Growing up and Redesigning ‘home’ - Space for Grace [AKB with Tony Floyd]

 Growing up and Redesigning ‘home’ - Space for Grace

(Rev Dr Amelia Koh-Butler and Rev Dr Tony Floyd)

for the UCA National History Conference 2021

 

Abstract

 

During the period 2009-2018, Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) community leaders across Australia grappled with identity in what we had proclaimed to be a Multicultural Church. As discussions about gender, identity and marriage unfolded,  intentional intercultural theologizing required fresh approaches to discernment. The National Multicultural Ministry Reference Committee of the Assembly worked on methodology and resources to facilitate a process of Space for Grace.

This paper describes an emic view of how the interactions of a highly diverse community of CALD leaders enabled higher-order theological listening. (The authors were National Director of Multicultural Ministry and Chairperson of the Reference Group.) The group discovered they did not need to be in consensus in order to undertake a team approach to theologizing and grew in their own cultural expressions and confidence as a result of the undertaking. Indeed, diversity, rather than sameness, was valued in new ways. Dominant culture and dominating cultures gave way to appreciation of difference and wonder (in the sense of awe). Learning to articulate beyond ‘own culture’ and achieve intercultural respect became core goals of doing theology.

The future growth of the UCA likely depends on harnessing the contributions of CALD inter-cultural interactions. Learning from the Space for Grace experiences (both failures and achievements), the authors identify key strategies for future collaborations.

Both have been an integral part of the UCA as it has grown up. Out of significant personal experiences and immersions, they write of the growing up (journeying) of the UCA’s embrace of diversity and inclusiveness, its witness to living faith and life cross culturally.

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Introduction

My own life has been enormously enriched by exploring and engaging with different people and cultures, particularly the First Peoples of northern Australia. Sitting under trees with the law men of Elcho Island and tuning in to their way of thinking was a turning point in my personal formation. 

I’m sure many of you have been significantly moved in your personal faith or participation in God’s mission by an experience of difference or diversity that has challenged your worldview. …

No matter how difficult the conversation or how wide the differences are, there is nothing that cannot be resolved if we are prepared to hear one another and leave the space for God’s grace. 

(Stuart McMillan – ex-President Assembly UCA – Intro to S4G Workbook)

 

By 2009, members of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) were talking about cultural understandings of marriage. Conversations about same-gender relationships and gender-identity had been part of ‘tricky issues’ conversations for some years. By 2011-2012, the Church was aware of increasing conversation in the Australian community and in religious circles, as people began to pose questions about how the Church would respond to changing definitions of marriage and legal recognition of same-gender relationships.

  

Intentional ‘marriage’ conversations began in 2012. In the National Multi/Cross-cultural Reference Committee we did not, however, start by considering Same-Gender. Instead, we considered how our different Christian journeys and cultural experiences made sense of marriage and relationships of household or kinship. By listening, we expected to find points in common. We discovered the need to make new language and meaning with one another. We had to redesign home. As we grew up in a new and changing society, alongside new family, we had to evolve new ways of doing theology in a new household.

 

In 2009, the UCA adopted the following understanding:

  the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony.  (Revised Preamble, UCA Constitution, 2009).

 

We reasoned the Spirit may also have been revealing God in the laws, customs, ceremony and experiences in other communities. We determined to listen carefully to the various non-dominant-culture groups now part of union. We sought to identify, and begin to map, the breadth of experience, identifying themes and questions.

 

Initially, we learnt about very different practices within at least 14 different cultural experiences – the diversity of the MCM-NRC. Some themes were common, others completely different. Previous assumptions about the world and marriage were completely overhauled in four hours. The world had changed. The process took the form of mapping a web of connectedness rather than a more Western-style linear statement of thought and conversation process.

 

1.         Spirit as meeting place

In early church communities, problems arose as people from beyond Judaism encountered the message of the followers of this Jesus: what to do with these outsiders, the gentiles? How can we share stories when our context, culture, experiences are so different? 

Initial responses were quite clear, though not unambiguously accepted, they must enter into this community by first becoming Jews: assimilating into the original language and cultural group. Not only be grounded in a specific tradition but become assimilated into it.

This was confronted and completely pushed aside in a totally unexpected invasion of hearts and worldviews by God and the Holy Spirit. The story of Peter and Cornelius and its consequences in Acts 10 and 11 is apposite here.

