A Wesleyan-Holiness Perspective on The Church: Towards a Common Vision

Although The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) presents an excellent theological statement about the church, it fails to inspire ecumenical cooperation in sacramental life and in service because of unrealistic assessments about the theory and practice of churches.

I write as a Wesleyan-Holiness theologian who has been involved with ecumenical and interfaith work with commissions (now known as convening tables) of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCCC) for more than a dozen years. I have dialogued, presented, and published articles and a book on the subject matter. Most of my service has been on behalf of the Wesleyan Theological Society, which has supported commissions of the NCCC for four decades. In addition, I also represent perspectives from the Society of Friends, which united with the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition in founding Azusa Pacific University in southern California. At the University, I teach in the Seminary, and I am heavily invested in promoting both the theory (beliefs, values) and practice (ministries) of churches.

In reading TCTCV, I was once again amazed by the excellent work in ecclesiastical scholarship, articulating God’s “Mission and the Unity of the Church,” existing as the “Church of the Triune God,” and how churches are “Growing in Communion,” “In and for the World,” to quote the chapter titles.¹ The World Council of Churches provides outstanding statements of belief and value about the nature of the church.

However, theoretical excellence in describing the church does not always translate into persuasive and effective ministerial and mission-oriented practice that supports the ecclesiastical theory. In fact, throughout my years of service on behalf of the commissions on Faith and Order and on Interfaith Relations, I have been concerned about how little the good theoretical work we did translated into practicable applications on behalf of the day-to-day lives of Christians and churches. As commissions, we found it challenging to produce outcomes that implemented our beliefs and values, no matter how good they were, in the pews, worship practices, ministries, and mission work.

Let me examine a sample statement from the Conclusion of TCTCV in order to illustrate my concerns. Its first sentence begins by saying: “The unity of the body of Christ consists in the gift of koinonia or communion that God graciously bestows upon human beings.”² This statement reflects stirring work on the Greek word “koinonia,” which talks about the communion, fellowship, and sharing that occurs in churches. Indeed, the biblical concept of koinonia has powerfully shaped Christians and churches in the past, and it continues to be fruitful in articulating ecclesiastical relations in the future.

The second sentence of the Conclusion affirms a “growing consensus” about the excellence of koinonia for ecumenical and interfaith work.³ In deed, I agree that the biblical concept increasingly finds favor among Christians and churches as a way to conceptualize the “Christian Unity” advocated by the Faith and Order Convening Table: “Faith and Order affirms the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ and keeps before the churches the Gospel call to visible unity in one faith and one Eucharistic communion, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ, in order that the world may believe.”⁴

The entirety of the aforementioned sentence in the Conclusion says: “There is a growing consensus that koinonia, as communion with the Holy Trinity, is manifested in three interrelated ways: unity in faith, unity in sacramental life, and unity in service (in all its forms, including ministry and mission).”⁵ Although I agree that there is growing consensus about the concept of koinonia, I do not agree that it is manifested in the three interrelated ways suggested above.

First, there may, indeed, be a “unity in faith” (that is, doctrine) discoverable in such ecumenical publications as TCTCV. The text certainly reflects excellent scholarship in articulating an ecclesiastical “common vision.”

Second, however, I question whether the document is convincing with regard to “unity in sacramental life.” For eight years, an NCCC Faith...