Here’s a nugget of sound advice from the general secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches: Don’t come to the ecumenical picnic without bringing some sandwiches.
“To be Reformed today, we cannot discern God’s will alone,” the Rev. Chris Ferguson, WCRC’s general secretary and an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, told the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), during the “Coffee with the Clerk” Facebook Live event during a taping that aired Monday. While “it may go upstream,” Ferguson said, “to be Presbyterian is to be ecumenical.”
Based in Hanover, Germany, the WCRC represents 100 million Christians across 233 denominations in 110 countries.
Ferguson praised the work of the Rev. Robina Winbush, the director of Ecumenical Relations for the PC(USA), who died March 7 returning from a 10-day trip to the Middle East.
“We are still in mourning, but we are redoubling our efforts to stand with the PC(USA),” Ferguson said. In her role as the PC(USA)’s chief ecumenical officer, Winbush “created an ecumenical space” using what he called traditional Presbyterian gifts of justice, inclusion and participation.
“The fruit is rich and the trees are heavy with that fruit,” he said of her considerable ecumenical efforts. It was Winbush, he said, who was instrumental in inserting the word “Communion” in the organization’s name. She told the WCRC about nine years ago, “you are a communion, not an association,” Ferguson said.
For denominations and organizations like the WCRC to be constantly reforming, “the temptation is we want some of that security back, to be back in our comfort zones,” he said, quoting Psalm 11, which he’d been studying recently: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
They can “go to the toughest places where life is the most threatened and hang in there,” he said, applauding PC(USA) efforts during the 223rd General Assembly last year to speak against and do something about the unjust cash bail system that plagues the legal system in a number of U.S. cities.
“Our challenges are to bring to faith into the present context, keep our eye on the ball and put God first to do justice in concrete terms,” Ferguson said. “I want to give the people in the PC(USA) a profound vote of thanks. With all the issues, I don’t know if you appreciate how much the PC(USA) has been a gift to the world — how you’ve been willing to go to tough places and proclaim a faith that’s alive. With God working through you, you are that bush that burns and is not consumed.”
For his part, Nelson thanked Ferguson for showing listeners ways “to learn to speak to each other, learn from each other and forge new relationships on the ground — in our congregations and in our communities.”
“This is been long years of ecumenical work that has been done, allowing us to share the Good News more effectively,” Nelson said. “I pray that we can continue to close the gap and bring ourselves together.”