Being Buckeye Disciples pt. 2

So how’d we get here? The following historical narrative is an informal organizational and evolutionary gloss on the more formal version found at the end of the document. It tends to focus on the Ohio and Anglo-European stream of development and does not pretend to be a normative description of even every early experience of Restoration origins and growth.

After the initial 1804-1809 withdrawal/expulsion from the Presbyterian structure of the Stone and Campbell groups, Restoration congregations were linked by their origins and originators, either through the Campbells, Scott, Smith, or a few others. "Our congregation was founded by Alexander Campbell on a preaching tour," or "Samuel Rogers, one of the original Cane Ridge preachers, established this church with a series of evangelistic meetings" are typical statements at the head of congregational histories.

Ongoing connectedness, for the early group, was three-fold: through founder-preachers in their sermonizing (even non-resident evangelists tended to come back regularly and preach "the simple New Testament plea" or re-teach the initial "five finger exercise" as well as share stories of fellow new church starts), through publications ("Disciples don’t have bishops, they have editors" was a long time catch-phrase of our movement, and still is in the Independent/NACC wing) such as The Millenial Harbinger, Christian Messenger, or American Christian Review, and by means of "The Christian Hymnbook," published by A. Campbell at Bethany and re-released in successive editions that steadily incorporated works by W. Scott, B. W. Stone, and J. T. Johnson, further consolidating various branches of the Restoration Movement (aka "the Stone-Campbell movement").

In the pages of The Millenial Harbinger discussions were early and often about how to maintain ties of fellowship and encouragement, with annual meetings in a "district" or a "School of Preachers" on a semi-annual basis serving some of those purposes. Shortly these informal gatherings began to collect offerings for various causes heard abroad, and no doubt just as quickly appeals began to be made at these meetings. Proper distribution and administration was a concern, and officers were elected in a manner well described by DeTocqueville as common on the early frontier in the 1830’s.

By 1849 the pressures, emotional and logistical, had grown to form an official "American Christian Missionary Society," to join together the work of various district and state missionary funds. Individuals like the doctor/preacher James Turner Barclay had shown an interest in being sent to serve as missionaries, with Barclay arguing from the "scripture principle" that, as the early church, we should send our missionaries "first to Jerusalem, and then. . .to the ends of the earth." The outlay to support a mission in Jerusalem could only be underwritten by a number of churches together, and a large number of churches could, at that date, only be pulled and held together by Campbell, Stone having died a few years before.

The formal organization into a "missionary society" began a process of division that both preceded and followed the Civil War, while drawing no small measure of strength from the divisions causing and deriving from that conflict. The "scripture principle" mixed with the strong preference for radical independence and autonomy of the frontier areas to empower a loud challenge: "where do missionary societies appear in Holy Scripture?" Paul may have taken up offerings to carry to Jerusalem, and John may have encouraged mutual support and upbuilding, but "the question of societies" would plague the Restoration Movement into, well, the present day.

Various evangelists, publications, and institutions took up a variety of stances, but Campbell himself tried to finesse the question by a) not showing up in Cincinnati for the founding meeting of the ACMS in 1849 and b) accepting the presidency of the new organization. On this subject, as with slavery, the entire movement would likely have benefited from a strong, clear statement staking out a position for the movement and challenging opponents to account for themselves, but Campbell’s fear of outright division likely led, sadly, to greater division in the long run. A lesson here, perhaps. . . . .?

"Our" wing of Restoration Christianity is sometimes referenced as "the cooperatives," or "those defending the societies." Coordinated mission work is one of our distinctives within the history that produced us, but is so typical in the rest of Christendom as to provoke no notice at all, as is our use of musical instruments, which also led to separation in the era following the Civil War, considered by some a reaction against the North by the South, by others a screen on which the battle against "modernism" was projected, and by a few, a simple case of literal faithfulness or lack thereof to the words of the Bible.

The point I would like to make here, before moving on to illuminate some key aspects of our structure today with developments of the 1900’s, is that both early and late in our history, the Disciples of Christ have struggled with distinctive features that need explaining to show why they’re distinctive. Cooperative missionary societies and melodeon/pipe organ use in worship over a century ago, or open and weekly communion with acceptance of Christians from other traditions more recently, are elements of our history that we’re used to thinking of internally as defining, but that to the newcomer looks pretty much like how everybody else does things, so what’s the fuss? Let’s just move on. . .lightin’ out for the territories, headin’ for the frontier where we can leave controversy behind us, even as we pack those debates into our interior baggage.

