Rev. Dr. Laurinda Hafner, a UCC pastor, tells this story: Bishop John Shelby Spong, the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, spent a month with us at the church as part of our Theologian in Residence Program. One evening he was speaking about the United Church of Christ and said, The vocation of the United Church of Christ is to walk the theological frontier and to confront and eradicate those prejudices based on stereotypical definitions of the past and frequently undergirded by words of sacred scripture. To fulfill this vocation, your denomination has to be free of the theological answers of yesterday. But there is a price to be paid for this kind of leadership, and faithfulness to this vocation requires that you are willing to pay it. And heres the part I love: No church that forces engagement with new thinking will ever appeal to the masses. No church committed to social justice will ever be a majority denomination. You should not aspire to serve those idols. Your call is to be a faithful church, a witnessing church. The entire Christian world benefits from your fulfilling this vocation and I for one admire you greatly.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:45:00 +0000
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