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refugees, and others in distress, rather than give them to merely humanitarian organisations.

Appeals for “extra” giving in times of emergency, the necessary explanation referred to above, the frontier Christian witness through Inter-Church Aid, are essential parts of an educational strategy. Only prayer and carefully thought-out national and local co-operation will resolve the administrative problems of working together locally towards an understanding of mission and unity. Statesmanlike planning, par- ticularly locally, will benefit individual missionary commitments more and more, as church members come to see their total ecumenical res- ponsibility. Comprehensive ecumenical education should also help many people, who now have more money available than their particular group in society ever had before, to show a Christian attitude towards their possessions, and so make them alive to their missionary and church responsibilities. The value of local churches working this out together, and so growing more closely together, cannot be over-estimated. “You cannot have ecumenical co-operation without practising inter-church aid.”

THE PARISH AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

by

ALAN A. BRASH

Since I have been asked to state some personal reflections on the above topic I should begin by indicating the particular kind of experience out of which the reflections come. I have been minister in two New Zealand parishes, both suburban in character. My pastorates lasted for eight and four years respectively, and during those years I felt something of the farcical nature of the existing divisions within the people of God. Between pastorates I served one term of five years as Secretary of the National Council of Churches, and since the second have been re- appointed to a further term in that office. In this position I have felt something of the theoretical nature of all ecumenical discussions until they are introduced into terms of the parish situation. In addition I have had enough participation in ecumenical confrontation at world level to know something of its inspiration and its heartbreak-at

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Oxford and Edinburgh, 1937, Amsterdam and Oegstgeest, 1948, and Sydney, 1956.

Many more profound people than I have grappled with the question, “What forms can and should the ecumenical spirit create within the parish situation?’ My own conclusions make no pretence at being profound, but they are the conclusions forced upon me by my own alternating experiences.

First : There are very strict limits to what can be done to manifest Christian unity at the parish level under the present circumstances. I have voted for, and sometimes framed, very many pious conference resolutions, the objective of which was to make the ecumenical move- ment local in one way or another, but my parish experience forces me to acknowledge the irrelevance of many of those resolutions.

How, in fact, can it be done? In my last parish I was given an almost ideal parish situation under the present condition of division of the churches. The suburb included only three congregations - Church of England, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Furthermore, there was a good community spirit in the district. Beyond that the three ministers concerned were close personal friends, and all of them wholly committed in action to the ecumenical movement. I set out convinced that here, at least, is a place where the resolutions of the conferences could be put to effect. But I am compelled to the realistic conclusion expressed above. Some things have been done. Two of the churches have occa- sional observances of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper together ; all three churches meet for social and recreational purposes from time to time; there have been exchanges of pulpits. But the fact remains that they are separate churches with no particular resentments against one another, but with no real caring between the members, and very little knowledge in each of the concerns of the others. Each parish is wholly occupied with its own parishioners, its own organisations, its own maintenance, carrying out the resolutions of its own central author- ity, and supporting its own missionary enterprises. We must begin with the reality. While the churches remain separate they are so pre- occupied with separate concerns that there is a strict limit to what they can do to manifest the unity which we acknowledge theologically they have.

Secondly: It appears that only some form of corporate union can bring neighbouring congregations into a real discovery of their unity. Without corporate union they can discover certain things. Sometimes

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they can achieve a measure of good fellowship, but how quickly that fellowship can be destroyed. Even the arrival of a new minister in one of the parishes can shatter it if he happens to be “non-ecumenical.” It is therefore quite obvious that the ecumenical movement as we know it must resist its coming-of-age temptation to become static. As we are constantly reminded it is not called to organise unions, but it must press on with the awareness that its task is to bring the member Churches so close to one another that they will not be able to avoid becoming one. We have not yet attained, and we must be more modest in our descriptions of the significance of our own activities in the ecumenical movement.

Thirdly : Meantime the visibility of our unity in the World Council of Churches and National Councils is indispensable, not only to inter-church ejiciency, but also to the spiritual welfare of the separatedparishes. It is very difficult to make a parish dissatisfied with its separation from its neighbouring parishes, but at least the organised ecumenical movement is a challenge to it and a rebuke to its separatism. The councils chal- lenge the lethargy of congregations and do something to oppose the deadweight of tradition-in-separateness by reminding us all that our unity does exist, not only in “spirit” but with some kind of a body, even if it is not the true body.

In the New Zealand second Faith and Order Conference at Sumner, Christchurch, 1955, one of our most effective adventures was to send preachers into 66 city and suburban pulpits, in each case of a different Communion from their own. Everywhere that experiment created interest in our Faith and Order discussions as no amount of general publicity could have done. Perhaps the most remembered sermon preached on that Sunday was by an Anglo-Catholic preaching in a Presbyterian pulpit, commenting on the reasons why he believed the congregation had gasped when he had crossed himself, and why he had been himself shocked at their failure to stand, out of respect for the ordained minister of God. Both re-actions had been on the basis of un-thought-out prejudice. Even if Presbyterians do not use it, they can be led to see that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the sign of the Cross, and it is possible for an Anglo-Catholic to feel the power of the Presbyterian determination not even to appear to worship anything other than God Himself. But these prejudices which we all have about the practices of other churches than our own, must be constantly chal- lenged by the existence of the so-called top level ecumenical fellowship

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which includes people who have different practices, but who have overcome the prejudices. The fruits of practical co-operation are not so important in the life of the churches as is this demonstration of an unexpected unity which is made by the ecumenical movement.

Fourthly: The members of the local congregation are interested in a statement of the theological issues that divide them from the Christians in neighbouring congregations. We have taken for granted too often that they are not. Clear statement of the actual issues that divide us generally comes as a surprise to most Church members. It helps them to see what the real issues are, and not only to appreciate their intrinsic difficulty, but also to recognise something of their relative insignificance over against our unity in Christ and in the great verities of faith and salvation. Quite incidentally, an understanding of the real issues fre- quently brings them to see that what they had thought were the issues are either insignificant trifles, or sinful prejudices.

Finally, When separated congregations in a parish can do no more together, they can pray faithjiully for one another. We have had far too much of praying “for the Church throughout the world” and not nearly enough prayer “for the other congregations of Christians within the bounds of this parish.” We must not become parochial, but we must begin to think of the parish as an area where several groups of Christ’s people are at work, and not speak as if our particular congregation was the only Christian fellowship in existence. This we have been doing, and in this complacent egotism we have been leading our congreg- ations in prayer. Such specific and localised intercession should not be confined to World Days of Prayer, World Communion Sundays, the Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and so on. To engage in such occasional prayer is important, but it is relatively easy. That we should pray thus regularly and sincerely would not only be evidence of a real awareness of our unity as congregations in Christ, but it would be the simple discipline by which we could enter much more fully into that unity than the parishes have yet done. It is true that we inevitably pray for those whom we sincerely love. It is also true that we come to love those for whom we sincerely pray.