UniteBoston

Bridging Divides Across Christians for the Flourishing of the City

Reconciling Love

Today, we have Megan Lietz as a guest blogger with UniteBoston. Megan is a research associate at the Emmanuel Gospel Center and is passionate about unity in the body of Christ. Today, she shares with us about some insights into the reconciling love of Christ that destroys barriers between God’s people.

 

In Ancient Near Eastern Jewish culture, it was believed that salvation was only for Jews or those who conformed to the legal requirements of Judaism. Gentiles were generally seen as lost and distinct from Jews in belief and culture. However, Jesus had a heart for both Jew and Gentile. He desired and made a way for them to be one in Him. For example, Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 pleads for unity among his followers and Ephesians 2:13-18 explains how Jesus’ work on the cross tore down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Despite the barriers that his followers erected between themselves and believers different from them, Jesus calls them to unite themselves with those who were seen as “the other.” This was viewed as inappropriate by the leading Jews. Eventually, the acceptance of the Gentiles became the belief that set early Christianity apart from other sects of Judaism.

 

Within the church today, there are many divisions. It’s easy for us to judge those from different cultural or Christian traditions. Instead of embracing people as brothers and sisters, we can label them as “the other” and practically exclude them from our interactions within the body of Christ. This behavior is in stark contract to what Jesus did, sacrificing his own body, so we could be one and experience the fruits of unity.

 

Today, let us pray that we and the ministries throughout our region will become mindful of the ways in which we separate ourselves from our fellow believers and, in doing so, disrespect the reconciling work that Jesus did on the cross. Let us pray that we see our brothers and sisters as Jesus does, covered by his blood and part of his family. May we act in unity because what divides us has been overcome by Jesus’ work on the cross.

“Living Stations of the Cross” Event Featured in the Boston Globe

Members of Trinity Church and other local congregations participated in an outdoors Stations of the Cross event on Good Friday.

UniteBoston’s Executive Director Kelly Steinhaus served in the role of Jesus for the first four scenes. She writes, “This year, I am seeing Holy Week in a whole new way. It’s difficult to describe in words how this experience has impacted my faith personally.”

The Boston Globe article features an image of Kelly with a crown of thorns and holding the cross.

Photo Credit: John Tlumacki, Globe Staff
Photo Credit: John Tlumacki, Globe Staff

Check out the article here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/25/ways-cross/PWRDp7nPmFJ0h3IY2QnZTN/story.html

Be encouraged by how God is making visible His love to our city!

Updates from the Institute for Christian Unity

Scott Brill is a good friend of ours at the Institute for Christian Unity – Here is an exciting update from them about what they have planned for the upcoming year!

“The world needs to know Jesus. We must proclaim Him without any pause, together. The division among Christians is the fruit of our sin, and it is a scandal and our greatest impediment for the mission for which the Lord has called us: announcing the Good News of the Gospel.”

So said Pope Francis in a letter he sent to a gathering of Evangelicals & Catholics this past September – at which I had the privilege of representing the Institute for Christian Unity. For me, Francis’ words capture the essence of our work and the passion which drives me to keep going at this in the face of many challenges. It resonates deeply with our vision: “To raise up a new generation of ‘prophetic ecumenists’ who seek to both confront and heal disunity in the Body of Christ and live as a sign of love for that Body, so that the world would know the good news of Jesus” And I hope it stirs something in you as well.

Over the past year, that vision and passion has motivated me to teach about reconciliation across historic church divides in a number of settings and to create networks between Catholics and Evangelicals through smaller gatherings like the one mentioned above. I also spent a week in April out of my comfort zone at the National Workshop for Christian Unity, helping my good friend and mentor John Armstrong establish the first-ever participation of Evangelicals at that conference.

That vision and passion has motivated my co-Director Vito Nicastro to spend months of hard work behind the scenes to bring about a remarkable joint letter from Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Hazelwood of the ELCA that even got a shoutout in the Boston Globe. It has motivated our Fellow Matt Crane to create a unique community grass-roots ecumenical forum in the Boston area. Over the past calendar year they have thoughtfully engaged a number of powerful topics including racism, human sexuality, the role of women in the church and the current refugee crisis – all in a space of mutual respect and love. And all of us have been involved in mentoring several young undergraduates and seminarians, all of whom are discovering their own call to prophetic ecumenism.

