Seeking God's Design: Disciples' Quest for Unity and Wholeness

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Foreword

Teresa Hord Owens

General Minister and President

In the 1960s, Disciples of Christ engaged in a careful, thoughtful process of church Restructure, as our leaders called it. At the 1968 International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), two key documents, A Proposed Recommendation on Principles of Merger for the National Christian Missionary Convention and the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) and the Provisional Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) were approved, giving birth to a restructured church, a new denomination.

The Merger Agreement formalized a process that had been proposed in the 1940s by influential Black leaders such as Rev. Robert H. Peoples, longtime pastor of Second (now Light of the World) Christian Church in Indianapolis, my home congregation. That process continued through the 1950s and early 1960s, uniting the offices of the African American NCMC with the offices of the United Christian Missionary Society (UCMS) and the predominantly White International Convention. This was not a situation of the church looking at this as a mission project. It was two groups of people within the church coming together to the table as whole groups of people saying, let’s show the world what this could look like. Let’s model a reflection of God’s unity on earth. It was a bold and prophetic witness for racial reconciliation and justice at a critical time in American history.

The Design brought to fruition a process that began in the aftermath of World War II when the newly formed World Council of Churches called on its member communions to take a careful, critical look at their structures with an eye toward more effectively accomplishing mission and promoting justice and peace in the world. Under the leadership of Granville Walker, who chaired the Commission on Brotherhood Restructure, and A. Dale Fiers, who served as President of UCMS and, later, as Executive Secretary of the International Convention, and who became the first General Minister and President, Disciples designed a church they hoped would be true to our long-standing commitment to Christian unity as a harbinger of God’s in-breaking realm. Restructure was about much more than church structure. It was about our mission and our witness to God’s healing, redeeming work in the world.

As we commemorate a half-century of ministry as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada, it is appropriate that we celebrate our accomplishments as a church and continue the process of theological reflection, spiritual growth, and renewal that is the legacy of these great leaders of Restructure. As we embark on our next 50 years as a church, may we continue to ask the questions that guided them: What is God’s design for the church? How are we structured? Does it still make sense? Does it still help us to live out what we now believe in this moment and in this context to be God’s design for the church?

Introduction

Rick Lowery

I have long wondered about the name of our church’s structuring document, The Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Why Design? Why not Constitution or Bylaws? Dean Kristine Kulp of the University of Chicago Divinity School, whose essay concludes this book, gave me an important clue in her response to a comment I made at the "Design at 50" Symposium¹ at Brite Divinity School in January 2019. I argued that The Design is deeply theological in character. She agreed and pointed out that the theme of the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam in 1948 was Man’s Disorder and God’s Design.

The papers for that Assembly—by such prominent theologians as Gustaf Aulén, Karl Barth, and H. Richard Niebuhr²—written in the immediate aftermath of world war, racist and fascist nationalism, Nazi genocide, and the development and use of nuclear weapons, offered ample evidence of the horrific disorder human beings were capable of creating in the world. It was plain to see in the ruins of Christian Europe and the apocalyptic devastations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the faith of these Christian leaders from around the world led them to argue that human disorder, this bitter fruit of human sin, was not the final word. God, they professed, dreams of a better world and in fact is at work in history to make the dream real. The term they used to describe this divine initiative was God’s Design. It was a key theological concept, a fundamental basis for the self-understanding of the ecumenical movement during those years, wrote Odair Pedroso Mateus, the Director of WCC’s Faith and Order Commission and a leading historian of the WCC, in a recent email to me. Post-war ecumenists, he said, understood human history in light of God’s history of salvation, God’s oikonomia (economy, in the root sense of household rules)—i.e., God’s Design for the world.

God’s Design for humanity and for the whole creation is the eschatological fulfillment, the end and purpose of history, what the gospel writers quoting Jesus describe as the basileia tou theou: the kingdom or realm of God. God’s Design is God’s just and righteous alternative to the mess created by human sinfulness, nationalistic arrogance, racist fantasy, and heartless greed. The church is called to be a witness to this Design, this new creation, that God intends for a world struggling to rise from the ashes of disorder.

Disciples, of course, were very much involved in the creation of WCC and were active participants in that first Assembly.³ Disciples leaders would have been very familiar with the key themes and concepts that emerged from these ecumenical gatherings. So the first serious stirrings of Disciples’ denominational Restructure, including the Merger Agreement that brought together the predominantly African American National Christian Missionary Convention and the predominantly White International Convention of Christian Churches—Disciples of Christ took place in that ecumenical context. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the architects of Restructure used the language of ecumenical theology to describe what they sought to accomplish. When the Commission on Brotherhood Restructure held its first meeting in Chicago in 1960, they asked these questions: What is God’s design for the church? How are Disciples organized for mission? How does that fit or not fit God’s design? And what are we going to do about it?⁴

In 1830, Alexander Campbell launched his theological journal Millennial Harbinger, which he named to highlight his conviction that, just as John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming Messiah, the Christian unity movement Campbell and others had started on the American frontier was in fact a sign, a harbinger of God’s coming reign in the world. The adoption of the language of Design in 1968 continued that Campbell tradition. The church of The Design would stand as a sign, a witness to God’s redeeming work in history—to God’s dream, God’s Design for the world and the whole human family. This church, in a fundamental sense, was restructured to more effectively be an eschatological sign of God’s in-breaking reign.

