By Steve Weatherbe

A VICTORIA church drew a star-studded cast to its eighth annual Epiphany celebration.

Presenters included nature painter Robert Bateman; sociologist of religion Reg Bibby; church futurist Leonard Sweet; several former United Church of Canada moderators; and a ‘Christian Buddhist’ eco-theologian from Korea.

An estimated 325 people came to Metropolitan United Church for the full Epiphany Explorations 2010 event, held January 21 – 25; another 225 dropped in for single sessions. They came from as far away as Wales, Nova Scotia and Texas.

Bibby led off with bad news for mainline Protestant churches, while Sweet followed up with hope.

Metropolitan United pastor Allan Saunders said Bibby’s polling indicated the mainline churches would continue to shrink – because it showed the children of current members with a very low rate of identification with the church.

“It was especially bad for the United Church,” said Saunders. “Something like one of five or one in 10 United Church teenagers identified themselves as United Church.”

Conservative Protestant churches are holding their own, Bibby reported, because of a high rate of youth retention.

Sweet’s contribution was enthusiastically applauded by the senior pastor from Victoria’s Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, Ron Michalski, and his church’s youth pastor, Andy Moore.

Sweet emphasized that our internet culture is highly individualized and fragmented. “It is a culture,” said Moore, “that is begging for relationships.”

Michalski added: “Sweet said we’ve been like a wheel with our attention turned toward the hub. But we need to keep one hand in, and reach one hand out to the culture.”

‘Epiphany,’ from page 1

Sweet put forward some thought provoking concepts: TGIF (representing Twitter, Google, Interface and Facebook), which gave some insight into the generation of Canadians born into the computerized world; and MRI (missional, relational and incarnational), delineating what the church needs to become to deal with that world.

“The church has stopped what it did in the beginning , which was to go out  and teach,” explained Moore.

“Now we stay and try to get people to come to us where we are, with a [set of] propositions or dogmas.”

Continue article >>

Chung Hyun Kyung, a theology professor at Union Theological College at Columbia University in New York, spoke on ‘Learning from Muslim Women about Making Peace.’

Chung visited 17 countries to arrive at her thesis, which she calls ‘Rainbow Islam.’ “I interviewed 200 women, and I found 200 different versions,” she explained. The first lesson to Christian women wanting to reach out to Muslim women: “Never generalize.” The second is: “Leave your prejudices behind”; and the third is: “Meet them with an open mind.”

Muslim women believe Christians see them as downtrodden and oppressed, said Chung. “But the women I talked to did not see themselves in those terms. They see themselves as better off than women in North America.”

The Qur’an, she maintained, “commands they be treated with respect. They have property rights. They have the right to divorce if they are not given sexual pleasure by their husbands. They have a deep pride in their faith.”

In an interview, Chung described herself as a third generation Christian who, since her Presbyterian childhood in South Korea, has been exploring Buddhism.

“Presbyterian Christianity is full of words,” she said. “Through Eastern mysticism, I was at last able to appreciate Christian mysticism: the Desert Fathers, Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen.”

Jonathan Dawn, a professor of intercultural studies at Trinity Western University in Langley, commended Chung’s observations about reaching out to Muslim women.

“I think she’s right,” he told BCCN. “I think people of all faiths tend to think of each other in terms of stereotypes from the media, until they meet face to face.

In Muslim countries, they may think Christian women are loose – if they assume all those from Western cultures are Christian, and also think Baywatch accurately depicts Western women.”

Commenting on Chung’s acceptance of two belief systems, he said this reflects a response one finds in many religions, as globalization throws believers together.

“You can have an effort to draw the lines in the sand, [passing laws] making it illegal to convert” to another religion. “Or you have this blurring of differences, in the naïve belief that all religions are really the same.”

Pastor Saunders said the eclectic roster of presenters is First Metropolitan’s own way to reach out to the community.

March 2010