Pastors

The One and the Many

Ministry that’s clearly Christian in a multi-faith world.

We now minister in a multi-faith society. Our congregants are living and working in a multi-faith world.

Our congregants of Asian-American heritage may very well attend funeral services of Buddhist family members where incense is burned.

Our church members will probably be asked during a coffee break what they make of the Dalai Lama as a spiritual guide, or what they think of Islam.

Other parishioners might be enrolled in yoga classes or may have close Mormon friends. Our church members need to know how to talk about and interact constructively with those of other faith traditions.

What does it mean to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength" among people who don't acknowledge him as God? What does it mean to "love your neighbor as yourself" when your neighbor's religion is so different from your own?

While it's important to teach the biblical truth of the Great Commandments, it's also important to lead by example in showing how to obey them. Those of us in Christian leadership can be examples of a living faith and love for neighbor in a diverse, multi-faith society. We do that by being gracious and open-handed toward those of other religions while remaining Christ-centered and rooted in biblical truth.

Sometimes we have to seek out relationships with those of other faiths; other times we simply have to respond warmly when they come to us.

Finding Inter-Faith Friendships

I invited the president of a mosque to my world religions class this past autumn, and he told us that the religious tradition his Muslim community has the hardest time connecting with is evangelical Christianity. In his experience, most evangelicals have already made up their minds about Islam and aren't interested in learning about it. By and large, he found evangelicals to be suspicious of Islam and closed to meaningful dialogue.

A few weeks after his time with that class, he invited me to a gathering marking his mosque's 25th anniversary. There he introduced me to the gathering as a friend and dialogue partner. He told this diverse audience how difficult it is to find evangelicals who are interested in engaging Muslims in an open manner.

The biblical claim to love Jesus entails loving my diverse neighbors as myself.

Along with other faith leaders from various traditions at the celebration, I shared my sincere appreciation for the wonderful work the Muslims of his tradition have done locally, regionally, and nationally. Among other things, they have cultivated the common good by promoting peace, renouncing terror, and increasing understanding about the essential teachings of Islam.

Not once have I been pressured to leave my Christian convictions at the door when engaging this Muslim and his community. During the celebration at the mosque that day, I centered my reflections on Jesus' instruction to love one's neighbors as oneself and to reach out to them, just as Jesus did, and as illustrated in his story of the Samaritan of extraordinary mercy in Luke 10.

In addition to this account, I often think of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4. Jesus did not allow the religious and cultural divisions between Jews and Samaritans to keep him from reaching out to her compassionately and with the good news.

While there is not always the opportunity to make a full gospel presentation in word in such occasions, we can always point out (and demonstrate) that the biblical claim to love Jesus entails loving my diverse neighbors as myself.

Moreover, as the beneficiary of these Muslims' neighborliness over the years, I want to demonstrate neighborliness toward them.

I continue to look for ways in which we can work together as Muslim and Christians in the public square, including how we might partner to care for Muslim refugees and recent Muslim immigrants.

I have been involved in similar endeavors for many years in Portland, Oregon, where I teach and minister. In addition to my partnership with the Muslim community, I co-lead initiatives with a Zen Buddhist priest where Christians join Buddhists for faith dialogues over meals. There we share with one another our respective convictions rather than minimize them. Of course, we do so graciously. Still, I have found that avoiding meaningful dialogue with one's religiously diverse neighbors does not help those I am mentoring come to terms with how to express and live out their faith in an increasingly multi-faith world.

If anything, by modeling biblical convictions and Christian love in the context of interreligious conversation, those I mentor are better prepared to engage their increasingly multi-faith world in faithful witness to Christ.

Joining Community-Wide Events

Another way pastors can model the faith in a multi-faith context is by participating in community memorial services for those who have been the victims of tornados, floods, bombings, or shootings. Such events in our cities and towns will likely include representatives from a variety of religions.

How should pastors respond to an invitation to lead in such a service? In view of occasions similar to the interfaith memorial service held after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, how might you respond?

We can learn a lot from chaplains. Chaplains minister to diverse religious and spiritual communities in various settings, including military bases, hospitals, and prisons. Evangelical military chaplains can offer pastors great wisdom on how to approach participation in such services with sensitivity and biblical discernment.

Take, for example, the 9/11 multi-faith memorial service that Chaplain Kenneth W. Bush of the United States Army helped coordinate when he was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany. Bush, who served as a pastor before becoming a chaplain, says that serving as a military chaplain is often like being a missionary in another country. Ken served as the military chaplain for the entire Army community there in Heidelberg.

After 9/11 the memorial service had to be ecumenical and involve everyone since it was a community's response to a national tragedy. It was also very personal in that one of the generals who died in the Pentagon on 9/11 had been involved with the Heidelberg congregation a few years before.

Based on Chaplain Bush's experiences and my own reflections, here are some things to keep in mind when participating in such an event.

Don't avoid involvement or compromise your faith. Be collaborative. While every church has the right to hold its own service, the whole community needs the opportunity to grieve together. Avoiding involvement is not the solution to responding to a tragedy that impacts the whole community. Nor is the other extreme—compromising your faith where you blend yours with all the other participants. You cannot effectively minister as a representative of your particular faith community to the community as a whole if you are not present or if you do not speak clearly from your tradition's vantage point.

Being collaborative means several things.

If you are helping to plan a memorial service, provide opportunities for religious leaders from various traditions, including your own, to offer reflections and to pray. Remember that your religious freedoms depend on theirs. Chaplain Bush made sure that he provided everyone in his community the freedom of religion, including the opportunity for other faith leaders to be present and participate in the 9/11 memorial service.

