Calling

Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+

University Chaplain for Community Life
Marsh Chapel, Boston University

LEAVE COMMENTS FOR THIS POST AT BOTTOM OF PAGE

October 11, 2010

Movement Calls to Movement

Live Blogging from our 2010 Calling Congregations Conference

 “Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts” –Psalm 42: 7 

Following the FTE Calling Congregations Conference yesterday I departed the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, took the MARTA train downtown and then walked the better part of a mile to Morehouse College to join the Student Christian Movement-USA Launch Event.  I arrived just in time for a business meeting.  Oh joy!  Reading and discussing bylaws did not seem a terribly propitious start to the endeavor of reigniting a movement that died out in the US over forty years ago.  Thankfully that part of the event drew to a close and we went to dinner.

I decided it was time to practice what FTE had preached at the Calling Congregations Conference.  I spent the dinner hour and much of the rest of the evening listening deeply to the stories of the young adults who have been called together to bring the Student Christian Movement back to life in the US.  They spoke of their passion for ecumenical engagement and social justice, and of their rooting and grounding in worship, scripture study, and theological reflection.  Ranging from a Roman Catholic campus minister in Berkeley, California to a Mennonite seminarian from Elkhart, Indiana to a United Methodist first-year undergraduate from the Paine College, and many more, their stories are powerful testimony of the call of God to the way of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit in our time. 

It was a bit ironic to go from a conference seeking to identify young people who are being called by God to an event made up entirely of young people who are being called by God.  I gave serious thought to picking up the phone, calling FTE and saying, “I found them!  They’re just down the street at Morehouse!” (I decided to write this blog post instead).

How are these movements connected?  One is a rather well funded and institutionally developed organization made up mostly of professional clergy with the mission of calling young leaders, renewing the church, and changing the world.  The other is a penniless and ragtag group of undergraduates, seminarians and young ministers pursuing the call of God on their lives to renew the church and change the world.  Clearly, the connection is in their emphasis on call, renewal and change more than on funding and organization.

These two movements need each other.  Student Christian Movements across the globe are filled with young people who are deeply engaged in the work of renewing the church and changing the world and have been since the early years of the twentieth century.  Sadly, the Student Christian Movement in the United States died out in 1968 and it is only now in 2010 that the movement is getting back underway.  SCM-USA needs the gifts and skills and talents and wisdom that FTE has cultivated in the decades since its inception in 1954 if it is going to be successful in identifying how God is calling them to renew the church and which sorts of change God is calling them to bring about in the world.  Not to mention access to funding and institutional stability.

On the flip side, FTE needs the Student Christian Movement.  SCM-USA is connected to Student Christian Movements across the globe that have cultivated their own body of wisdom about renewing the church and changing the world.  SCM chapters already in place on several campuses around the US, and several others in development, will be magnets for young adults who are being called to this work.  Furthermore, the SCM is already practicing what FTE preaches in their VocationCARE program: sharing of stories, deep listening and theological reflection.

It is in VocationCARE that FTE and SCM-USA could find their most concrete connection.  While the Student Christian Movement naturally carves out a space for itself, asks self-awakening questions, reflects theologically, and explores, establishes and enacts ministry opportunities, their ways of doing so are not nearly as carefully cultivated and systematically set out as FTE has been able to develop.  On the other hand, if FTE wants to see the VocationCARE model take root in congregations around the country, then there is no better way than by inculcating it in a burgeoning movement on the brink of deployment, full of passion and commitment, and deeply aware of the call God has offered them.

There could be no more appropriate place to launch the Student Christian Movement than at Morehouse College with its deep connection to Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.  There could have been no more appropriate place to hold the FTE Leaders in Ministry Conference last June than at Boston University with its deep connection to Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.  In Thurman we find a Christian leader who skillfully identified, ignited and nurtured the call of God in the lives of young people.  In King we have a young Christian leader in whom the call of God was skillfully identified, ignited and nurtured by Thurman and other members of the Christian community.  And has anyone renewed the church or changed the world as much as Thurman and King?  FTE and SCM-USA are poised to fulfill the mission to which God has called them: to call young leaders, renew the church and change the world.  Movement calls to movement.  Will we answer the call?