we have made good progress also in financial management and attention to teaching about our wider mission. In the area of resourcing for program, the adoption of an approach that encourages churches to cluster together to meet similar needs seems to serve well. Our cadre of part time specialists has brought important skill and dedication to our work through this transition time. The spirit of the design in concentrating on grass roots initiative is not only working, but also transforming our relationships.

A significant glitch in implementation, however, has been around the way the design relies on the associations and regions in the recruiting of people to serve in various capacities. Another is in the differing levels of investment in the design in different parts of the Conference and among different constituencies. After a lot of study, the Board and I concluded that it has proven to be too difficult to recruit a sufficient number of people annually through the associations to serve on ministry teams with broad mandates and new geographies that may not hang together naturally. The fact that we have a few ministry teams that are beginning to work well makes us believe that the overall spirit of the design works, and also underlines the importance of leadership and a full complement of participants.

The proposal that Article 4 of the Bylaws be suspended is a confession that we need more time and space in which to experiment, unencumbered by the rigid requirements of the current Bylaws. We can maintain our commitment to a “bubble up” (as opposed to top down) approach while still consolidating our gains and streamlining our systems. I know that some of you think it is a contradiction to critique the design in terms of the ineffectiveness of the broad geography of regions and then move to a conference-wide approach. Let me deal with that directly. What seems to be in the way is that regions are not well-defined entities. People from Fairfield County rarely drive up route 8 to Torrington. People from Danielson don’t get to Avon very often. It is hard to see a common vision of the mission regionally.

However, the Connecticut Conference is a known entity. Lay leaders and clergy alike were used to relying on the Conference when they were in need. They are telling us more and more that they feel like they don’t know where to turn for help. As one of our specialists puts it: all too often they are learning not to rely on us or on each other, but instead to muddle through. That isn’t healthy. Moving to three Conference-wide ministry teams rather than nine regional teams can retain the focus on bubble-up and on regional programming through their style of work while enabling us to have full participation and connection back to churches and associations. Another insight in this regard: the desire to move to regions evidenced a yearning for the Conference to be closer to the churches and for the churches to be closer to each other. It may well be that the yearning was not geographically rooted, but participation-rooted. If the ministry teams meet conference-wide but carry out program responsive to churches’ requests in clusters and in regions, and if that program expands the participation of church leaders in wider church life, we may well be able to have the best of both worlds.

Another area in which we experience great challenges as I reported last year is in the expectations of the Regional Ministers. As we worked with that concern over the past year, our best solution was to identify certain portions of their portfolios that could be pulled together into a single additional position. This enables us both to address some areas of our work that need more sustained attention and to lift some of the burden from the Regional Ministers’ workloads. The areas we identified in need of this additional focus include pastoral care of the clergy in times of crisis, education and training to stem the tide of clergy misconduct, and continuing education. Further, when Carole Carlson arrives in January, she will work also with spirituality in support of pastors, placement and interim ministries. We look forward to welcoming Carole to our staff team!

In sum, I believe we have taken some positive steps this year to address the places where the design needs adjusting. The decision about suspension of Bylaw 4 is up to you, but I would encourage you to support your board in their desire to create the space and time in which to perfect our approach to these key areas of our life together.

Church and state: eyes newly opened

Thirdly, I wish to speak about a matter that has consumed a great deal of my time and energy this past year -- a lawsuit against one of our churches and its association. In short, the suit alleges negligent hiring and supervision of a former minister who is alleged to have sexually abused a young person in his church. For many months, but intensively between about May and September, we were absorbed in determining a response to the plaintiff’s subpoena of records from the disciplinary review process related to that pastor.

Such a matter cannot be entered into lightly as it has serious implications not only for us in the UCC in Connecticut, but also for other denominations and for the UCC nationwide. I spent literally hundreds of hours embroiled in the details of the particular case, first amendment law, and the Connecticut statute related to clergy-parishioner confidentiality. I learned much that I wish were not true. For instance, I learned of the “adverse state of the law” nationwide around the first amendment protections of ecclesiastical process. By “adverse state” (an attorney’s phrase), I mean that the laws that are on the books do not favor religion when it is time for a judgment call in the tension between the free exercise of religion and the government’s prerogatives.

The issues we faced around this case amounted to the first time there had been an attempt to subpoena such records in the UCC under these conditions. We consulted with the national UCC attorney, with President John Thomas, with other Conference Ministers and their attorneys, and with ecumenical colleagues here in Connecticut. Virtually all encouraged us to resist compliance as far and as long as possible.

