Christian Churches Together Annual Meeting Focuses on Poverty
On January 15, 2009, Bishop Wayne Burkette and I stepped out from one of the churches in the Capitol Hill neighborhood onto the streets of Washington DC, and we set off through the single digit wind chill to meet with our Congressional representatives.
We were working with Christian Churches Together (CCT) and we had prepared, through our conversations and decisions in the days prior, a common prayer and statement for justice and equality on the matter of domestic poverty that would be shared with the leaders of our country. So as Wayne and I headed out into the cold, our task was to share from our experience and our hearts why the issue of poverty was so important to the many people who love and follow Jesus, and to encourage these leaders to consider the poor as they make tremendous decisions in these crucial times. As we went through the streets and hallways of our government, we saw some of the 70-plus other brothers and sisters of CCT who also joined us in this common purpose that had all of our hearts ablaze.
The Northern and Southern Provinces became a single participating member of CCT after the 2006 Synods. And it makes good Moravian sense: the desire to see less fragmentation in Christ’s body, to see more of the “oneness” that Jesus prayed for in John’s Gospel, these are realities we have prayed for through times of both persecution and joyful mission. CCT is the widest gathering of our Christian brothers and sisters in North America. Worship at these meetings is an exciting experience of the five families: Orthodox, Catholic, historical Protestant, Evangelical-Pentecostal, and historic African American — and these are joined in participation by many Christ-centered organizations such as the Salvation Army. CCT at work is a shining example of seeking agreement instead of division: all statements and efforts are reached by consensus; if there are concerns about how a particular issue would be received by other Christian communions, we acknowledge that difference and look for other things that bind us as one in Christ.
While prayers and conversations about this fellowship began in 2001, CCT’s official start came in 2006; and from that beginning two main issues were seen as touching each of our Christian communities: evangelism and poverty. Once again, we need not look far into our own historical and current Moravian experiences to see how profoundly these very issues have touched our hearts to the point of putting our faith into action.
While the CCT annual meeting includes work done on both of our agreed upon foci, it seemed necessary that this year’s meeting (held January 13-16 in Baltimore) reach some very applicable consensus about the matter of poverty. This need arose from our awareness of the rise of domestic poverty in this economy, and the needs of the many people in our nation and our churches who are seeing this reality reach their doorstep. And with the transition taking place in Washington, it seemed an important time to share these thoughts for consideration with our country’s leaders — including the Presidential transition team.
So, before our inspired day in the cold of DC, our CCT gathering produced a new statement on poverty that called for attention to be paid to how poverty is further entrenched by or negatively affects the systems of education, communities, families, and work. We articulated practical ways our nation’s leadership could extend support to those who currently stand in the turmoil of poverty, while strengthening the ground on which those who are not far from poverty stand. Through the latest hours of January 14, CCT hammered out what we believe was a faithful statement of our Lord’s compassion to the poor and neglected, our churches’ responsibilities in this matter, and our hopes that our country’s leadership will hear our prayers clearly.
The statement and the subsequent meetings with our representatives and the transitional team seemed productive. But our gathering was much more than that. What CCT did in those days was not only a strong action — a ministry that addresses poverty — for us to model in our many churches, but it was also a strong model to repeat — building relationships amongst diverse Christians, to live out together the teachings and will of Jesus. That is the essence of a missional community.
On the last day I was giving some thought to our Moravian churches as missional communities, when I shared breakfast with Ron Sider (author of Just Generosity). Sider had been a key leader in the days before, just a day removed from having met with the transition team himself, and here we sat having a similarly intense conversation about how important it was that Moravian communities find ways to be intentional and faithful on the issue of poverty.
At CCT we spent equal time discussing factors of poverty from the “top down,” and how our churches can be or currently are involved in this particular ministry from the “bottom up.” In the end, we acted prophetically on the former; but the latter may be the more important and more elaborate work that must be done — to put in the hands of each of our communities the task of working from the “bottom up” to show compassion to “the least of these.”
At Laurel Ridge, the youth enjoy participating in the Group Interaction Course (GIC) where they learn team building skills. One of the challenges is “the wall,” in which each of the youth are to move from the ground to the top of a very tall wall. You cannot make it on your own — it takes someone reaching down from the top of the wall to lift you up, as well as people on the ground level with you, willing to get a little dirty and cramped as you step and stretch from the perch of their hands and shoulders. To succeed at “the wall” any number of our Moravian youth could tell you that you need help from the top down and from the bottom up.
You and I have made it this far in life because people have been willing to get a little dirty while we reach higher and stand taller; and most importantly, we have made it this far because we believe in a God who saw it fit to also come and stand in the mess and lift us up as we could never do it on our own. Most of us are not politicians who make the momentous decisions affecting our society, but we are the people who make up communities of Christ who are commissioned to live and love like Jesus did — working with compassion and determination to transform people’s lives from the bottom up.
The work of CCT acted at the top of the wall and encouraged all of our communions to go home and begin acting on the ground level. Let us at this time at least be inspired to begin that conversation together and look for ways to stand with and lift up the poor.