In that same way, allow me to lightly skip across some other issues that were seen as titanic, fellowship-breaking controversies in their day, and simply note that from the American (and later United) Christian Missionary Society we saw (State Name Here, such as Ohio) Christian Missionary Societies around the US and Canada, working sometimes with and more often alongside equally well developed and staffed structures for the International Sunday School Society, plus officers and women’s relief society subgroups of the International Convention (predecessor of what we now call the General Assembly), boards and occasionally staff of conference grounds, and state/district ministerial associations. All these groups, plus agents for Disciples’ colleges and charitable institutions, were holding meetings, rallies, and doing fundraising in and among the congregations of the now well established Christian Churches.

Some states merged their missionary society and Sunday School association organization and staff fairly early in the 20th century, and Ohio was an "early adopter" in this respect. While ministerial associations tended to stay independent longer, the centrifugal force that slowly urged those groups toward an accountability relationship with the "state secretary" was the ministerial search process. In those days, pulpit committees would write, and later call, the nearest Disciples’ college president, their friends in the relief societies (proto-ICWF and/or Disciples’ Men), and most importantly the State Secretary for guidance and recommendations. With no national "database" to draw on, and no recommended procedure to follow, these informal networks were (were?!) the main way ministerial relocation took place. Obviously, these state secretaries, of whom our own Gaines Cook and Herald Monroe were exemplars, gained a large measure of informal but unmistakable influence over both church life and clergy, even in areas not related to the formal roles of their job as state secretary of the Ohio Christian Missionary Society.

More uniquely, Herald Monroe pulled into the growing nexus of influences for state society life the power of the camp meeting, the youth conference, the burgeoning camp movement post-WWI. Few state societies carried their assembly ground structure with them into the pre-Restructure fellowship they were creating (such as our neighbors in Indiana, who saw only debts and maintenance worries after the Depression neglect of such institutions as Bethany Park), but the energy of Chautauqua-type events and their own network of contacts carried into the Monroe years in a manner few regions took advantage of.

Is this "just" history? Obviously I don’t think so, and my point here is that these influences still affect the Christian Church in Ohio today. The sense, at least, of the independence of some districts, the semi-autonomous role of the Commission on Ministry, the influence of camp and conference ties in regional life, right down to the fact that many congregations still have a Sunday School Superintendent (or even Christian Ed department) with relative autonomy from the rest of the organizational structure, as well as the peculiar assumptions people bring to the regional staff and their given authority versus their assumed responsibility – all of these have specific ties to sources of authority and practices in pre-Restructure Disciple life. The roots of why congregations and pastors give no formal authority to regional staff, even when they ask them to intervene, but have very high expectations of regional impact, are not shallowly placed in modern trends against institutional structures, but have deep sources in how we put our current structure together.

We have a strong dose of what Harold Bloom calls in literary studies "the anxiety of influence," where we in the West, and especially America, want to show ourselves as both inheritors of distant tradition and as self-generating unique creations. The idea that we are direct beneficiaries of an immediately preceding tradition is something to be quashed or hidden: but by being unacknowledged, it controls us all the more. For a quick example, look at how, in a tradition whose deep roots are supposed to be in "New Testament faith and practice as our only rule," we go through paroxysms of angst over changing phrasing in the printed bulletin at most congregations. The fact that it might be largely lifted from Methodist or Presbyterian sources is not even a conversation starter, let alone a resolution for how to proceed. Influence must be consciously acknowledged in order to be deliberately shaped.

So, the main sources of regional influence historically derive from the state missionary society, the Sunday School association, and the camp & conference system. An overarching focus of authority from those three is the ability to recommend pastors to pulpits and vice versa. Today, with mission passion at an ebb, and Sunday School more a function than a vital source of fellowship and identity, the main flow of influence between the region and congregation is through ministerial placement and Camp Christian. When, due to factors largely beyond the staff’s control, the ministerial search function is a source of frustration and not of empowerment (fewer candidates to choose from, lower quality in the pool, new packets slowly forthcoming after the initial round), it isn’t surprising from an historical perspective that camp and conference (and to a lesser degree the women’s and men’s work) are the primary springs of regional vitality.

Another odd factor to note here is that as our regional presuppositions aren’t what they used to be, it is also the case that much of what once was controversial and somewhat exciting to be involved in – doing cooperative missions, introducing organs into worship, starting a Sunday school class -- is now mundane or defunct. Regional work, which was actually a theologically risqué area of church life less than a hundred years ago, is now mainstream, everyday work in a streambed whose sources are drying-up.

What do Christians in congregations look to regions for more recently? For that perspective, let me turn to a little personal history.
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Looking back to growing up between my home Disciples congregation and an independent Christian church in my mother’s hometown (Kansas IL, Z. T. Sweeney’s home church), somehow I learned through both that congregational life had particular purposes common to each, even though individual conversion was the only language I remember hearing. I’d try to put this clear but unspoken teaching into words thusly: "The Work of the church is to care for its members and manifest God’s love through charitable works and social action in Christ’s name." But if it was unspoken, where/how did that image come? How was it taught?