In the end, we concluded that the protections many of us had understood to be in place as a result of the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States have in fact been significantly eroded in recent years. There is no question that we did not want to stand in the way of justice for this young person, and we wanted to be as cooperative as we could be. Yet we also knew that we did not want to contribute to more erosion of very important provisions related to the separation of church and state and the free exercise of religion. In addition, we had a concern that our response not have a chilling effect on the willingness of persons to come forward when it is necessary because of pastoral misconduct. But the erosion has in fact already happened and, blessed as we are with resources, the Connecticut Conference simply does not have the financial margin to press the issue as far and as hard as it needs to be pressed. The outcome finally was a negotiated agreement to turn the documents over under a protective order so that their confidentiality would be preserved at the very least.

There were some startling moments in the course of these events. One of those came when the plaintiff’s attorney during oral argument before a judge claimed that our documents were not subject to confidentiality provisions because a committee had been responsible for them, and that committee had included laity. The attorney read the list of those who had served on the committee on ministry. The judge immediately ruled in his favor.

Now this may seem like a subtle nuance, but it is critically important to us as a denomination. Virtually nothing we do, other than individual counseling, is done by a sole person acting alone. We may joke about our propensity to set up committees for everything that comes along, but we do that out of a theological understanding of the nature of the Church. We do not have solo bishops in this church. Further, all of our decisions include laity as a matter of principle – the church is not the church without active lay participation in every aspect of our life. For us, the church and ministry committee of the association is the bishop. It goes against the very nature of the United Church of Christ, especially in the Congregational tradition, to lodge power in a single person or in the clergy acting alone. We truly believe that the Holy Spirit is most fully known to us when at least two or three are gathered in Christ’s name. Thus for a judge to rule that because our work of oversight is done by a committee it is not confidential, is tantamount to his or her establishing a particular form of religion as the standard.

Another moment came when the plaintiff’s attorney argued that the documents of a disciplinary review as to fitness for ministry are not ecclesiastical just because we say they are. This is dangerous ground. Who better to determine what is religious, what is ecclesiastical, what is essential to our practice of our faith than we ourselves? The government through the courts? I don’t think so! I recognize in his argument a legitimate concern that religious bodies not use the term “ecclesiastical” to hide behind when they want to avoid something the law demands rightly of all of us. Yet in his argument is an implication that religious bodies should not be self-defining and thus that the court should determine what is religious and what is not.

Perhaps from these two illustrations you can get some idea of why I felt it necessary to devote a very large portion of my time to this issue for four months of this year. The implications for all of us, for our way of the being the Church of Jesus Christ, and for our relation to our government are serious. For this reason, I want to commend to your attention an article by Stephen L. Carter in the October 11 issue of Christian Century, and his new book entitled God’s Name in Vain. My eyes have been opened, though I would not say the eyes of my heart have been enlightened, as I have dealt with this complex concern. I believe God has yet more light to shed, and hope that I may be able to lead us next year in some theological and biblical reflection about these matters.

Global partnerships: eyes and hearts enlightened with new vision

Finally, in the presence of our global partners from the Kyung-ki Presbytery and from the Colombian Mennonite Church, giving thanks for their witness, I invite you to a deeper relationship with other Christians around the globe.

We come this weekend seeking to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, yearning not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed so we can know God’s hope for us, God’s will in our lives.

Through the witness of these partners of ours, we have the potential to expand our vision of what it means to be Christian in these times. We are a people profoundly conformed to our world. We need to be transformed. We are a people who need to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened. But what would that mean?

In ancient times, in the era when that phrase was written, the heart was seen as the central and integrating organ of the person, the place where intellect, will, emotion and physical life all have their source. This is where attitudes and thoughts are shaped, where character is determined. It is therefore the primary avenue for receiving the Holy Spirit, for knowing God and building a right relationship with God. So when we are seeking to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we are truly seeking transformation in our loyalties, our aspirations, and our character.

If the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, this is who I think we would be: individually and collectively, we would be recognizable as a people who make our every decision based on God’s hope and will for us. It is that simple.

Yes, there would still be some measure of conflict among us. Conflict, after all, is healthy when we learn to work with it in ways that deepen relationships instead of destroying them. And yes, there would be many times that we would be on a lonely road. Yet with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we could not help but know, in ways we can now only imagine, that God walks that road with us.

These partners from Korea and Colombia represent two churches that appear to me to live God’s profound hope for humanity, and I cherish for us a similar commitment.