Standing as a sign of God’s alternate plan for the world is not easy. In fact, the church was put to the test before The Design and the Merger Agreement were even brought to a vote.

John Humbert, our third General Minister and President (GMP), was Deputy General Minister before he became GMP. He served as the program director for the 1966 General Assembly in Dallas, Texas. He was instrumental in gathering the principals for what is now an iconic Disciples photograph of Dale Fiers and other Disciples leaders standing in front of a communion table with one of the Assembly participants, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. From our viewpoint five decades later, the decision to invite Dr. King may seem to have been a no-brainer, an amazing get for Disciples—which it certainly was. In Dallas in 1966, however, it was not so clear-cut for everyone. It was risky, bold, and very controversial. Still reeling from the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, the local arrangements committee had serious concerns about and objections to having King address the Assembly there. They pleaded with Fiers to rescind the invitation, but Fiers and the planners of the Assembly stood firm. The local arrangements committee, for the most part, resigned and had to be replaced. Fiers and the Assembly planners were, of course, right, but John Humbert told me that Fiers worried that the controversy over that Assembly would derail the years-long process of Restructure, which was heading toward final votes on the Merger Agreement and The Design a couple of years later. And yet our leaders persisted. In the end, Disciples’ witness to justice, and particularly our witness to racial equality and economic equity, was more fundamental, more basic and grounding than our deeply held conviction that we needed to restructure.

This volume reflects on the long, careful, and, in important ways, risky and courageous work that went into Restructure and Merger.

The heart of this book is a series of interviews my predecessor James Seale did from 1989 to 1993 with key figures in Restructure, including the Merger process that brought together the National Christian Missionary Convention and the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) to give life to the restructured denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The coeditors have structured that portion of the book around six key questions that, in our collective judgment, seemed particularly important in the Seale interviews. Each question constitutes a chapter in Part II of the book.

In Part I, we provide background for the interviews. Duane Cummins and Lawrence Burnley each offer a chapter on the broader historical and cultural contexts of Restructure and Merger, with Burnley examining the social, political, and cultural factors of Merger through a racial lens.

In the final section, Part III, we have invited current Disciples leaders to reflect on The Design and the broader process of Restructure and Merger from our standpoint 50 years later. Many of these contemporary reflections are drawn from six papers delivered at the "Design at 50" Symposium at Brite Divinity School, January 14–15, 2019.

My work on this project has been a joy, with many surprises and new insights along the way. I wish to express my deep gratitude to my wonderful coeditors—Duane Cummins, Peter Morgan, and Lawrence Burnley—and to the numerous contributors both living and now joined with that great cloud of witnesses whose lives and work are the foundation of our ongoing mission to live into God’s Design for the church and the world.

1 https://www.brite.edu/programs/lifelong-learning/The_Design_at_50_Symposium/.

2 Man’s Disorder and God’s Design: The Amsterdam Assembly Series, a one-volume edition of four books: I. The Universal Church in God’s Design; II. The Church’s Witness to God’s Design; III. The Church and the Disorder of Society; and IV. The Church and the Institutional Disorder (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Gustaf Aulén, The Church in the Light of the New Testament, 18–30; Karl Barth, The Church—the Living Congregation of the Living Lord Jesus Christ, 67–76; H. Richard Niebuhr, The Disorder of Man in the Church of God, 78–88.

3 A. Dale Fiers, the first General Minister and President, however, was pastoring a local church at the time and did not attend a WCC Assembly until the third one in New Delhi 1961.

4 From a video interview with Dale Fiers by Betsy Goehrig, available at https://youtube/-HUwI81txQI.

Part I: Background

Context

Duane Cummins

At the outset we are struck by one great partition which divides the religious field. On the one side of it lies the institutional, on the other personal religion… [O]ne branch of the religion keeps the divinity, another keeps man most in view… [T]heology, ceremony and ecclesiastical organization are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch… [I]n the personal branch of religion it is the

inner disposition of man himself which forms the center of interest…

his conscience, his incompleteness.

—William James,

The Varieties of Religious Experience

, 1902

Balancing the personal and the institutional dimensions of Disciples religious experience had long been a near intractable dilemma. Both were essential, and throughout Disciples historic eras, emphasis shifted from one to the other, tensions surrounded each shift of emphasis, and disagreements were always abundant among Disciples on the manner in which they were performing their ministry in both the personal and institutional dimensions of religious life. For several decades, from 1920 to 1950, the emphasis within Disciples, shifted significantly toward the institutional dimension, toward developing a more cooperative institutional life, both within its own life and within its ecumenical relationships. To that end, the United Christian Missionary Society was established in 1920. Maintaining the 19th-century society concept, the UCMS brought together into a single organization the American Christian Missionary Society, the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions, the Foreign Christian Missionary Society, the Board of Church Extension, the National Benevolent Association, and the Board of Ministerial Relief—and would eventually engage itself ecumenically with several cooperative ventures as they were formed, including the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948; the National Council of Churches, founded in 1950; and the Consultation on Church Union, founded in 1960. In light of social changes emerging from World War II, the World Council of Churches urged all member denominations to study their structures with a view toward their responsiveness to those changes. Institutional structure was the thematic emphasis of the age. Yale church historian Sydney Ahlstrom, in his Religious History of the American People, 1972, wrote of the "progressive organizational reform" in the denominations during that post–World War II era.⁵