Also, encourage people to speak and pray in accordance with their own tradition, while being sensitive to many groups' concerns over proselytism. Don't speak and pray for someone else. Allow each representative to speak and pray in their own way. Discernment is needed to determine how to pray in a given context. For example, Bush always seeks to discern if it is appropriate in a given occasion to close his prayer by invoking Jesus' name. Sometimes he prays in Jesus' name, though there is no indication from Scripture or the prayers of Jesus that he must do so.

Be clear and winsome as you make sure everyone knows the ground rules. The service is intended to bring comfort, healing, and reconciliation, not to engender debate or denunciation of other faith traditions. Everyone needs to agree to this intent and know their roles.

Participate humbly and humanely, speaking from the common ground of shared grief to comfort all who are gathered there to mourn. It's counterproductive, for instance, to stereotype all Muslims in negative and dehumanizing terms. According to the Public Religion Research Institute's survey, What it Means to be American: Attitudes towards Increasing Diversity in America Ten Years after 9/11, "Nearly 6-in-10 white evangelical Protestants believe the values of Islam are at odds with American values, but majorities of Catholics and religiously unaffiliated Americans disagree." Chaplain Bush saw the Muslim military personnel mourning with him—all of them grieving, suffering, and confused. This experience was a leveler. He told me that in North American we often assume that not being self-sufficient at every turn is a sin or part of our fallen condition. Instead, we should see that we all share the need for others, including those of diverse religious traditions, and we all grieve similarly when experiencing tragedies. How can it be otherwise when we all share in the image of God? For Bush, this is one place where we find common ground on which to build.

Chaplain Bush shared with me that he longs for everyone to come to know Christ, but he has to guard against sharing Christ in a coercive way or in a manner that denies people's rights as citizens and as human beings. So how can we bear witness to Christ when participating in such multi-faith memorial gatherings?

Simply being present, participating, and sharing in the grief of the community are profound forms of witness to Christ's care and compassion. We can "weep with those who weep" and comfort those who mourn. Still, there is more that can be said.

Take for example Billy Graham's message offered at the 9/11 service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., just days after the tragedy. He shared how his distinctively Christian faith addresses such horrific events and provides hope.

Dr. Graham did not coercively tell the mourners gathered at the cathedral or those watching on television that they needed to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved. Instead of turning the memorial service into an evangelistic crusade where he prescribed his faith to those of other paths and traditions, he spoke descriptively as a Christian and set forth clearly how it is that biblical Christianity approaches such tragedies in view of God's work in Christ.

"Here in this majestic National Cathedral," he said, "we see all around us the symbols of the Cross. For the Christian, I'm speaking for the Christian now, the Cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering, for he took them upon himself in the person of Jesus Christ our sins and our suffering. And from the Cross, God declares, 'I love you. I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pains that you feel. But I love you.'"

In this way we speak to the common grief of all mourners at such a gathering from the standpoint of your distinctively Christian hope.

We do so in a descriptive rather than prescriptive manner. God provides other opportunities for direct evangelistic confrontation. Offering hope and love in these settings highlights your concern for those attending in their grief and will reflect well on Christ's care for them. As the Apostle Peter said, we should always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us, and always to do so with gentleness and respect (1 Pet. 3:15).

Multi-Faiths in Our Congregation

It's not only society at large that is evolving religiously. People in our own congregations come increasingly from various faith traditions and may still hold dear some of the teachings and practices of these traditions. It is important to invite people from such diverse backgrounds in your churches to center their thoughts and imaginations on Christ. That's more gracious than to put up boundaries that deny them entrance into the church until they believe the way you do.

Take, for example, the ministry of E. Jill Riley, pastor of Navigate, an Evangelical Covenant Church in Billings, Montana. Navigate began with a passion for people who do not have a church, with artists at the center of their focus. Currently, she said, they have "Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, atheists, skeptics and naysayers" in their midst, indigenous religion practitioners, and those from traditional Christian groups such as Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. The community includes "Gay and Straight, Filipinos, Koreans (Jill is Korean), black, Samoan, Latino, and white." All this in Billings, Montana!

Riley says that Navigate holds the Bible as the centering point for all conversations, not as a divider or boundary marker. As pastor, she invites people to express their own theology, beliefs, and questions, exposing all views including her own to the light of Scripture. She is encouraged as lives are being transformed and people turn their faces toward Jesus, as revealed in Christian Scripture.

Hospitality to the Stranger

At times throughout history, Christians have been known for being hospitable rather than hostile to people of other faiths. I know of evangelical Army chaplains who purchased with their own money dates and Gatorade to share with Muslim soldiers in training exercises with American forces under the Texas sun during the month of Ramadan. The Muslims found these items a welcome relief from the 100-degree temperatures when they broke the fast at the close of the day.

These chaplains called to mind Leviticus 19:34: "The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." These chaplains did not use such acts of hospitality as a form of manipulation to try and convert the Muslims. However, their hospitality demonstrated their own conversion to Christ.

Being Good Neighbors, Together

Christian congregations can also partner together with diverse religious communities on community projects. Take for example the developing partnership of the 3,000-member NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, with the Muslim community in his region. NorthWood is a church committed to sharing the good news of Jesus and loving its neighbors.

Pastor Bob Roberts and his Muslim neighbors seek to build friendships of mutual trust and to work together in service to the community, including such things as remodeling homes and renovating a baseball field. Their collaborative efforts also include cooking clubs, where those from different cultures share recipes. Far from watering down the faith, this evangelical minister believes such collaborative efforts have strengthened his faith and benefitted the Christian community's witness.

Paul Louis Metzger is professor of theology and director of The Institute for the Theology of Culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Connecting Christ: How to Discuss Jesus in a World of Diverse Paths (Thomas Nelson, 2012) and the blog, Uncommon God, Common Good.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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