WORKING GROUP DESCRIPTIONS

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Most of the work on the conference theme is done in Working Groups, to which full members are expected to contribute a paper. Further focus of the general call is given in each Working Group description below:

1. Biblical Studies
Conveners: Cheryl B. Anderson & Bruce Birch
The themes of the call for the Twelth Institute (Ecclesiology, Mission, and Vocation) are threaded throughout both testaments of our scripture. This working group welcomes papers that fall within any of four themes that we will use to organize our work: 1) calling and vocation; 2) formation and roles of leadership; 3) the character and formation of God’s people; 4) the mission of God’s people. The latter two themes focus on the corporate community of faith, while the former two focus on individual calling and leadership within the community. We ask that each paper focus on a specific text or group of texts rather than ranging broadly in a thematic way.

2. Wesley Studies and Early Methodism
Conveners: Ted Campbell & Richard Heitzenrater
The Wesleyan heritage has manifested through its long history a number of fluctuating visions of how the church should relate to the world, from its self-identity as a counter-cultural movement to its nineteenth-century identity as an accommodating institution. The trilogy of subjects in the subtitle of this Institute (Ecclesiology, Mission, and Vocation) also offer a challenge for Methodists, who began as a mission movement within a church and have had trouble developing a coherent ecclesiology to match their missional and vocational impulses. The writings of the Wesleys (Samuel, Susanna, John, Charles, and Samuel Jr.) provide not only a variety of ways of perceiving the Christ/culture relationship but also a number of approaches to resolving specific problems within particular cultural contexts. This working group will focus on the writings of the Wesley family in the context of the eighteenth-century culture to search for principles and practices that can be appropriated within a variety of cultural settings in our own day. In other words, we will examine our heritage to help us discern the charge we still “have to keep,” and to discover how we presently intend “to do our Master’s will.”

3. History and Development of Methodism (post-Wesley)
Conveners: Margaret Jones & Douglas Strong
The desire to “serve the present age” may be regarded as fundamental to Methodism. It has received very different expressions in varying social and cultural contexts. A recurring theme in Methodist history is the tension between acknowledgment of, and co-operation with, the prevenient grace of God at work in the cultural milieu and the necessity of preserving a prophetic stance over against that same milieu. This tension has often played itself out historically in the life of the church and in the church’s mission. Historical reflection on such themes, while retaining all its integrity as a field of study, may become in its turn a means of serving our own “present age.”

4. Systematic Theology
Conveners: Craig Keen & Sarah Lancaster
The Systematic Theology working group will attend to the ecclesiological significance and broader theological ramifications of the calling and mission of the church, which the Creed of Nicea describes not only as “one, holy, catholic,” but also as “apostolic.” We ask in particular that members of this working group consider the Great Commission that closes the Gospel of Matthew. We also ask that members consider the connectedness of Methodist bodies to one another and to the larger church.
The specific topics and issues to which the Systematic Theology working group will devote itself will depend, of course, upon its members’ interests. However, the conveners ask that attention be paid at least initially to some of these questions: To what extent are the church and the Holy Spirit to be understood together? What sets the church off as “odd” in relation to other societies? How should the church be involved in political and economic action, such as global capitalism or war? How are the marks of the church to be understood? What is the role of the dissenting voice within the church, especially when that voice corresponds to voices not widely considered to be those of the church? How does ecclesiology affect understanding and practice of liturgy and sacraments, for instance in the connection between baptism and Eucharist or between baptism and confirmation? What does an understanding of the nature and mission of the church mean for ordering ministry (bishops, elders, deacons) or for distinguishing clergy and laity? To what extent does a congregation that includes children and the mentally “handicapped” call into question soteriologies based on adult consciousness and decision? Is there salvation outside the church? How might the Wesleyan notion of “sanctification” affect ecclesiology, for instance as a body which brings together faith and works and in which members develop social virtues? What might be a theological understanding of “membership,” in a congregation, conference, or denomination, especially in relation to the universal church? How might we work out a doctrine of the Trinity that prioritizes mission, particularly in a pluralistic world? What is the relation between the classic theological notions of the church, on the one hand, and the modern notion of “religion,” on the other? How is it possible to engage in evangelism without precluding the “other”? How is it that the church as a social body functions as a means of the grace that yields faith in the lives of particular people? What is the relation between the doctrinal memory of the church and the hope of its questioning members? Contributions from many disciplines and spheres of experience will be relevant to the group’s work.

5. Mission and Evangelism
Conveners: W. Stephen Gunter & Rui de Souza Josgrilberg
This group will seek to explore particular insights from the Methodist traditions that call the church to participate in God’s redemptive mission in the world as faithful messengers of the gospel. We will do this first by checking our ecclesiological, missional and vocational bearings. This is always a salutary exercise, but today it has become a matter of some urgency. The inculturation of the gospel (announcing good news for the world as we walk with Christ in the world) has too often become an enculturation (allowing our various contexts to shape the gospel and govern the church).
Papers are especially invited on two aspects of enculturation to which Protestantism and thence Methodism are particularly prone: a provincial ecclesiocentrism that usurps the mission of God, and an anthropocentrism that reduces the dynamic of evangelism to personal experience. Close to a generation ago these were identified respectively for the American church by Orlando Costas in Christ Outside the Gate (1982), and by Philip Lee in Against the Protestant Gnostics (1987). In seeking theological course corrections from our Wesleyan heritage for both of these miscalculations, the group will encourage contrasting contextual explorations from colleagues representing the whole of world Methodism.
Lastly, we will seek to plot fresh courses for participation in the mission of God and faithfulness in announcing the coming Reign of God. We hope that our time together can provide some trustworthy compass headings.

