Pilgrimage of theological colleges to the sanctuary of the Holy Family

Dr. Michel E. Abs

The Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)

To Egypt, the land of Al Kanana, to the land that is marked by the refuge of the Holy Family, giving it a distinct identity, a delegation of students and deans of theological institutes in the Middle East, under A.T.I.M.E. went in order to meet, debate, and draw lines of action for the future, the future of teaching theology for parish ministers, the leadership of the church and  the joint Christian work, that is, the Ecumenical work.

They were blessed days, during which the students gathered first, in a conference under the theme “We Witness Together,” followed by the General Assembly of the Association, which includes all theological teaching institutes affiliated with the member churches of the Middle East Council of Churches.

The high standing of lectures, the quality of the interventions and discussions, and the dynamism that characterized them, indicate an advanced level in the work of the colleges, as well as in the work of the A.T.I.M.E. In addition to all of this, there were activities related and complementary to these meetings.

The MECC’s media accompanied all these actions, documented them, and published them on its media pages out of the belief that the work of this association, which is organically linked to MECC, is essential in ecumenical work.

The Association has historically been a mine for producing ecclesiastical and ecumenical leadership, and today it is resuming the fulfillment of this role to the highest. The observer must notice, with great hope and joy, the fellowship and harmony that crystallized in these meetings and the activities accompanying them, and he must be certain in the depths of his soul, that these students, thanks to the care of the deans, are the leaders of tomorrow in the churches and the ecumenical movement.

At the student meeting, at the request of the President of the Association, the Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches gave a lecture on the role of the Council in rapprochement between churches towards ecumenism, which will be published in one of the MECC’s subsequent bulletins. He also gave a speech at the opening of the General Assembly, which will be published here. His speech was under the title “Together from the Sources” out of his belief that the servants of tomorrow’s parishes and future leaders of the ecumenical movement must be together and interact within ecumenism, in an ecumenical encounter from the beginning of their priestly lives, so that the ecumenical values ​​and aspirations may take root in their souls and minds and become part of their culture. They act based on it spontaneously, and do not take it later as a prescription or instruction manual for use when needed.

Together from the sources means that the seeds of ecumenism are planted from the beginning, resulting in a tree with deep roots, unshaken by the powerful storms of isolation or fanaticism.

This speech was delivered on July 12 in Cairo.

Together from the sources

The Association is a precursor model of basic ecumenical work

I thank His Holiness Archimandrite Dean Yacoub Khalil for inviting me to address this distinguished and advanced group in the service of the Lord, and for giving me the opportunity to present my point of view regarding the role of the ATIME and its work, not in terms of internal dynamics, as that is its concern, but in terms of its functional role in ecumenical work and development of the Common Christian work.

What I will present are matters that I have shared and discussed with many, as strategic directions for the MECC, but this is the first time that I have presented them directly to those concerned.

I must first remind you of the MECC’s  target as stated in its constitution since its founding: “The purpose of the Council is to deepen the spiritual fellowship among the churches of the Middle East, and to unite them in word and deed as they strive to achieve the unity of the churches and bear a living evangelical witness to spread the gospel of salvation and reconciliation through the Lord Jesus Christ, love, peace and justice throughout the region and among the people inhabiting it.”

In order to achieve this goal, the MECC works through the various bodies that comprise it or are associated with it to “achieve this goal through:

1-      Dialogue amongst the churches (locally, regionally and internationally), and strengthening the spirit of fellowship and ecumenical awareness.

2-      Providing the means for common study and research aiming at further understanding of the traditions of member churches, mutual enrichment, and activating fellowship through common worship.

3-      Cooperation and joint undertakings in humanitarian service to achieve justice, to relieve the poor, the needy and the marginalized of their suffering, to uphold human rights, and to strengthen Christian presence in order to live on in freedom, peace and equality in citizenship, rights, and duties.

4-      Developing and reinforcing organized dialogue aimed at strengthening and deepening peace and friendship between people for the good of humanity.

In the image and example of the MECC, the visionary founders formed the Association of Colleges and Theological Institutes in the Middle East (ATIME) as an attempt to translate the goals and principles they set for the Council into actions, into tangible activities, embodied by an institution linked to the ecumenical goal through the Council. There is no doubt that if the Council was established in a blessed moment, then the founding of the ATIME occurred in a blessed moment as well, and by the same inspiring leaders, or their students who followed their example.

The ATIME was modeled on the MECC , and was given the character of an association, not a department, in order for it to have independence, which gives it room for freedom of movement, innovation and interaction.

It was stated in its regulations that its establishment came “in response to three needs: an academic need that requires continuous improvement of the quality of theological education in the Middle East in this era, a practical need related to the necessity of jointly benefiting from human energies and material resources, so that it becomes possible to better support academic requirements, and finally, an ecclesiastical need related to the preparation of pastors and ministers who will bear the responsibility of carrying out ecclesiastical tasks in an ecumenical spirit in the region.”

