Interdenominationality - what?

If your read this blog yesterday then you'll notice that I've done some rewriting. I wasn't quite happy with what I had written towards the end since it seemed quite, well, incoherent. So, I sat down to look at it some more and did some editing. Hope this is now a bit more clear. Incidentally it seems that it is just the pollen that is making me a bit miserable :).

One of the interesting things (so to speak) about pollen allergies is that there are times when you're not quite sure wether you in fact have a cold. Right now I think I might just have the beginnings of a one, though. The not so fun part is that I'm off to Riga, Latvia, early (VERY early) Friday morning and neither allergies nor colds go well together with flying. Thankfully the flights are pretty short.

Why to Riga, you ask. Well, there is a meeting of the Anglican Deanery synod of the Nordic and Baltic countries and although I'm a Lutheran I've been asked to participate. Come to think of it I'm not quite sure why, though. Probably because one service of each month for the International Congregation is an Anglican one. Also, there is this thing called the Porvoo Declaration which means that a group of Lutheran and Anglican churches have been for some ten years "involved in a new and closer relationship for the sake of greater unity and more effective mission". What this really means in practise is of course what everyone is still trying to figure out. In a world where the church is so split I think that something like this declaration is pretty awesome.

That being said I have to admit that going to this meeting makes me feel like a duck that stumbled into a meeting of swans or something. Ecumenism, and in this case I mean the promotion of unity between Christian churches, is what our congregation is all about. It is not the Turku Cathedral Lutheran International Conregation but the International Congregation without mention of denomination. However, their pastor is for better and for worse a Lutheran. I didn't have much choice really, having been born in a Lutheran country, although, of course, I could have changed if I wanted - or indeed, still could. It just happens - as is the case with everyone else, too, of course - that my church is home to me no matter what and more importantly it's theology comes closest to how I understand things. So, I really don't have much of a choice.

Interdenominational work is fascinating but at the same time also really challenging because the human capability of grasping things is limited. You make mistakes, draw wrong conclusions, mess up things and generally feel that you really don't know much even about your own denomination and very little if anything about others. You of course ought to know way more and the good thing is that you do learn more all the time.

The problem is that because most are members of denominations that they regard as their home we all, then, have strong feelings about our churches. There may be issues we don't agree with but the ones who are should talk about them are members not someone from the outside, right? It's the same with our families. We can freely admit that they're odd but it hurts if someone else makes the same comment. Why? Because we know the whole story and the good things, too, but someone else commenting might not.

What is a minor complication, however, is the fact that whatever we hold dear to us we very easily assume that it should be dear to others, too. When it isn't we feel surprised and, in the worst case, rejected. And we may find ourselves getting quite defensive about it.

I love chocolate. If I really want to make - or get - a great dessert it'll include chocolate, preferably lots of it. Because I love chocolate I tend to think that everyone else does, too. The same applies to theology and my understading of God - who I am sure will forgive me from being compaired to chocolate. I understand Him in my own way and that has been influenced by a multitude of things. The most important thing is that I love God very much but, at the same time, the thing is that I love Him based on my understanding of who He is and how He is. And that is influenced by my church and it's theology.

In this work my theology gets constantly challenged, as it should, but at the same time what happens is that I sometimes find myself feeling like the duck in a swan's party: different, clumsy, slightly odd and a bit lonely. On the other hand, this is quite likely to be how we all feel at times.

My challenge for all of us is that we try to become as aware as we can of our own theology with it's quirks and it's most important aspects and then remember that others are like us, too, in their relationship to God and faith. What will happen and happens between us will always go beyond anything we ourselves can think of because others have their expectations and their own ways of seeing things.

At the end of the day if we can take a break from being so concentrated on what we think and want and just look at each other with interest and love and without predesposed ideas we may find that even if we do sometimes feel out of place we're in the party because God invited us there. We can, if we want to, understand each other and respect and value each others differences (theological and otherwise), too, without anyone feeling rejected or preasured to change. It all starts with us asking God to help us distinguish what is important and what is not.

After all true change is in any case the work of the Holy Spirit.