Richard Brown has been editor of the Herald magazine since January 2007.

Discernment Processess and Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

Doctrine and Covenants 163 Commentary Series

The Future Beckons: Do Not Be Afraid

By Richard A. Brown

This is the second of twenty-four articles to appear in the Herald that will focus on Doctrine and Covenants Section 163. We encourage the church to use these commentaries as the starting point to engage in widespread conversation about important issues before the church.

Within a single week in June I attended two inspirational memorial services. The men were about ten years apart in age—late eighties and late seventies respectively. I do not think they knew each other, but they shared several characteristics. Each had a daughter I have known for years. Both men helped construct church buildings during their lifetimes. Each loved nature, tended gardens, and cared for animals. They were wellread and placed a high value on thinking and learning. They served in Melchisedec priesthood roles, including pastor. And both were happily married for decades to strong, intelligent, hardworking women of deep faith.

The wonderful truth is the Community of Christ exists today because of people just like those two married couples. Their generation has passed along—and strengthened—the traditions and heritage of this faith movement. The sad fact is that, having transferred congregational leadership roles to my own baby boomer generation, they are now dying in increasing numbers.

I was privileged to be asked to speak at the first memorial service. What I said about Jack could, I believe, be said about George, as well: His life embodied the Great Commandment spoken by Jesus—love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. God, family, church, career, and community were not separate compartments with easily definable boundaries. Those areas composed a unified whole, a life well lived, and an inheritance of goodness for all who knew him.

As is usually the case, on the drive home from the service I thought of one more thing I could have said: I do not know what heaven is like—none of us can with certainty, of course. But I can easily imagine the first thing my brother in Christ would say on entering heaven’s gates: “Lord, put me to work. I have been sitting long enough.”

We stand on the shoulders of spiritual giants in the Community of Christ. Since our beginnings as a faith movement in the 1820s, we have been a people on the borders of society—growing, building, dreaming, enduring. We have survived persecution, uprooting our newly settled communities repeatedly, grieving the assassination of our founding prophet-president in 1844, and dispersing widely after that tragic event in Nauvoo, Illinois. But eventually we reorganized and founded both a publishing house and a college. In time we resettled Jackson County, Missouri, made it the site of our international headquarters, and expanded our missionary efforts. Each location and era in which we proclaimed the “Restoration gospel of Jesus Christ” brought new cultural, language, and financial challenges.

Six years ago we responded to the impulse of the Holy Spirit and changed the name of the church. Today the Community of Christ is established in more than fifty nations of the world. We routinely translate the written word into at least a dozen languages. We could do more, of course, if we had more money. As President Steve Veazey pointed out at the closing service of World Conference, there is much good we could do—and feel called by God to do in abundance—if we adopt an attitude of generosity.

In response to his prophetic calling, President Veazey brought “Words of Counsel” to that Conference. That has happened many times before. We trust and hope it will happen again. But there was something different this time, I believe, and the church as a whole has already begun to be challenged with that difference.

Social scientists might well term what I think is happening in the church as a “tipping point.” That term originated with measuring scales: accurate weights placed on one side of a scale to balance a commodity on the other side. There comes a point in social and institutional development when the balance of influencing factors begins to tip. Unlike a measuring scale, there are many possible directions for the tipping. Once we set a direction, other forces come into play to speed up the process, often making it irreversible.

Section 163 is a big document, longer and more comprehensive than just about any other section in the Doctrine and Covenants. Each of its eleven paragraphs (and most have subparagraphs) introduce areas of importance for us as a body of Christ and a people of God. Sometimes in the past we have been guilty of approving new inspired documents at Conference time, inserting them into the Doctrine and Covenants, and moving on to other important challenges confronting us. This time is different.

As an international faith community we will engage in extended conversation with one another and, most especially, with the Holy Spirit to figure out just what God is calling us to be and do. There are many choices, many “right” answers. The key question, as posed in paragraph 10b, is to “discern and pursue what matters most for the journey ahead.” This idea of figuring out what God wants rather than what we want for the church is a hugely tough one for us, especially for my own baby boomer generation. Presbyterian pastor and author N. Graham Standish put it this way in his new book, Humble Leadership: Being Radically Open to God’s Guidance and Grace (Alban Institute, 2007):

People who want to maintain tradition at all costs often want to maintain those traditions from the past that make them feel safe and secure, and they react instinctively and angrily to anything that threatens their security. They resist change in a church because change means living in uncertainty and ambiguity, which are among the worst feelings these people can imagine….

It’s not just members trying to maintain traditions who can be closed to God. Those who want to get rid of traditions can be just as closed off to God. Sometimes those who want only new music, new orders of worship, and new practices can be just as closed to God because they want to create a church that serves them and their needs, not a church that focuses on what God is calling them to do. —Humble Leadership, p. 20

Our situation is daunting. We are trying to be an international church in increasingly pluralistic societies and cultures. We are called to be accepting, diverse, multilingual, egalitarian, and generous. We have begun to be more comfortable with our new name, but we do not yet fully understand what a blessing it can be and what God has in store for us. To top all this off, we still do not fit easily in any other religious tradition. We face what I will call a collection of “yets”:

• We are called to proclaim the “peace of Jesus Christ,” yet we are not a traditional peace church like the Quakers or Brethren.

• We are a deeply sacramental people who celebrate eight holy sacraments, yet we are not within the traditions of other Christian churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican) that also observe so many.

• We value the outward characteristics of a spiritual life, yet we are not within the broad stream of traditional holiness churches (such as those within historic Wesleyan movements).

• We have deep, lasting roots in the Latter Day Saint tradition, yet we do not self-identify as a “Mormon” church—and cringe when others make that connection.

• We uphold the congregation as the primary unit of the church, yet we are not a Congregationalist church.

• We can agree in principle with many of our Protestant sisters and brothers on the “priesthood of all believers,” yet at the same time we affirm our system of governance as a theocratic democracy led by the Holy Spirit through priesthood.

• We see ourselves as a Spirit-led community, yet we are not a Pentecostal church like the Assemblies of God.

Most of us in the Community of Christ try our best to balance multiple roles and responsibilities. Like my late friend Jack, we have God, family, church, career, and community all mixed up in our identities. I am a bivocational pastor, church employee, and editor of this magazine, a husband (my wife and I just celebrated our twenty-eighth anniversary), and the father of two young adults. On the same day as Jack’s memorial service, my neighbors across the street experienced a house fire. I am ashamed to admit I could not remember their names, even though they have lived there for four years.

Perhaps that is just a small sign of the busyness and complexity of my life. I rationalize that by adding: Who among us is not plagued by something similar? Now, put all of us together in the church, with all our combined busyness and complexity. Add in the ever-increasing pace of change in society and the dizzying advances in technology. Stir in the call to be pastoral, to evangelize, to pursue peace, to do justice, to give generously of time, talents, and finances. At the same time, remember those recent decades in the church in which we experienced division (even schism) and, often, heated disagreements (even rancor).

Section 163 calls us to stop, to listen to “the Voice,” and engage in an extended conversation about the future church God beckons us to become. Perhaps what will matter most for us baby boomers, in particular, is to prepare to hand over the leadership reins to those who currently are young adults. Or maybe it will be something else, depending on who and where we are. We will not know until we engage honestly, prayerfully, and humbly in this conversation. I am so glad paragraph one ends with the counsel: Do not be afraid.