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The Chicago Agreement and Local Churches
Posted by David Rogers in Church & Missions
On Feb. 16, 17 college campus ministries in the U.S. released the Chicago Agreement on Unity in Mission, the result of a meeting this past fall in which representatives of the various groups met together and thought through how to best express their essential unity as fellow members of the Body of Christ.
(See the March 28, Baptist Press news article on this development here).
The text of the Chicago Agreement reads:
1. We are all part of Christ’s body.
2. We do not regard any campus as our exclusive field. We recognize that many students and faculty may be helped through the various appeals and styles of the different organizations.
3. We will seek to establish relationships and build bridges with our counterparts in other Christian groups on campus. When establishing ministries on new campuses, we will take the initiative to communicate with the leadership of existing groups.
4. We will speak well of and refrain from criticism of each others’ ministries and members.
5. We commit to addressing problems on a local, regional or national level by humbly communicating with our counterparts, seeking the Lord together to resolve the issues.
6. We affirm the leadership commitments students and faculty have made to each others’ ministries and will not actively recruit them away from those groups. When starting a new campus work, each organization will endeavor to select new leaders, not leaders from other ministries.
7. We recognize students and faculty have the freedom to choose their involvement with any campus ministry. In general, we will encourage them to select and be involved with one primary organization.
8. We will encourage collaborative efforts on a voluntary basis between our organizations. We are open to share experiences and resources to assist each other with the unique challenges of campus ministry.
The Founding Ministries included among the signatories are:
• Asian American Christian Fellowship
• Baptist Collegiate Ministry
• Campus Ambassadors
• Campus Crusade for Christ
• Campus Outreach
• Chi Alpha
• Christian Union
• Coalition for Christian Outreach
• Fellowship of Christian Athletes
• Great Commission Ministries Churches
• The Impact Movement
• InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
• The Navigators
• North American Mission Board
• Reformed University Fellowship
• Student Mobilization
• Young Life College
A few comments from me…
I think this is, in principle, a wonderful document. It expresses, in my opinion, a very biblical approach to Christian unity, and avoids some common pitfalls often encountered in other efforts made toward the furtherance of practical Christian unity. I think it is especially important that a balance is maintained between mutual recognition of other groups as fellow parts of Christ’s body, and avoiding, at the same time, the predominance of any one group, or a merger approach to unity. This agreement recognizes that unity and uniformity are not the same thing. The different groups represented have different emphases and different ways of doing things. But this need not get in the way of recognizing each other as legitimate members of the Body of Christ, getting to know each other better, blessing each other, sharing resources, and, when the situation calls for it, cooperating with each other in joint ministry projects.
While avoiding a single-organization-as-predominant or merger approach to unity, the Chicago Agreement also avoids the opposite extreme of isolationism. It recognizes that it is not sufficient to just peacefully coexist. It calls for meaningful relationships, bridge-building, and interpersonal communication.
It is interesting to me that parachurch ministries such as those behind the Chicago Agreement are taking the lead in practical expressions of Christian unity such as this. It makes me wonder why local churches cannot follow their lead and adopt similar agreements among themselves (and with other expressions of the Body of Christ, such as the parachurch organizations signing the Chicago Agreement).
I realize there is a difference between local churches and parachurch organizations. For example, I believe that parachurch organizations do not have the same prerogative to carry out church discipline, at least not in the same way, as local churches do. It would, perhaps, be helpful for local churches to spell out some additional principles regarding the mutual recognition of discipline decisions taken by sister congregations. Also, while it is generally preferable for those in a college community to be involved primarily with no more than one campus ministry, and to maintain active membership in one local congregation, I don’t think local church membership and involvement in parachurch ministries are mutually incompatible. The relationship between local churches and parachurch organizations is a separate subject, and involves a few added complexities. However, I do think, for the most part, the Chicago Agreement is a good model for local churches to follow in their relationships with other churches.
I am encouraged that both Baptist Collegiate Ministry and NAMB have signed on to the Chicago Agreement. It shows in a tangible way that it is possible to maintain a distinctive denominational identity, and, at the same time, live and work in unity with the rest of the Body of Christ around you.