I knew myself as part of a congregation before I ever thought of myself as a Christian. That may be described as an experience unique to those born and raised in the church, but the reading and talking I’ve done both before and during this temporary covenant of futuring together tells me that most unchurched are looking for belonging before they take much interest in believing.

Belonging to the church family, I knew congregational life as a rhythmic cycle of setting up folding chairs and unwieldy tables, decorating the sanctuary and stowing away the last round of wreaths and banners, with worship services in between. Without worship, there would be no point to most of the other activities, but all of the potlucks and meetings (while we kids played in the nursery or colored in the library) and conversations in the parking lot were the location where I got my clearest picture of how church was more than building, that others like and unlike me were doing much the same in other places (but differently).

Perhaps it should have been (should be?) otherwise, but I recall little within worship itself that made an impact as to the reach and scope of Christendom beyond our own walls. I can affirm my home congregation’s effectiveness in communicating the mission and ministry of the Disciples of Christ, but it was through Sunday School and evening programs, in the newsletter and on bulletin boards.

The quotidian affairs of First Christian Church, Valparaiso, Indiana, were where I was most likely to encounter the "larger church," the "mission field," or "the Brotherhood." I’m sure that announcements or offering meditations touched on the Christian Church in Indiana or the Unified Promotion theme or Basic Mission Finance, but I can honestly report that I left for college without consciously hearing about any of that in worship, save a single dimly recalled missionary in the pulpit on a Sunday.

As of this date, I have only eight total years of personal experience in Ohio, but I pray you allow me the ethnographic ear of a pastor and the insights of a historian to claim that, heresy though it may be, it does not seem that Indiana and the Buckeye State, neighbors that they are geographically, are not significantly different. In fact, Henry Shaw went on to write "Hoosier Disciples," the still definitive history of that region, and made much the same point – at least as of the mid-1960’s. My memories kick in just after that, so. . .

Covenant, the bond initiated by God as a free and grace-filled gift to a lost and wandering people, was not a hard concept to understand when it was first introduced to me. As I said, I was made to feel part of a supportive and affirming community long before I had anything to contribute or offer, and well in advance of when it might have been obvious how I might respond to the gift of being made part of that covenant. Just as God to Abraham or Moses took the initiative in offering the relationship, and much as the Creator had no intrinsic need to be obligated to the creation, let alone to any individual created being, the congregation "named me and claimed me" and made me their own.

As my earliest memories of church life came out of the period right around "restructure," that contentious period of the late ‘60’s for the Disciples, I have a number of recollections around seeing posters and bulletin boards proclaiming our obligations to "the Brotherhood" in faithfulness and faithful giving, exhortations around the tables in Fellowship Hall but dimly understood to a child about our "sister congregations in Indiana and around the world," and "the sacred debt" owed to the missionaries who served in our name from Tibet to inner city Chicago. There were flyers and displays about Disciple-related colleges, projects for the youth group supporting NBA homes, and traveling speakers and choirs from other outposts of Discipledom (who often stayed at our house as they passed through).

Learning about the Disciples of Christ came through things we did and people we saw, not what we were told. On one level, I would like to think that this is a more ideal form of learning, but looking around me today, I do wonder just how well it worked. A preliminary thought: perhaps the object lessons needed some intentional grounding, not to replace but to reinforce the meaning behind the activity.

When a bit older, I got a clearer – or at least more specific – image of the wider church when serving on a pulpit committee, and meeting the first person I recall as a regional staffer (Jim Powell, for those curious about such things) when he came to meet with us about the ministerial search process. From Rev. Powell to y’all on the Futuring Task Force, my ongoing best sense of what it means to be part of the wider church has been through personal relationship: names and faces and overheard stories brought back from General Assemblies and CWF Workshops and State Youth Conventions about people.

What I hear today, in congregations I serve or pass through regularly, is a gravely attenuated sense of what it means to be part of the Christian Church in Ohio, because the relationships aren’t there. A few in each church go to all manner of events, and even tell stories about who they saw and what they heard, but most are only vaguely aware of faces and names they can associate with "the region." Mind you, they don’t mean full-time paid staff, they mean "other than you, Jeff, who represents the region?" Does the district president? The CCH rep in the pulpit? The state CYF officer visiting on a Sunday in a pew? The sense that one is "encountering the region" is limited, but does it have to be; how could many others appropriately embody the regional church? And how can most of those many responsibly teach the meaning of covenant relationship along with their ministry of presence, in harmony with the "preaching and teaching elder," the pastor?

But along with good teaching necessarily comes truth-telling.