At the moment when tradition, theology, or expectations clearly and coherently derived from both should have kicked in and Peter demanded they all become Jews, the radical unexpected occurred. The Holy Spirit burst into the gathering and poured Pentecost into lives and hearts that had not even been baptised.
Even though this totally unexpected activity of God the Holy Spirit brought about conviction, faith and transformation it was still a matter for very serious questioning back at ‘theology central’ in Jerusalem. Other stories of those early Christian communities make clear that while this episode had a happy inclusion, the matter of how new groups are gathering into the wider Body of Christ is still not over and done with. 

In a contemporary pluralistic urban setting, where gospel proclamation is situated in- between and among multiple cultures, it is more helpful to recollect these early church experiences, where Jews and Gentiles heard the gospel together (Acts 2:5-11, 11:19-21, 13:16, 26), largely in home communities. The church grew across culturally-bounded sets and overcame cultural barriers between people groups. People needed to learn to cross cultures at home, around a table.

2.      Diversity is having a seat at the table, inclusion is having  voice, and belonging is having that voice be heard.

DIVERSITY

A seat at the Table

“Growing up in Australia, I remember childhood Christmases where adults would sit at the big table and children, not yet trusted with the crystal and silverware, would be seated at the little table. There were advantages to being at the little table. Mess and noise were more acceptable, but the richer food and mysteries of the big table.”

         AKB - ‘’Becoming We: Exploring Liminality’ in When we pray 2019, Burns & Gribben Ed. 

How often do we place people who are ‘different’ at a ‘little’ table to avoid them making a mess of the ‘big’ table?  

For some, the actual experience of Space for Grace was that the process was not treated as if it was a ‘big table’ contribution. The learnings from sharing from a diversity of experiences were not valued by many at the ‘big’ table, but were treated as a distraction or an add-on, not central to us moving forward together as the community of the shared table. 

The household table is usually hosted by the ‘at home’ family. Culturally, this is often perceived to be hosting by a dominant culture group. Often, the people who are most unaware of a dominant culture are the ones who feel completely at home with it. People of dominant culture often desire to be hospitable to guests, going out of their way to make minority people feel welcomed and cared for. This can work very well when we visit each other’s homes and enter into each other’s lives. Knowing our personal sense of place and personhood allows us the confidence to take a seat at the table of conversation. When others start to stereotype us or make assumptions about our identity, I am equipped to be able to share some of our personal ‘home’ story to move beyond the stereotype into the reality that will enable effective relating to take place. 

Where hospitality becomes a caricature is where a dominant culture group assumes the role of Host at Christ’s table. Who is this Host, who determines normative behaviour, by their own cultural standards, when the feast of Heaven is for all? Who is the interloper when during the liturgy we actually proclaim … “This is the Lord’s table, and he invites us to this feast!” Developing identity confidence helps persons to resist dominant culture put-downs and challenge oppressive assumptions. Knowing and articulating the validity of personal story allows that story to be placed humbly beside the other stories and respect for each-others’ story will be learned.  It is a way of self-respect and being able to show respect for others by being prepared to share. 
 

 

3.         Redesigning home … for grown-ups

The cross-cultural encounter between gathered leaders from across the UCA offers an example of how space for grace grew into being. It should be noted at the outset, space for grace is not a political or theological position. This story offers a method for exploring and understanding diversity while developing increasingly generous relationships. 

For those of us born and nurtured in ‘western’ cultural and philosophical traditions living with and communicating meaningfully across cultural and religious differences are foreign, even frightening experiences. Yet God gives us space in which we who are so often the guardians of ‘the story’ can become story-listeners as we allow space for the grace of other story sharers to be heard, respected, and valued. Space in which God’s grace will work through the many who live, worship, witness and serve within the UCA. Equal travellers carrying in their being insights and experiences of living and interacting in close, respectful, neighbourly proximity with religious and cultural difference, images and metaphors.  

A key background reality shift is away from being Agenda driven which so often enhances feelings of being time poor – every second counts, we must move on to the next agenda item. The intentional and fundamental shift is towards understanding that the time we have is actually God’s gift to us. Within that gift of time our fundamental and agreed task is discerning the directions and resources, insights and possibilities stirred by the various story-journeys, experiences, reflections and metaphors shared out of our cultural and language diversity.

The early hard work on developing this thinking was conducted by culturally and linguistically diverse members of the church, who offered their time, tears, scholarship and experiences on the ministry of the Multi/Cross-cultural Reference Committee. During the initial five years, the group rejoiced in each other’s scholarly achievements and global recognitions of work. In this time of reflecting on the growing up of and in the UCA, the home now for these leaders, it seems timely to celebrate their contribution to shaping the church of today and tomorrow. Many of the cohort left homes and lands, sacrificing place and position to join Jesus on the margins of Australian society and the Australian Church. Their greatest welcome, in almost every case, has come from the First Peoples. Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress leaders have been consistently hospitable and generous in their words and deeds. 

