SPE Program Spotlight
More than What Separates Us
In Feb. 2005, the Rev. Chris Tuttle, a young Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor in Greensboro, N.C., was driving up to the mountains of western North Carolina for a long weekend at Montreat, the Presbyterian retreat center. The farther he drove, the more excited and anxious he became. With each mile, he grew both more hopeful and more skeptical about what lay ahead.
What had he gotten himself into? Two of his classmates from Columbia Theological Seminary, the Revs. Thomas Daniel and Pen Peery, had invited him and seven other recent Columbia grads, all just a few years into pastoral ministry, to join them at Montreat. Unlike thousands of pastors before them, they wouldn’t be gathering at the noted retreat center for Bible study or worship—though those would be part of the weekend’s activities. Nor would they be meeting to sharpen their preaching skills or learn how to run a church building campaign or otherwise engage in continuing education sessions.
Instead, these 10 pastors were coming together to talk about the very things that were dividing and threatening to split the Presbyterian Church USA—indeed most Mainline denominations these days. Gay ordination and marriage. The nature and centrality of Scripture. The Lordship of Christ. Worship styles. On and on through a list of hot button issues.
But this wasn’t a meeting of like-minded pastors, getting together to plot strategy. Instead, these were pastors from both sides of the theological and political divide. Five liberals and five conservatives, they weren’t expecting to change one another’s minds. Instead, they were hoping simply to understand each other a little better and to find a way to stay in conversation despite their differences.
“It seemed like a nice idea, something that would be great if it worked,” recalls Tuttle. “But I couldn’t help but wonder if it actually would. I admit, I was a bit reluctant. If we were all going to be honest, this could be risky. And that would give anyone pause.”
As Tuttle describes in the accompanying article, “Hope in the Simple Things,” the weekend was a great success. As Tuttle had expected, the meeting had some tense moments filled with heated and impassioned discussion, but the pastors also found much in common—especially a deep commitment to be in the same church together.
“I realize that I don’t agree with Pen and Chris on most of these issues,” says Daniel, co-pastor at First Presbyterian in Evanston, Ill. “But I want to be a pastor in the same church with them because they are both a lot bigger and a lot more than just their position on an issue.”
In today’s climate, many church people, whatever their denomination, reduce others to a vote or a position “on the other side,” and consequently miss 95 percent of what others’ lives and theology are about, says Daniel.
“We have far more in common as members of the body of Christ than what separates us,” says Daniel. “ But we choose to focus on what separates us, and that is a problem. That is sin.”
Daniel had witnessed that “sin” up close in the fall of 2004, when he attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, meeting in Richmond, Va. As the proceedings unfolded, he saw and heard very little dialogue—a lot of talking and haranguing perhaps, but virtually no listening. Instead, partisan clusters of delegates repeatedly scurried off the floor to meet in strategy sessions, and then returned to do battle, no holds barred, with “the other side.”
“It was one of the most depressing things I had ever seen,” he recalls. “I thought ‘This is crazy. Why not just blow this up now?’ If this is the model for how we are supposed to get through these times, it’s not going to work.”
Meeting later for coffee with Peery, a seminary classmate serving as associate pastor of Second Presbyterian, Richmond, Daniel vented his concerns about the Assembly. As they talked, the two pastors, one conservative, one liberal, decided to broaden their conversation and hatched their proposal for the 2005 meeting at Montreat.
That initial meeting was completely independent, planned and carried out entirely by Daniel, Peery and the other pastors without sanction or support from any Presbyterian organization or other group. But soon after that first meeting, the group—now called Common Ground—received an important boost when it was invited to be part of the S3 Project, a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project at Columbia Seminary.
Hearing about the group’s first meeting from one of the pastors who had attended, Sarah Erickson, the S3 coordinator, encouraged the group to apply for a grant. Focused on self-directed peer learning, the S3 Project—short for Sabbath, Study and Service—has sponsored 34 such pastor peer groups since August 2003. To Erickson, Common Ground seemed an ideal candidate for a grant.
“We look for creative proposals in which pastors combine Sabbath rest, study and service in meaningful ways to sustain their ministry,” she says. “We look for proposals with integrity about what the participants are trying to accomplish.”
To Erickson, Common Ground clearly fit those requirements. The S3 Grants Advisory Committee, which reviews all project proposals, agreed and accepted Common Ground as one of nine new groups that began in Aug. 2005.
From its inception, the group has clearly helped sustain its members and their ministries despite their theological differences, she says. Although some Presbyterians—both liberal and conservative—have dismissed the Common Ground pastors as naïve, Erickson disagrees. Several members, including Tuttle and Peery, are the children of pastors and grew up seeing the church at its best and its worst, as only a “PK” can. They have no illusions about church.