6. Ethics, Economics and Globalization
Conveners: Ted Jennings, Néstor Míguez, & Jong-Chun Park
We live in a world dominated by what Hardt and Negri define as “Empire, characterized by a complex and multilayered system composed of economic neo-liberalism (accelerated through the effects of consumer capitalism and speculative, financial capital), of US military hegemony, and a culture industry that seems to reduce all particular cultures to interchangeable components.” In his own day Wesley was fiercely critical both of Spanish colonialism and emergent British imperialism. What perspectives can contemporary Wesleyan thinkers bring to bear in the analysis of our contemporary global situation and in offering proposals for transformation?

7. Christian Formation
Conveners: Michael Nausner & Angela Shier-Jones
How are Christians enabled to discern and fulfill their calling to serve the present age? This working group is keen to explore how Christians become disciples in a world challenged by different forms of globalization, religious plurality, and increasing fragmentation and secularization. In such a situation, how can Christians meaningfully be formed in their faith through the discipline of the church to serve God in the world? John Wesley believed that the Rules of the Societies were instrumental in the success of the Methodist movement in meeting the needs of his time—what tools do Methodists have at hand today to serve the need of our time?
The working group invites papers around such questions as: What sort of “methodical” rule of life will help Methodists to face the challenges of modern Christian discipleship? What role does church discipline play in Christian formation and vocational discernment? What Church practices and/or structures best serve the missiological imperative of this present age—and how do we discern them? What church/community pastoral practices will create or sustain a community equipped to meet today’s challenges? What forms of ministry does this age demand?

8. Science, Technology, and Public Policy
Conveners: Robin Lovin & David Wilkinson
Science and technology are today reshaping global society as profoundly as the Industrial Revolution reshaped the world of Methodism’s origins. Our ministry must understand the new hopes and responsibilities that are opening before us, even as it defends persons against scientific abuse and technological exploitation. Our theology must teach us to receive human inventiveness as God’s gift and to rejoice in the order and beauty of a universe that exceeds our comprehension and defies subordination to human purposes. The church’s mission and vocation in a world reshaped by science and technology will confront old questions in new ways: What is the form and function of the church in a technological society? How do these changes affect the church’s institutional life and mission, especially beyond the local congregation? How do we “equip the saints” for this new world? What sorts of scientific knowledge and technological virtues are required of Christians in all vocations? What does it mean to see careers in science and technology as Christian vocation? What help can we offer to those who face the hard decisions that accompany greater knowledge, and what is our ministry among those who are adversely affected by social, economic, and environmental changes? What is our public witness to existing governments and to the agencies of an emerging world order? How do we stand against those movements within our culture which would devalue or demonize science and technology?

9. Worship and Spirituality
Conveners: Robert Gribben & Karen Westerfield Tucker
The terms “liturgy” and “worship” (Gottesdienst) are connected intrinsically with “service”: God’s service to us; our service to God; our service to others in God’s name. These multiple meanings of service will be explored by the examination of past and present liturgical—and more broadly spiritual—practices and theological reflections. How did the Wesleys address their age through liturgy and paraliturgy, song, other spiritual disciplines, and the selection of sacred spaces—and might their work serve as a paradigm in our present age? How did subsequent Methodists/Wesleyans address service to the present age liturgically? Do current ritual, liturgical, musical, and spatial expressions—those officially sanctioned and those locally created—speak appropriately and faithfully to the present age? What criteria have been (and perhaps should be) established for evaluating traditional and contemporary liturgical forms? Should there be limits to liturgical enculturation and localization in a denominational family that prides itself on “connection”?

10. Ecumenism & Other Faiths
Conveners: Geoffrey Wainwright & Gillian Kingston
This working group will welcome papers related to the following clusters of questions: 1) What are the theological and practical implications of ecumenism as both “exchange of ideas” and “exchange of gifts,” as proposed in the Seoul Report (2006) of the dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church (“The Grace Given You In Christ”)? 2) It is expected that, at Seoul in July 2006, the WMC and its member churches will associate with the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification of 1999. What will be appropriate ways for implementing the Official Common Affirmation: “Building on their shared affirmation of basic truths of the doctrine of justification, the three parties commit themselves to strive together for the deepening of their common understanding of justification in theological study, teaching and preaching. The present achievement and commitment are viewed by Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists as part of their pursuit of the full communion and common witness to the world which is the will of Christ for all Christians”? 3) What would be the likely implications for ecumenism of the shifts in the demography and modes of Christianity forecast by Philip Jenkins in his book The Next Christendom (2002)? 4) What are the grounds for discerning an incipient and impending “clash of civilizations” at global level? How far does “religion” enter into such a clash? What are the implications for “inter-faith relations”? What issues are raised for “a Christian theology of religion[s]”?