This agreement, in and of itself, is a good thing, as far as I am concerned. However, it will be up to individual leaders at a local level to carry out and put into the practice the principles enunciated in it. It is one thing for representatives at a national level to come to an agreement such as this. It is something else for ministry leaders working on the same campus to diligently and consistently follow through with what other leaders have agreed to on their behalf.
In the same way, Christian unity at a local church level is primarily a local matter. It is great to have big worldwide or nationwide meetings and organizations such as the World Evangelical Alliance, the Lausanne Movement, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Gospel Coalition, and Together for the Gospel. But the day-to-day bread-and-butter practice of Christian unity is carried out more than anywhere else among those who live and work in the same locality.
Questions for discussion:
• Are any of you aware of agreements similar to the Chicago Agreement among local congregations at a local level?
• What do you see are some of the benefits and some of the pitfalls of agreements such as this?
• How does/should the practice of Christian unity among local churches differ from the practice of Christian unity among parachurch organizations?
• Do any of you have a problem with BCM and/or NAMB signing the Chicago Agreement? If so, why?
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I know of no such agreements between my church and any others in our area.
Though I haven’t been “sent out” as it were, I do play soccer and translate for another church’s soccer outreach. Since they don’t have a Hispanic ministry, but a lot of Hispanics are coming, I cooperate with them and have full leeway to invite them to my church.
Our church could stand to actively engage the other churches in our area, and we already do somewhat through the soccer, a downtown outreach (featured in this year’s AAEO promo material), and the funneling of VBS materials to our less-wealthy neighbors in the inner-city. We may not have an agreement per se, but we do have some unity going on.
Andrew,
Thanks for being the first one to finally give me some input on this.
In Extremadura, the region in Spain in which I served for 10 years, in the local Evangelical Council we had a mutually agreed upon code of Ministerial Ethics. I wrote about that in the following posts:
http://loveeachstone.blogspot.com/2007/04/ministerial-ethics-and-city-church.html
http://loveeachstone.blogspot.com/2007/04/ministerial-ethics-and-city-church-part.html
I am still curious to know of any examples of similar agreements in the States. And, if there are not any, why not?
Would the relationship between the SBC and the CNBC (Canadian National Baptist Convention) fit in this category? I haven’t done any research to see what kind of agreements are in place, but I would assume there is something in writing.
Andrew, I’m not real familiar with that. But, what I am talking about would play out, more than anything else, on a local level, among churches that were in the same city, or, at least (as in the case of Extremadura) in the same region.
To a certain degree, local Baptist associations fill this function among Baptist churches. Local ministers’ assocations sometimes do on a more interdenominational basis. I suppose, in the States, it is more “politically incorrect” to have ministers associations that are not either denominationally based, or ecumenically based (including liberals, Catholics, even Jews, et al). Not to disparage the value of relating in a friendly way to those folks, but what I am talking about is a special working relationship or agreement specifically among professing Evangelicals.
Floyd County Georgia Baptist Associaton for a while had separate meetings at associational level for Ministers who broke with the CR and later in the week the CBF group would meet; both at the Associational offices, just on different days. As recently as four years ago I heard of a similar situation in South Carolina.
In Wayward Christian Soldiers Charles Marsh examined the breach between Billy Graham and Francis Schaeffer over Inerrancy in re the Lausanne Covenant. Recently scholars like Steven Miller of St. Louis, and Joseph Crespino of Emory are exploring the larger implications of all this. Another faultline is the distinction between Eisenhower Republicans in the SBC as distinct from Demint and Haley Barbour/Charles Pickering (SBC Peace Committee) Republicans.
For deeper explorations of how Christians associate in the Public square I invite you to engage the discussion in SBC Trends and Baptist Heritage at http://www.baptistlife.com/forums and the ongoing discussions with Howell Scott at his fromlaw2grace blog
[...] “The Chicago Agreement and Local Churches,” by David Rogers in the SBC Impact blog, with a commentary on an agreement brokered between various campus ministry groups. Do you agree with these para-ecclesiological guidelines? http://sbcimpact.org/2011/04/08/the-chicago-agreement-and-local-churches [...]