At this precise moment Disciples chose to enter a process of Restructure. Inspired by success of cooperative initiatives in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and prompted by the fact that seven state missionary societies had begun to organize themselves into unified entities with delegate assemblies, the Council of Agencies began to study interagency relationships and unification. In 1958, Willard Wickizer (1899–1974), chair of the UCMS Division of Home Missions and credited with being the Father of Restructure, delivered to the Council an address, Ideas for ‘Brotherhood’ Restructure, that compelled the Council to action. A brief excerpt contains its flavor:

[Only] in recent days has anyone dared to suggest that what the Disciples of Christ needs to do is to look at its total organizational Structure and attempt a major restructuring that would result in more effective cooperation. Now it would seem that we have reached a degree of maturity as a religious body when such a restructuring might be faced with some hope of success.

Too frequently in the past we have wanted to prove our freedom by refusing to cooperate when all the time we could have proven it just as well and far more constructively by cooperating together for the advancement of God’s kingdom. Of this I am sure, it is high time our brotherhood took a look at its organized life in its totality and Restructure it according to a basic plan. For too long we have been willing to add patch on patch, never moving to a carefully worked out master plan. I believe the mood of the people would support such an undertaking at this time.⁶

During that era from 1920 to 1950, the increasing number of Disciples agencies, both state and national, resulted in a complex, multilayered system with less-than-adequate coordination and accountability. Congregations felt they were being imposed upon with countless state and agency financial appeals—while the states and agencies needed an integral unity, a responsible mode of making decisions, some sense of accountability to replace the mine is mine and yours is an afterthought mentality. Frustration with the lack of coordination resulted in the desire for a major overhaul into a more ecclesial architecture. The Disciples had no theology of church beyond the local congregation. But in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s they were, in practice, maturing into church, into something more than a loosely knit collection of congregations with agencies materializing as a need arose. In the early years of Disciples history, an inadequate understanding of church produced an inadequate structure. A deepening sophistication among seminary-educated Disciples clergy in the 20th century brought a new understanding of the nature of church: what it ought to be, what it could be.

Process, for Disciples, is equal in importance to the end result. And it is important to understand Restructure as a process, rather than as an event. Kenneth Teegarden, widely identified as the architect of Restructure, explained:

Renewal is not just change. It is bringing the results of change into line with the continuity of our mission as the church. This is why we refer to Restructure and renewal as a process. It is an endless interweaving of continuity and change, conserving the meaningful aspects of a rich and enduring tradition, but realizing it must be a tradition facilitating its own continuous renewal.⁷

The 125-member Commission on Brotherhood Restructure was approved and appointed at the 1962 International Convention—composed of:

1. 34 lay persons, 91 ministers

2. 17 women, 108 men

3. 30 from congregations of fewer than 500 members

4. 95 from congregations of 500 members or larger

Kenneth Teegarden, in a 1990 interview, noted that the Commission was broadly representative, but not broadly representative in today’s terms… It was largely a male, Anglo group, very few Hispanics, a slightly larger number of Blacks. He also noted that the Commission represented the strength of the church in many ways:

Strong, sizeable congregations were represented on the Commission in a very forceful way. What are now [general] units were represented. Eight societies were represented in a good way, and many of the best theological minds of the church were there, professors and persons theologically astute who were able to evaluate what was being done, not just in organizational and pragmatic terms. And we had a kind of counter-balancing influence (The Atlanta Declaration group and the Charles Bayer group concerned about spiritual and intellectual renewal.)⁸

On July 7, 1966, the Commission approved a draft of the "Provisional Design." Two more years of labor remained. The following January, 225,000 copies of the Provisional Design were circulated throughout the church, accompanied by a consultation process with State Secretaries and a series of mini-conventions or regional assemblies. The Provisional Design recommended a Church in Covenant, organized in three manifestations—congregational, regional, and general—all components of a covenantal church. The meaning of covenant was presented in the Preamble to the Design. Responsibilities and accountability of each manifestation were delineated in the body of the document. In 1967, the St. Louis International Convention gave triumphant approval to the Provisional Design—beyond the two-thirds majority requirement. There were 5,093 registered voting delegates from 1,967 congregations. In addition, there were 4,482 nonvoting members, bringing the total number of congregations represented to 2,133. Following this congregational approval came the two-thirds majority approval from states, areas and general agencies—prior to final approval by the fabled September 1968 assembly in Kansas City.

With Restructure, Disciples had accomplished something unprecedented and did so in the face of great historical odds—at the exact moment of a pervasive, cultural anti-establishment backlash. Kenneth Teegarden warned in 1965 that the new structure would look barbarous to some;