Inclusion pays attention to TIME

Two images of ‘time’ shared within the membership of MCM-NRC may be helpful: 

Coconut time (the Pacific) – often spoken of as ‘whenever!’ Coconuts do not have a ‘ready for harvest’ season. When each coconut is ready/ripe it falls. 

Bamboo time (Asia): When some of the very tall bamboo is planted, nothing seems to happen for 5 years. Then, suddenly the bamboo begins to grow - up to 18-25 metres in 6 weeks. 

Some of the Parables of Jesus, along with other stories from the Scriptures (Hebrew and Christian) seem to point clearly to God’s use of such ways and such concepts of time. It is known in Greek as kairos - God/appropriate time, a time and a plan to be honoured: differentiating it from chronos another concept of time that might be simply called – clock time. A call to faithfulness in action, and trust in waiting for the nurture and the harvest belong to God’s activity, God’s kairos, and not our chronos. 

A greater struggle has involved trying to be heard by ‘dominant culture’. Some are aware of their ‘position’ and others are less aware of how privilege has inadvertently worked to keep some voices silent, unable to articulate positions of dislocation or dispossession. As we have shared in discussions with our First People family, silence does not always mean approbation, nor does it imply disapproval. Sometimes, there are simply no words that can be spoken or heard within the relationships required for respectful speaking and listening. Respectful dialogue may only be possible for some when there is a secure home for conversation, or at the very least, a place of temporary hospitality. For many, the calling of God to hold to the unity (expressed in the Trinity), requires us to be crucified, rather than utter words preventing restoration and reconciliation.

When the Multi/Cross-cultural Ministry Reference Committee faced important matters in the life of the Church we created what we described as a ‘Space for Grace’ by carefully and respectfully using the gift of time to include the stories and experiences of the diverse people in our group as normative. We sought to use time to value one another and the blessings of God in all our lives. This does not cheapen grace, as has been claimed. Rather it highlights the critical place which the Grace of God plays in the whole of our lives, and our responsibility to expect and wait upon it.

We started one late-afternoon session (5-7pm), sharing stories about marriage in our families. It was so interesting, we gave up our after-dinner free-time to continue (8-10pm). Initially, we learnt about very different practices within at least 14 different cultural experiences. Some themes were common, others completely different. Our previous assumptions about the world and marriage were completely overhauled in four hours. The complexity of the world had changed. 

While this may seem like an anthropological approach, remember the group included theologians, liturgical scholars, missiologists, social developers and scientists. Most were first generation Australian migrants. Some were Indigenous to their country of origin, challenged by their own Indigeneity – they were coming out of their own post-colonial and post-missionary contexts.

Inclusion pays attention to LANGUAGE in order to fully communicate. Facilitating this the MCN-NRC included Interpreters as regular participants & Synod staff with ministry in this area were also invited & contributed.

The conversation was rich, with different disciplines edging into the storying and clarifying questions. We learnt to care for one another as people invited into the hospitality of each other’s stories. We were guests in each other’s spaces. We were careful and respectful. We adjusted ourselves to being in familial prayerful relationship with others of many different stories. 

In only a few days, we went from being situated in our own lands and stories to being in globally-formed relationships with multiple world-views. This was made possible because of a shared reading of carefully holding all things in common (Acts 2) and seeing what God would nourish us with. We banqueted in each other’s offerings and understood different languages. We reeled from the experience. It was an experience of Pentecost. We would never be the same again. Stories were not used to set the boundaries of convention or rules of social gaming. Rather, they allowed us to better understand the etiquette and field of play. They gave us a guided tour of what was possible, rather than what was directed. 

We understood the diversity of the Reference Group was its key strength. We wanted to explore how we could seek God and hold unity with our diversity. We focused on spending time on the first nine pages of “A Manual for Meetings” and trusting that the essential ‘work’ would be discerned and dealt with on the journey.

Meetings took 3-4 days, twice a year. The first day was spent entirely in Gathering and Co-Creating spiritual community. Worship and bible study allowed us to move into exploring the Human-Divine Encounter, making meaning using metaphors from scripture and culture. We listened to one another’s news and stories. As people spoke, we[1] identified emerging issues and, at the end of the day, summarised any emerging themes. On the second day, we broadened our understanding of a Co-Created community, introducing inputs and issues referred from different sectors of Church or society. The Human-Divine engagement would then require us to see where and how these connected with our experiences. We undertook theological reflection, featuring diverse stories and styles, in order to bring as many voices into the process as possible. 