“I don’t think they are being naïve,” she says. “They are being authentic. They are not trying to change the world, but trying to model an approach to being together in spite of their differences.”
In many ways, Daniel says, Common Ground is trying to reclaim a more Biblical way of working through disagreements, a process much like that outlined in Acts. Just as in the early church when it fought over issues such as baptizing Gentiles, that process requires prayer, patience, humility, openness, honesty and a willingness to speak the truth in love, says Daniel.
Since that initial meeting two years ago, Common Ground has held a second face-to-face gathering and is planning another this fall as well as a series of pulpit exchanges. In between the meetings, they hold monthly email discussions focused on a host of issues.
Both the face-to-face gatherings and the online discussions are structured so as to foster open and honest communication. In their meetings, for example, two pastors—one liberal and one conservative—are assigned beforehand to research and prepare a presentation together on a particular issue and then lead a group discussion. Afterwards, the two lead worship together.
Such conditions can radically change the nature of a discussion, making it much less likely to become a debate aimed at “scoring points” against an opponent, says Peery. With pastors of opposing viewpoints researching and preparing a discussion together, the purpose is not to devise the most powerful arguments and counter arguments. Instead, pastors learn to put themselves in the other’s place, delving deeply into their theology and hopefully, in the process, understanding better why both parties think the way they do.
In a culture that’s often more interested in being “right” than faithful, such an approach requires an extraordinary amount of humility.
“The thing that Presbyterians say is distinctive about what we believe is that God is sovereign, that God is God and we are not,” says Peery. “If you really believe that, you can have strong opinions but you have to leave room for the reality that you don’t know it all.”
Despite their theological differences, Common Ground has, as the name suggests, indeed found common ground, primarily in the issues with which all pastors struggle.
“We’re all realizing that whether left or right, we’re all caught up in the same mess,” says Tuttle. “We’re all starting out in ministry, struggling to find a sense of pastoral identity. We’re all trying to figure out how to balance work and family.”
Besides discussing the most controversial issues of the day, Common Ground members have also spent time talking about the nuts and bolts of pastoral ministry. Like most SPE peer groups, it has become a powerful source of support for members, helping them overcome the isolation of ministry.
“Nobody really understands what it means to be a pastor except another pastor,” says Peery. “You just feel alone sometimes. Nobody else can really get what it means to walk from a hospital room of a cancer patient into a Bible study, and then into an administrative board meeting. Nobody can understand that unless you are in the club.”
For Peery, Common Ground has reinvigorated his theological and intellectual curiosity, helping him to understand that his preparation for ministry didn’t end when he received his seminary degree.
“You go to seminary and you’ve been in school for ever and ever and you think that now you have the tools to do the work,” he says. “But this has made me realize that if I’m going to be out here doing the work, I’ve got a lot more I need to learn.”
Although none of the Common Ground members have changed their positions on the big issues, many say the experience has already changed the way they do ministry.
Peery says he now handles conflicts better in his church in Richmond, trying much harder than before to seek out and listen to those on the other side of an issue. Likewise, Tuttle says he is now better able to understand some of his church members who might disagree with him on various issues.
“My hope is that my congregation and I are both more willing to listen to each other than we might have thought,” Tuttle says. “I’ve discovered that there is wiggle room for grace to be at work.”
For Daniel, Common Ground has helped him to “engage the nuances” of faith, theology and scripture and to be a little more comfortable living at times in the gray areas.
“That’s why human beings want to make things black and white,” he says. “That’s why we insist on being right rather than faithful. Faithful often means wandering in the wilderness, rather than making a snap judgment. Have I changed my vote on these issues? No, but it has changed the way I approach them, and that has been invaluable.”
Despite the benefits that have already come from being in Common Ground, members understand that, at some point, they may find they can no longer live with the nuances. In a culture of polarization, both within and outside the church, powerful forces and pressures are working to drive people apart, they say. At some point, presumably, issues will be resolved. Votes will be taken. Choices will have to be made.
The group members live with the tension of working to find common ground without surrendering their own distinctiveness and principles. They wrestle with the risk of sacrificing important positions and principles merely for the sake of getting along with one another.
“That’s the danger of working with a group like ours,” says Peery. “We all relate to that. But the reason this process is good is because, if we can stay in conversation and listen to where the Spirit is calling the church, then maybe the Spirit will move us in places where we don’t want and never expected to go.”
Trusting in the Spirit, even for pastors, is difficult, he says.
“Being Spirit-led means you really have to stay open and listen. You can make plans and say what you think, but ultimately, you listen and wait and go where the Spirit leads you. And that’s a hard thing to trust if you’re like me and a lot of other pastors and you enjoy knowing everything and being in control and planning ahead.”