In order for there to be a stronger bond between the League and the Council, the League’s statute states that “by paying attention to these three needs, the ATIME’s mission is in harmony with the goals of the MECC, especially with regard to spreading ecumenical awareness, establishing joint theological studies and research, and promoting ecumenical formation for all groups and ages.” All of this supports the educational and pastoral mission of churches in today’s world.”

The fact that the Association consists of colleges and theological institutes affiliated with the member churches of the Middle East Council of Churches, means that it is truly ecumenical in depth, in goals, approaches and methods.

In the same context, the objectives of the ATIME are defined in promoting ecumenical formation, consolidating fraternal relations, and encouraging the spirit of cooperation, understanding, dialogue, consultation, and exchange of experiences at the level of teaching staff and students, in member colleges and institutes.

As for the educational system in theological education, the ATIME is the catalyst for encouraging studies and publishing, exchanging publications and periodicals, encouraging Christian culture in the region, and enhancing familiarity with the region, its churches, religions and societies, without neglecting the necessity of openness to the outside by establishing cooperative relations with other academic institutions.

To maintain a high and legal standard for the certificates granted according to the systems of the countries in which the Association is located, the preparation of future pastors, church ministers, and professors of theological education in the Middle East will be through granting them certificates equivalent to higher university education in accordance with what is followed in the higher education system in each country.

This ATIME is a phenomenon in itself, parallel to the phenomenon of establishing the MECC, and it includes those concerned with teaching theology and building servants of tomorrow’s parishes. For the deans and directors of theological schools to study the teaching of theology in a common direction, and to exchange opinions in a clear direction towards ecumenism, this indicates a conscious will on the part of these educational leaders to take joint education between the churches to its sources, and to root ecumenism from its basic sources, Christian education and service.

What is required in joint Christian work is not for institutions to dissolve into one institution, neither the churches nor their theological institutes, but rather for diversity to be preserved, within the unity of spirit, vision, and goals.

You are dealing with great challenges, which is building the shepherds of tomorrow, the servants of the parishes, in a society that strongly tends towards materialism, tyrannical individual selfishness, hypocrisy, injustice, and everything that is the opposite of our Christian faith. They will deal with all these social ills, in addition to hatred and its widespread discourse in the world, racial discrimination, poor distribution of wealth and income, and harm to the environment, among other things. As if all of this is not enough, they will collide with the emerging pathological identities and dysfunctional personal choices of some of the younger generation. How difficult are their tasks, and how difficult are your tasks in fortifying them against all of this, and in providing them with methodologies and methods to address these social problems, which nothing indicates will recede in the near term, and in fact there is expectation and fear that they will spread.

Ecumenism constitutes the guaranteeing framework for training the servants of tomorrow's parishes, because, by changing their mental pattern, it will make them adopt the logic of a bundle of sticks, which is solid when it is a single bundle, and which breaks stick by stick, when it is untied. The link here is the ecumenical mental structure, or Ecumenical Paradigm.

The ecumenical paradigm is this general logic and this common view that we are one in Christ and that we interact and work together for the goals specified in the ecumenical movement in the Middle East, which is represented by the Middle East Council of Churches, and which is embodied, in our case here, by the ATIME.

All that is required of the MECC member churches is to follow this logic, which is the self-evident ecumenical logic.

Christianity is spread throughout the globe, distributed among thousands of civilizations and cultures, so it is obvious that it takes several theological, cultural, organizational and social forms, and that they are distinguished from each other. Therefore, we must expect extreme diversity in the forms of belonging to Christianity, and ecumenism, through the ecumenical paradigm, is the only means to bring all these Christians together in a common life where each institution or group maintains its privacy within the unity of faith and life and moving together, despite our diversity, towards the salvation goal and Christian values. We have to be one, hand in hand, with our eyes fixed on the goal of spreading the message of salvation and Christian values ​​to a human society in crisis that has lost its compass, as our Christianity has a serious role in saving the human race, which is immersed in its loss and persists in its error, and this danger increases day by day, therefore, it is called upon to have unified goals and diverse means.

Based on this logic, and this view of Christianity, we must ask the following question: Can you be a Christian, and close yourself off to other churches, so that you do not care to get to know them, their theology, their history, and their social structure, and you do not care to interact with them, and you do not care for its situation or fate, in the event that it is exposed to a crisis, and you need to extend a helping hand to it?

Ecumenism is a great challenge, assumed by bright minds and souls who yearn for openness and freedom. Therefore, if you are truly a Christian, you have no choice but to be an ecumenist!