I have been powerfully moved by these two churches with whom we are privileged to be partners. The Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea has walked the lonely path for decades as it has sought to be a witness for human rights and for justice, especially for the poorest of the poor. Members of that church have been martyred in their pursuit of Christ’s calling, including the father of our own Moksa-nim Chang, Ho Jun, pastor of our First Korean UCC. When I visited South Korea eighteen months ago, I met Christians among the leaders of the PROK who stand in my mind shoulder to shoulder with the great saints of Christianity. Their determined and faithful witness to Jesus Christ as the only One to whom they owe their loyalty inspires me to challenge us to the same.

The Mennonites in Colombia similarly walk the lonely path as a witness for human rights, for justice and for peace in the midst of a nation torn apart by war for more than thirty years. They are few in number, but their witness shines like a beacon to the people of that nation. As a traditional peace church, the Mennonites could choose to disengage from the politics and the struggles that surround them. Yet they have chosen to engage. They serve the poorest of the poor, the 1.5 million people who have been forced off their ancestral lands by the twin forces of violence and greed. They develop projects to teach survival skills and to create new industries and jobs. They participate, indeed lead, in the Movement for a Civil Society, which seeks to create foundations for peace even while the wars rage. And they offer their churches as sanctuaries of peace.

Every culture and every age presents a different set of challenges for the Christian Church. At one time we may be few in number and struggling to survive. At another we may be dominant in our society and struggling to discern the faithful witness. In some instances, faithfulness demands a risk-taking that leads to persecution, and in others a cultural cooperation to attain the highest possible integration of Christian values with national ideals. In every case, I believe we are expected to live in radical obedience to the ways God in Christ has set before us.

Yet Christians in every age and place have always had difficulty separating their particular practice of the faith from their national habits and proclivities. We are all culture bound. I remember a visit to Uganda on my last sabbatical in 1985 or so. Time and again we heard of the conflicts that erupted in churches when African drums would be introduced into worship. Only keyboard instruments like organ or piano, introduced by European and American missionaries, were considered Christian. And I have been amazed to discover almost everywhere I’ve traveled that the portrayal of Jesus that hangs on the wall is usually a fair-haired Nordic Gentile.

It’s easier to see in other cultures than in our own.

Yet the witness of our partners in Korea and Colombia can teach us, as can Christians in other nations. How much, we need to ask ourselves, of how I act is determined by my faith, and how much by my accommodation to the culture of the United States? What does it mean here to have the eyes of my heart enlightened, to shape my life entirely by the teachings of Jesus Christ and by my faith in God? How many of my assumptions about what it means to be a Christian have been formed by nation or culture rather than by Christ?

Many years ago, I traveled to east Africa on a Plowshares seminar. One day we toured a school and medical clinic the church was building. It was very hot and dusty. At the end of the hour-long tour, in which we caught the vision of a changed society held before us by those villagers, they led us back to the parking lot for a soft drink. One by one they handed us hot sodas. We stood in a circle and before anyone drank, we were invited to say together “the grace”. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ…” I have carried that moment in my heart ever since. Which among us stops to say a grace before sipping a soda? Which of us would even drink a hot, sticky orange soda with an attitude of thankfulness?

As old line Christians in this privileged country, we take much for granted! Through these partners and their witness, we have much to learn about faithfulness in the daily things of life, and as well as in the momentous things. In particular, we need to ask ourselves whether we are as prepared as they to speak up for peace when war making dominates, whether we will press issues of human rights when it may have costly consequences.

As Christians in the most powerful nation on earth, we have a special responsibility to speak the word of Christ to our government and to our international corporations. That word is one of peace, of justice and mercy, of hope and freedom. I pray that it will be a word spoken in unity with Christians of other nations.

I believe this is an age in which we are called to get very clear about our identity as Christians. Attaining that clarity will have consequences for our lives as individuals and as churches. As Americans we love our country and are deeply moved when the flag waves boldly as a symbol of freedom. But as Christian Americans we must not be confused about our primary loyalty being to God in Christ. Christ’s way must govern our way, and when the values of nation and the values of faith conflict, it must be the values of faith that gain our allegiance.

And so I want to encourage our churches to develop direct partnerships with churches in Korea and Colombia. Through these relationships, we experience our oneness in Christ, learn about the conditions they face as they seek to be Christ’s witnesses in their lands, and grow in our ability to see clearly our own mission. Through them we learn not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed, indeed to be transforming of the world in all that we do. I also urge you to step forward to serve on our partnership committees, to pray daily for the people of Colombia and the people of the Koreas, and to take any opportunity you have to experience the church at work in another part of the world. You may come back with challenging questions and you will certainly return with a new vantage point on faith and on your nation, with new appreciation for the United Church of Christ and the worldwide ecumenical church. Through living out these partnerships, the eyes of your heart will be enlightened, and God’s promise will take on new meaning. May it be so for you!

The Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree