Tag: Ecumenical

The “C” in the YMCA: as Obstacle, Offense, and Opportunity

A humble reflection on the role of Christian emphasis in the future of a successful YMCA striving to live out its mission of putting Christian principles into practice through equitable programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

Every generation of YMCA leaders are stewards of the Y they receive, often amidst the challenges and turbulence of their time.

The YMCA they entered into on that first day of membership and employment must adapt to unexpected changes in their communities and culture.

Being a nationwide organization this often looks and feels complex since the Y finds itself in over ten thousand different cultures/communities across the USA.

As the YMCA strives to authentically and resiliently respond to the crises of our times, especially as it marshals all of its institutional strength and resources to equitably build up people in spirit, mind and body, it must remember: where did this wealth of capacity to love, care and serve come from?

What were the leaders doing in the generations prior to us that made these possibilities a reality?

What has the Y been becoming since 1844, who did we come from, what have been our failures and successes, our learning curves that have gotten us to this crucial moment?

As complex as the YMCA is, I’m going to try to make a general case for why the “C” in our name has been and can still be central to our future success, still a vital source for our DIG work.

I acknowledge up front that the “C” can also be a highly combustible reality that obviously still causes merited concern by some; but, I believe it also can be the fire we need to fulfill our mission and cause amongst those struggling the most in our communities for generations to come.

“C” as OBSTACLE

First, for some in the YMCA, the “Christian” in our name is an obstacle.

This is a sentiment of Christians in our movement as well as those of other traditions.

It’s easy to notice the Christians with loud voices who resist equity in our communities, ignore and/or undermine the “for all” in our YMCA mission.

It’d be easy to list off Christians you know who seem to be obstacles to equity, to our core values, to our mission, to our work to be an anti-racist, multicultural organization.

It might be you don’t even really know any Christians at your Y, you just know what you have seen or heard elsewhere convinces you that the “C” is an obstacle to progress and success.

It can also become easy to presume that if we removed Christian emphasis from the Y, we’d have less obstacles to equity, diversity and inclusion. That might have some truth to it.

But: what is also true is the untold Christians in the Y who are passionate advocates for DIG work because of their Christian faith.

Faith is a key dimension of diversity, and for many in our Y movement a powerful motivation for humbly and faithfully persevering in the diverse, inclusive, global work of the Y.

Be that as it may, it’s obvious that Christians in the Y have racked up a long list of examples of being an obstacle to the flourishing of all.

For this we must confess our sins, repent, make amends where we can, and do better.

“C” as OFFENSIVE

Secondly: It’d be irresponsible to overlook the fact that some within our Y movement see the “C” as more than an obstacle, they also see it as an offense.

And who can blame them?

The historically obvious sins of Christians and their institutions in the USA leave much disgust in our souls.

Not only the failures of the faith in the past, but the egregious racism and violence of Christians today give plenty of ammunition to justify the belief that we are an offense.

With the public offensiveness of many high profile Christians, along with the thousands of every day offenses committed by people of the faith, it’s not without evidence that the suppression or removal of the Christian name and identity is supported.

Why keep an offensive culture in our name as we strive to focus intensely on becoming an anti-racist, multicultural organization?

It’s tough to make a defense against the offensiveness of Christianity in light of the many negative realities revealed in history and the current headlines.

It’s tough also because there is an essential offensive nature to Christianity as evidenced by the crucifixion of Jesus we read about in the Gospels of the New Testament.

For all the good that Jesus did, for all of his teachings on love and forgiveness in the kingdom of God, he was still killed by the ruling authorities under the accusations of political sedition and religious blasphemy – intertwined realities that reveal the intense offense Christ Jesus generated among people with power and the crowds.

It’s one thing for Christians to be offensive because they act like privileged jerks with thin-skin, it’s another for Christians to offend when they insist on abiding by the way of Jesus and his kingdom of atonement and reconciliation.

So yes, there are definitely toxic Christians that give the “C” a bad name, and there have been times when Christians in the Y gave offense by their faith-fullness to Christ Jesus.

My hunch is that the majority of offensiveness that is noticed in the Y towards Christians is due to the unrepentant meanness and arrogance of how some put their faith into practice. That is worth objecting to.

For all the ways we Christians have been offensive due to our sins, we must confess and repent of this too, make amends where we can, and do better.

“C” as OPPORTUNITY

Third: For me, I think it’s worth considering, in my humble opinion, of ways the “C” can be an opportunity to build equity in spirit, mind and body, for all.

What is the work of anti-racism if it’s not spiritual work?

If it was merely a matter of educating the mind, or enforcing bodily complicity to anti-racist principles, we’d have achieved more progress by now.

But isn’t equity first an attitude before it’s an action, a belief as much as it is behavior?

Don’t we want people to want to be inclusive, not just open to multicultural friendships because of peer pressure or economic coercion?

So if you are going to draw on spiritual resources to fuel anti-racist work, why would you cut out or suppress or ignore our “C” in our name, which is one of the strongest sources of spiritual energy in our American heritage and social fabric?

I’m not going to try and make a case for whether or not the USA is a Christian nation, but I think it’s unhelpful to overlook or downplay the Christian energies that have shaped and are still central to our culture, for good and for bad.

Religion is resurgent in the world, and the rest of the world sees the USA as still one of the most religious nations in the planet.

So, rather than suppress the powerful reality of religion in the Y, we need to bring it out into the open so that we can openly benefit from the remarkable resources it brings to people, as well as maturely and truthfully critique and correct what corrodes flourishing for all.

Cancelling the “C” in our name misses an opportunity to reinvigorate our dimensions of diversity, especially the dynamic and pervasive role of faith and religion.

The majority of Americans still identify with Christianity, and it is likely that percentage is higher within the Y, especially in light of its highly public brand recognition as the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Rather than rebrand as a secular institution, let’s resource the richly complex “C” to inspire “for all” in an increasing religiously pluralistic society.

Let’s face it, many Christians within the Y are embarrassed by the negative obstacles and nefarious offensiveness of the “C” as embodied by some members and staff.

I’ve found that many Christians in the Y are frustrated with the kind of “C” that they see, and aren’t sure what a better version could look like in these pluralistic times.

So instead of experimenting with fresh expressions of an inclusive Christianity, they unfortunately let the heart of the Y wither.

If we are honest, though, some if not many of the great YMCA DIG work, some of our greatest and most inclusive leaders in the Y are beautiful Christians doing God’s work in wonderful ways.

And it is their Christian faith which shapes and fuels what they do in an irreplaceable way.

To minimize or downplay their “C” in the “for all” work they are championing is too miss the opportunity to lift this up as a way to inspire a new imagination for how inclusive Christianity can be a vital dimension of diversity.

You see the “C” you are looking for.

Let’s look for opportunities to responsibly live out and respect faith as a key dimension of diversity.

What does that mean for the Y?

It means not only honestly critiquing the moral and ethical failures of the YMCA in the past as a Christian-based organization, but to also draw on the best of our Christian foundation and heritage, to use the real ways we have cared deeply for people as a Christian-based organization as a resource for current and future equity work.

What can we learn from Christians like George Williams on lifting up young men lost in the urban-industrial wastelands?

What can we learn from John R. Mott, an American and global Christian who pioneered ecumenical work as well as innovative multi-faith initiatives?

What can we learn from Rev. Martin Luther King on nonviolent Christian reconciliation work amidst racial and social injustices?

And so many more YMCA Christian men and women, old and young, who can re-inspire a “thick C” that celebrates and nourishes a very diverse, inclusive and global Christian faith in the Y, which then is a seed-bed for loving multi-faith and multicultural work that is anti-racist, equitable, beautiful, true, just and good.

YMCA OF THE USA & THE WORLD “C”

The YMCA was and is a crucial player in the global church community to lift up the practical value of religious diversity and inclusion – we helped start the World Council of Churches.

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Y still has rich resources to draw on for ways the “C” in our name can make us more welcoming, more equitable, more hospitable, more open “for all.”

An example: The World YMCA logo still includes the John 17:21 Bible reference in its logo; its at the heart of the triangle in our logo.

The prayer of Jesus that it highlights is crucial to the foundational motivations of those who breathed life into the Y in 1844.

And it is still a deeply powerful prayer on the lips and in the hearts of millions of Christians yet today throughout the whole earth and in the YMCA here in the USA.

Christ Jesus, on the night he was to be betrayed and killed by his own people, prayed for the unity of those who would believe in him in the decades and centuries to come.

Christ Jesus also prayed that all those who believed would be in deep union with God.

If you’re a Christian, isn’t that still a compelling vision for the Y – that through all of the many good programs and initiatives we have done since 1844 – that it can still be a contribution to Christians becoming more in union with our loving, caring, and sacrificial Lord Jesus Christ?

With our rich legacy already in that work, why would we end it – if we don’t reinvigorate that work, who else is there like us to pick up that task?

And if you’re not of the Christian faith, would you want the Y to downplay even more it’s influence on Christians to become more equitable and inclusive?

If the Y doesn’t do that work with Christians, who will?

Another example: Challenge 21 is a creative and compelling strategy of the World YMCA to let the “C” nourish its work while expanding the ways they strive for love and justice “for all.”

There is much the American Y can learn from Challenge 21 and our global friends in this complex work.

In fact it was cross-cultural experiences that invigorated spiritual and social transformation for George Williams (from rural to urban), John R. Mott (from America to the World), Martin Luther King (from Atlanta to India) and many others in the Y.

More examples: Who was it that decided to let women join the Young Men’s Christian Association? Christians.

Who was it that decided to lessen the strict Christian church attendance requirements for membership in the YMCA? Christians.

Who was it that decided to let Jewish and Muslim young men join the Y? Christians.

Who was it that decided to let Catholic Christians join the Y? Protestant Christians.

Who was it that decided to let non-Christians to join the Y? Christians.

Who was it that resisted all these decisions? Yes, obviously other Christians in the Y.

So which Christians do you want to pay the most attention to? The ones who resist adapting to inclusivity, or the ones that work for it.

RELIGION & the SECULAR

The real struggle of the “C” in the Y is not between secularism and Christianity, it’s mostly just between Christians.

Christians in general have stumbled through the rapid changes in our culture, especially as it has become more secular and religiously pluralistic.

The myth of secularism is that it is a “neutral” space created so that different kinds of Christians can cooperate in a public way, and then this gets extended to those of other faith and religious traditions, or those with none.

Secularism, however, is about a “negative peace” between Christians, and between those of different or no faiths, unable to unravel antagonisms, and succumbing to cultural and political entropy.

Christian Ecumenism is a “positive peace” between Christians, a constructive engagement for mutual understanding and collaboration; this is also a key foundation for Christians to participate in multi-faith and multicultural friendships in a pluralistic and secular society.

So if the Y is going to dig deeper into its DIG work, especially in its focus on religion and faith as a powerful dimension of diversity, we ought to get as much wisdom as we can on how it can be a constructive source for YMCA Christian ecumenical work and multi-faith work.

The “C” needs DIG as much as our DIG work needs a vital and bravely humble “C”.

What you suppress becomes more powerful, but in a toxic way.

It seems to me that the YMCA has struggled for the past fifty years on what to do with the “C” – it seems to have slowly suppressed it from public view, trying to be more secular, yet causing yet more consternation and antagonisms along the way.

The “C” will always be part of the YMCA – so can we transition from a “negative peace” in the Y to a “positive peace” where religion and faith can openly be lived and discussed?

Or will the “C” continue to be the elephant in the room, an unmovable obstacle, an enduring offense?

Let’s not suppress the “C” in the Y, let’s embrace the opportunity in front of us and learn how it can become a public and healthy part of our cause and mission as we become an anti-racist, multicultural organization in spirit, mind and body in the USA and the World.

For me, our current emphasis on equity and justice is a crucial way the Y is still inspired by the prayer of Jesus: “that all may be one.”

FEEDBACK

There is much that can be critiqued and questioned in my attempt to make a case for the opportunity the “C” gives the Y to flourish for all.

Did I make too little of the ways the Christian name is an obstacle and an offense?

I’d be very open to reactions that point out realities I’m missing, or ways to strengthen the way forward.

YMCA, Communion, Ecumenical Unity: Alexander Schmemann’s For The Life Of The World & the Eucharist

What is a way that communion can be part of the YMCA’s Christian ecumenical work in a community to build stronger bridges for a healthier spirit for all? Expanding and enriching our grasp of communion opens up new possibilities.

What is Communion? In part, it is about union with Christ Jesus, with God, with God’s people in Christ, across the globe and the ages.

As the Director of Christian Emphasis with the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne, Indiana, and as one connected with other Christian Y workers around the state, country, and world, I muse often on why communion isn’t a more common practice within our association.

When I was first hired, and I proposed offering communion at different branches in the chapels for our members, I was discouraged from doing so. The main reason given focused on the non-unifying reality of communion, how it was not as inclusive as other Christian practices like praying, volunteering in the community, singing, or a Bible study.

Interestingly, this is a very similar reason given in the early days of my denomination, formed in the last decades of the 18th century, for why they only practiced communion quarterly as a church.

The Church of the United Brethren in Christ was formed amongst primarily German Protestants, led by a continental German Reformed pastor and a Pennsylvania German Mennonite minister. They had close ties with the British clergyman Francis Asbury of the Anglican-Methodist movement.

It was a heady day of revivals, of preaching to mass cr0wds in open fields or large barns. They sought to proclaim a simple message of salvation to churched-people.

The liturgy around communion in the Reformed, Mennonite, and Anglican churches became tainted with formality, a dead spirit, and legalism. A result: a de-emphasis on the role of communion in a Sunday morning worship gathering, and an over-emphasis on the proclamation of the word for the explicit result of the salvation of souls for Christ.

The YMCA movement in 1844, a British product of Anglican and Dissenter Christians, highly valued the revival style, with founder George Williams leaving a legacy of constantly witnessing to strangers for the salvation of their souls.

While the Y valued unity and harmony in the movement, as expressed in the 1855 Paris Basis, the emphasis was on the extension of the kingdom through revival-style tactics that led to the salvation of souls. It would seem that communion was delegated as a sacrament of the church, and the Y was not a church, but the Y could help the church out by saving souls, and then sending them to the church.

This became a complicated scenario. Often the young men saved by the YMCA didn’t want to join the stuffy old churches in town. So the Y had to provide discipleship courses and ministry training of their own. Springfield College provided a lot of this educational operations. But without the emphasis on communion, which was the role of the church.

The Y has moved on from offering Christian education courses as part of its core identity. Many other para-church organizations have sprung up over the decades to evangelize and disciple youth, men, and families. There is a current movement in the Y to strengthen the “C” – I’m part of that work; but: to what end? What can we learn from our past 176 years of Christian ministry work (evangelism & discipleship) and build on it, rather than repeat it or over-nostalgiaize it?

Click on pic for more on the World YMCA celebration and reflection of their 175th anniversary gathering.

My own church tradition has a mixed relationship with communion, much like many other conservative Evangelical congregations. With a reductionistic-like focus on the salvation of souls as the highest, most important, very urgent priority – the role of communion is minimized. It’s not always clear how to connect communion to the salvation of souls, other than to over-emphasize the atonement for our sins made through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus on the cross.

While that part of communion is true, there is more to the sacrament of communion than just substitutionary atonement, of justification by faith, of sanctification by grace. There is also the spiritual unity that is inherent in the name of the practice: commune + union = communion. And it is this element that the YMCA can retrieve and build upon, especially with our emphasis on unity, on being “for all” and building bridges.

Rather than skim the surface in connecting with the many different kinds of Christians in the YMCA, we could make thoughtful attempts to build stronger spiritual bonds through the practice of communion. It’s not just the sharing of a cup and bread that bind us together, but how we understand it, what it means to us, how it connects us to what God has revealed to his people through Christ, through the Scriptures, and the saints who have come before us.

Growing up in the UB church, we partook of communion quarterly. Because it was so special, we didn’t want to take it too often, as that might cause us to take it for granted. Also, we didn’t want to be like the Catholics or liberal mainline congregations who took it every week. But even as a youth, it seemed to me that if communion was as special as we said it was, shouldn’t we do it every week? When I started a church, we “compromised” and practiced communion every month. For certain sermon series, we might do it every week, which was a relief for some in our congregation, and a stretch for others.

The practice of communion continues to stick in my heart as a sacrament which I want to understand better, that I want it to mean more; it seems to me there is more to it than what I was taught or experienced growing up. Getting to know faithful Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, and Methodist Christians who took communion every week has helped a lot.

I realize that there are certain restrictions that some denominations place on their members when it comes to partaking of communion. Because it is so special, it is especically guarded, to help keep it pure and it’s meaning sacred.

My Protestant evangelical heritage prompts me to open up communion to the world, but to also pay attention to the concern to keep it special. I’d like to find a way where we could offer communion every week, maybe every day, in a way that it would be open to the world, and still be special. The YMCA seems to be a vehicle to attempt those experiences.

In our under-nourished Christian ecumenical work, once a hall-mark of our YMCA identity, and now in America almost largely forgotten, the sacrament of communion could be a spiritual practice which re-focuses Christian Y members on Christ in a new, ecumenical way.

Something like this is needed for Christians to fuel the existential/spiritual work of racial reconciliation in our communities, adapting to and recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and building bridges across polarized chasms.

Thi attempt/experiment is not a replacement for the different Christian churches and how they do communion. But maybe rather a re-connecting point for Christians who are not part of a church tradition for many reasons, some of them being the hypocrisy of the church, the irrelevance of the church, the spiritual-deadness of the church, and other reasons.

There is much that needs to be thought out on this idea. For me, I know it includes continuing to expand my understanding of what communion means to other Christians and their church traditions.

This morning I was reading For The Life Of the World by Alexander Schmemann, former Dean and Professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary. The following paragraphs from chapter 2, The Eucharist, caught my attention, I had to re-read it several times, as it made fresh connections and new points about communion that I found to be inspiring, disturbing, and encouraging.

It opens up for me a richer vision of what is happening in communion, of it’s larger purpose, what it can mean for me and for us as participants, and what it can mean for the church and the world. This Orthodox perspective is new to me, so there is much I need to learn yet to keep it in context. Yet, I do know that I will never participate in communion the same ever again, having read this perspective by Rev. Schmemann. For me, it reads as a profound meditation on John 17:21.

“As we proceed further in the eucharistic liturgy, the time has come now to offer to God the totality of all our lives, of ourselves, of the world in which we live. This is the first meaning of our bringing to the altar the elements of our food.

For we already know that that food is life, that it is the very principle of life, and that the whole world has been created as food for man. We also know that to offer this food, this world, this life to God is the initial ‘eucharist’ function of man, his very fulfillment as man.

We know that we were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God. We know that real life is ‘eucharist,’ a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled. We know that we have lost this eucharistic life, and finally we know that in Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man.

For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist; He offered Himself in total obedience, love and thanksgiving to God. God was His very life. And he gave this perfect and eucharistic life to us. In Him God became our life.

And thus this offering to God of bread and wine, of the food that we must eat in order to live, is our offering to Him of ourselves, of our life and of the whole world. ‘To take in our hands the whole world as if it were an apple!’ said a Russian poet.

It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful.

Yes, to be sure, it is a sacrifice: but sacrifice is the most natural act of man, the very essence of his life. Man is a sacrificial being, because he finds his life in love, and love is sacrificial: it puts the value, the very meaning of life in the other and gives life to the other, and in this giving, in this sacrifice, finds the meaning and joy of life.

We offer the world and ourselves to God. But we do it in Christ and in remembrance of Him. We do it in Christ because He has already offered all that is to be offered to God.

He has performed once and for all this Eucharist and nothing has been left unoffered. In him was Life -and this Life of all of us, He gave to God. The church is all those who have been accepted into the eucharistic life of Christ.

And we do it in remembrance of Him because, as we offer again and again our life and our world to God, we discover each time that there is nothing else to be offered but Christ Himself – the life of the world, the fullness of all that exists.

It is His Eucharist, and He is the Eucharist. As the prayer of offering says – ‘it is He who offers and it is He who is offered.’ The liturgy has led us into the all-embracing Eucharist of Christ, and has revealed to us that the only Eucharist, the only offering of the world is Christ.

We come again and again with our lives to offer; we bring and ‘sacrifice’ – that is, give to God – what He has given us; and each time we come to the End of all sacrifices, of all offerings, of all eucharist, because each time it is revealed to us that Christ has offered all that exists, and the He and all that exists has been offered in His offering of Himself.

We are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist. (p34-36)

For The Life Of The World, Chapter 2, “The Eucharist”, pages 34-36, Alexander Schmemann

What Are Ways The YMCA Is For All In The Holy Land?

Since 1878 the YMCA has worked in Jerusalem to work for holy and loving peace among Jews, Christians, and Muslims as well as between international political and ethnic powers seeking to control the land.

There is still much more peace-making work to do in this place that sits at the center of the universe.

The Y is in the middle of it, striving to nurture loving, caring and serving with flourishing for all.

Let’s find a way to join in it.

The Holy Land is revered by millions of Jews around the world, along with billions of Christians and Muslims.

Jerusalem is a sacred city, the epicenter of the story of these three Abrahamic faiths that make up the majority of the world population.

The Psalms call us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem – one that we would all love to see answered in our lifetime.

For the religious among us, it’s almost as if Jerusalem is the center of the world, the point where heaven and earth have met, still meet, and one day will reconvene.

To be a peace-maker in the Holy Land is to embody the deepest hopes and calling of those who identify as children of Abraham.

And yet war, terror, fury, revenge, and hate corrode the foundations of what is most beautiful about the Holy Land.

So what is the YMCA doing in this land?

As an organization with Christian origins and heritage, with a commitment to living out the kingdom of God in the world harmoniously and for the common good, it ends up having a unique role in many communities across the world.

Especially in the Holy Land.

What does it mean for this kind of organization with this kind of Christian legacy to advocate for inclusivity amongst its membership and leadership?

At one level it creates space for Jews, Christians, and Muslims who do want to work, pray and play together to do so.

The synergy and love that develops around their efforts together not only becomes compelling attractive but healing as well as inspiring.

For those that feel like their only options are withdrawing from violence into safe enclaves of like-mindedness or wading into the conflict to show how right they are, there are other ways of being a peace-maker without being identical.

There are plenty of similarities and differences between the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who serve with the YMCA in the Holy Land.

But it’s the inclusive nature of the mission that both allows them to draw on the best of their faith traditions without requiring strict adherence to their religious doctrines or spiritual practices.

Mutual respect, compassionate caring, genuine honesty, and mature responsibility go a long way in allowing talented people of different faiths to do YMCA mission-work together.

Within Christian traditions, there can be the belief that God will only bless his people when they are holy and loving.

Thus there is always a striving to be more holy and more loving.

The problem is that these two desires can sometimes (often) cause conflict with each other.

Sometimes to be more holy I might feel the need to withdraw from those who are different or less pure than myself.

But to be more loving is to be more compassionate and healing to those least like me.

We can see this tension being played out in the stories of God’s people throughout recorded history. Including in the YMCA.

Since 1878 the YMCA has worked in Jerusalem to work for holy and loving peace among Jews, Christians, and Muslims as well as between international political and ethnic powers seeking to control the land.

There is still much more peace-making work to do in this place that sits at the center of the universe.

The Y is in the middle of it, striving to nurture loving, caring and serving with flourishing for all.

Let’s find a way to join in it.

(featured image is the domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the foreground, the Dome of the Rock mosque in the middle, and a Jewish cemetery in the far background)