The absence of the ecumenical mind, or its weakness, inevitably leads to the mentality of a shell and isolation, leading to quotas in resources. This would put the churches in conflict over the distribution of resources, leading to their alienation from each other. Dealing with resources, whatever they may be, can only be based on needs, classified according to priority and based on scientific standards. Working on the basis of apportionment is a difficult matter, and it is not ecumenical because it is based on compromises of interests between those concerned with matters.

Based on my experience and my observation as a researcher in social sciences, in addition to being Secretary General of the MECC, and as I was director of the Relief and Development Program for Lebanon throughout the eighties, I must attest that I have experienced ecumenical behaviors at the core, issued by church leaders, individuals, and ecumenical officials par excellence. They act according to the highest standards of ecumenism, including openness to the other self, caring for it, and insisting on its involvement in all activities that take place or projects that are implemented. They are sincerely ecumenical, believe in ecumenical choice and live it in all its depths, and this does not contradict the fact that they belong to a church and work for its benefit and preserve its entity, institutions and people. This does not prevent that, and the interests of a church institution are not supposed to be in contradiction with the interests of another one, nor with the interests of the whole faith community, but rather complementary to them.

This is matched by some non-ecumenical behaviors or reactions among some people, where someone who you thought was an ecumenist will surprise you with actions that indicate that his ecumenical affiliation is still weak. These are disappointing actions, which make some wonder the extent to which ecumenical culture affects some people.

My experience in the Council is very rich, and sometimes arduous, and it has taught me to distinguish between two types of behavior as mentioned above, some of which are ecumenically mature, and some of which require some maturity and more advanced experience in the direction of the ecumenical paradigm.

In this context, we must mention that the Middle East Council of Churches constitutes the comprehensive institutional framework for practicing the ecumenical experience and disseminating its culture, not only among Christians, but throughout society as a whole, including non-Christians.

The MECC is nothing more than an institution, created by the Church in order to live the ecumenical experience through encounters between its leaders and, gradually, among its people. Ecumenical culture is the opposite of the culture of demonizing the other and ascribing various negative descriptions to him. It is the opposite of the hate speech that is rampant in the world today. Since it has succeeded in bringing together Christian churches that were estranged from each other, and even rivaled each other and sometimes fought historically, it is capable of taking the same path towards the societal level and based on the Christian faith, which is founded on love.

Suspending the work of the ATIME for a period of time was a strategic mistake, especially since this was for financial reasons, as continuing the work of the Association could be done at the lowest possible costs, as is the case today, and with simple contributions from the member churches, noting that projects to develop and expand the work of the Association require special funding which concerns special Ecumenical institutions. Imagine if there was no framework that brings us together today, how much we would have lost on the moral and practical levels. The suspension of the ATIME’s work has cost the joint Christian work an entire generation of ecumenical leadership, and this matter must be compensated for by sustained training for this generation.

Since we are talking about the applied field, we must mention the pilote role played by the Association at the level of ecumenical relations.

The agency is the organizational model that all activities of the member churches should emulate. It is a cross activity in the churches’ work, a cross activity, meaning that it includes the same type of activity that exists in all churches, and this is considered in the field of management as networking and leads to the creation of a self-contained community or knowledge range, in which member institutions exchange knowledge and experiences. Networking is considered the best method for coordination and development between institutions in the modern era.

In this context, we must mention that networking constitutes an essential item in the strategic work of the Middle East Council of Churches, as we aim to make it exist among all church institutions with intersecting activities, and the association was and remains the first and exemplary application in this context, a model that is prohibited from failing.

The expected networking will include the field of media, and we are in the process of establishing an ecumenical communication network, and the same applies to development, women and family, youth, the environment, vocational training, and other common activities among churches. In all of this, ATIME is the model.

In conclusion, let me go back to the ATIME’s regulations in the nineteenth article, the subject of which is “dissolving the association,” as it was stated that its dissolution shall be by a decision issued by a regular meeting of the association in accordance with the procedures contained in article sixteen, with a majority of seventy-five percent (75%) of the members. The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches then relieves the Association of its financial obligations and transfers the remaining assets to the Middle East Council of Churches.

Allow me to implore you to keep this cup away from yourselves and from me, and do not consider this matter possible, because it is the most abhorrent of sins, and because the dissolution of the ATIME, or the dissolution of the MECC, as stated in its regulations, means that our Christianity is weak, and it is but a name with no content. 

It is true that the current level of performance in the ATIME is very high, and that its usual vitality has been restored, thanks to the leadership and knowledge of its president, the seriousness and follow-up of its executive secretary, and the visions of both of them, and that they, through good coordination and harmony in work, have set an advanced level of achievement and effectiveness, but the essential remains in continuity with the leaders who will later come to the helm of the association.

Institutions of joint Christian work are here to stay, to serve and radiate love to the world, and to give this world a better life.

The cross of humanity is large, and Christ is still carrying it on the path to Calvary for human beings. Either we are together, carrying the cross with him, or we are dispersed and let him down and leave him carrying it alone.