Though each of us has another full-time ministry, our goal for next year is to continue to expand the impact of the Institute. Some of the ways we’d like to do that include:
• Working with Vision New England to develop more missional partnerships between Evangelicals and Catholics.
• Hosting a multi-day Christian unity gathering in the greater Boston area in the fall of 2016.
• Following up the joint letter by creating structures for Lutherans, Catholics and other Christians to come together for study, prayer and service
• Expanding the WEE Forum to more communities

Warmly in Christ,

Scott Brill
Founding Fellow and Co-Director

Ted Talk by Boston’s Bonnie Gatchell

Bonnie Gatchell is the director of Route One Ministry, who works with women exploited by the commercial sex industry by entering strip clubs. She has provided educational training to many local churches and organizations across New England, exposing the reality of sex trafficking in New England and providing practical solutions to bring about its end.

Last week, Bonnie was featured on Tedx. Listen to her speak out for exploited women, and visit Route One Ministry to join in their efforts to help women experience the breaking of chains and healing of wounds through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Video: The Trinity & Ecumenical Relations

Kelly Steinhaus, Executive Director of UniteBoston and student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, recently spoke at the Boston Theological Institute’s 2016 Orlando E. Costas Consultation on World Mission & Ecumenism .

The title of her presentation and paper is: “Mutual Indwelling: The Perichoretic Nature of the Trinity as a Model for Ecumenical Consciousness and Praxis.”

Watch her 3-minute presentation below!

Transcript:

God within God’s self is radically relational.

In 749, John Damascene began to propose the term “perichoresis” to describe the “cleaving together” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The fellowship of the Godhead is so intimate that the three persons not only embrace each other, but also enter into and dwell within one other in a divine dance.

The Trinitarian life is also our life; as followers of Christ we are called to become an “image of God” and take on God’s way of being. Yet throughout the 2,000 years of its existence, Christianity has splintered time and again, to the point that some estimate more than 33,000 Christian denominations. This disunity is a scandal and a public contradiction of the gospel.

Today, our parishes largely function as isolated autonomous entities, with some city blocks having multiple Christian churches with nearly identical goals yet little to no communication between them. This isolation leads to growing negative views and polarization between different cultural expressions and ideologies present in the Church. This is not who we are called to be, and this is not the way of the Trinity.

My thesis is that the self-giving nature of the Trinity must be reflected in our relations with other Christians. Christian unity is a process by which the church is brought to maturity. In going beyond our own Christian tradition, we find that our negative beliefs about other groups are overgeneralized and untrue. Thus, Christian unity reveals our hidden biases and matures our faith personally and corporately.

What we know about the Trinity must be reflected in our ecumenical praxis. We must go beyond our siloed independent church walls, towards those who are ideologically and culturally different than us. Ecumenical initiatives have traditionally consisted of inter-denominational worship events and high-level dialogue, but have neglected to build the depth of relationship between all Christians demonstrated by Trinitarian communion.

I’m the founding director of an ecumenical movement in Boston called UniteBoston which seeks to nurture these relational connections. We have a website and newsletter as an infrastructure for communication for Christian events happening around Boston.

Each fall, we also coordinate 10 nights of worship gatherings designed to reflect the diversity of Boston’s Christian community and promote ecumenical understanding.

Finally, we coordinate a team of UniteBoston Reps who work with pastors to identify shared missional goals and collaborate on joint service projects. Last October, over 200 Christians throughout Boston – Catholic, Orthodox, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical – served together on twelve service projects to tangibly demonstrate the love of Christ.

Iron sharpens iron, and we have found that through rubbing shoulders with other Christians, our perspectives are broadened and our love for one another is deepened. As the being-in-one-another nature of the Trinity emerges within us, we are becoming the Church and Bride of Christ that Jesus prays for, so that the world will see God’s true character and love. Thank you.


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