Monday, August 27, 2007

How Ecumenical Are You?


I would like some DTS student/alumni insight on a question I keep asking myself: How ecumenical is too ecumenical?

The question has implications for a personal interest for me of missions. To make the question more pragmatic:

When do you work within an established church in world missions, and when do you go outside the church and compete with it?

Do you co-operate with other Protestant Churches (such as the Anglican church of Nigeria that is very evangelical? Is it different with a dying church such as the Lutheran state church of Sweden?)?

What about there "other" Christian branches of Orthodoxy and Catholicism? Should the Greek Orthodox become Protestants, or evangelical Orthodox?

Or is ecclesiology rather unimportant and one just evangelizes and lets the person figure out where to go?

1 comment:

M. Jay Bennett said...

I think these are very complicated issues with no easy answers.

How ecumenical is too ecumenical?

I would say when the fundamentals have been compromised. But that only reframes the question.

Then the question becomes: what are the fundamentals?

I would answer:

(1) The existence of God
(2) The deity of Jesus Christ
(3) The atoning work of Christ
(4) Salvation by grace through faith without any fallen human merit