We reflected using the tools of scripture and doctrinal debate. Nuanced doctrines developed over centuries or decades, from different parts of the world, were used to stretch our thinking, rather than as tools for silencing engagement. For many, this made a refreshing change, as each participant was able to recount occasions when their migrant voice had been silenced by dominant voices in the Australian context. Indeed, we reflected, the people who were most likely to hear our voices and listen deeply, were those other silenced voices, belonging to First People. In addition to a background of ‘Terra Nullius’, we realised we were embedded in a reality of ‘Experience Nullius’.

Having taken the time to recognise the work of the Spirit among us, the gathering did not start to formulate proposals until into day 3. This always included ensuring that there was clear and common understanding of what was shaping as a proposal. Additionally, that the various insights and concerns noted in the first two days were recognised and acknowledged in some appropriate and respectful way. The decision-making session rarely took longer than an hour or two on the last day of meeting. Then we would have lunch and conclude with Communion... sending us out, empowered and nourished by learning, community and sacrament. (Note – We really did not need longer for decision- making if we had taken the time to do deep theological discernment together on the way towards forming the proposals.) 

We were aware that by western measures the process was (a) ‘time consuming’, and (b) vulnerable to being colonized by the frequent ‘Western’ process of ‘programming’, where over-focus on outcomes could undermine attention to process and disrupt relationships.[2] Sensitivity to differences of style proved particularly helpful. Although many of us had been formed in Western-style (or Eurocentric) theological seminaries, we all had cross-cultural experiences to draw from and we were interested in broader theological methods. In a group of (at times) sixteen or more people, most had teaching and research experience in a range of different seminary and university settings, employing quite different approaches to research. Additionally, being a group of mostly migrants, the group were well-travelled and attended international conferences on a regular basis in very different parts of the world. This meant the group did not have a dominant culture view determining what could be considered normative. Normality was something to be negotiated, rather than assumed. 

The experience of disconnection and the journey to building new connections, a place of belonging and identity grounded in the landscape, is embedded in the culture and identity of first peoples in this country. But for the forced and voluntary immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who make up the generations of second peoples, this new place of ‘our rocks and seas’ must be rebuilt on the foundations, memories and insights from ‘my own rocks and seas’.

(Irish artist Hector McDonnell, speaking on Songs of Praise, ABC TV Sunday 26^th May 2011, when in London he realized the source of his disconnection and isolation – his distance from his home-place and roots.)

Although most of the group had extensive experience in using more linear or hermeneutical spirals that assumed progression in a particular direction, we deliberately introduced the ‘tried and true’ discernment disciplines from non-western spiritual heritages. Some of these involve additional steps to enable relationships to be maintained whenever new material is introduced. For example, some (region-specific) small groups discerned what parts of stories could be safely shared with the wider group, without exposing particular communities to anxiety and vulnerability or the possible consequences of shame.

The group included Asian, African, Pacific, European and Arabic-background participants, and all were committed to using the UCA’s foundational document, The Basis of Union, as a key reference point. This led us to adopting The Wesleyan Quadrilateral to inform our approach to method. However, this did not assume a linear or ‘boxed’ approach, but rather, one of conversation. Tradition, reason and experience were grounded by biblical reflection.

Every member of the MCM-NRC was touched by God’s grace in the conversations from those years. We struggled together and there were tears and laughter. We did not get to having end-solutions to complex questions and issues. But we found the Spirit spoke to us in ways we could not have foreseen, leading us into deeper awareness of and acceptance of our diversity, differences, and ability to live by grace with the tensions within which we are called to live faith and life cross- culturally. It is our conviction this is the manner of journeying anticipated in the Manual for Meetings for communal discernment and genuine consensus. 

The experience embodied the vision in the Declaration affirmed by the Assembly in 2012 and Commended to the whole UCA, its Councils, Agencies, Congregations and members, “A multicultural Church, living faith and life Cross-culturally”

 

A MULTICULTURAL CHURCH, LIVING ITS FAITH AND LIFE CROSS-CULTURALLY – receives cultural and linguistic diversity as God’s gifts and: 

·       embodies these diversities as gracious gifts of the Creator God to the human family, 

·       rejoices in the variety of God's grace, and 

·       lives out its life and witness cross-culturally as a sign and promise of hope within multicultural, multiracial and multifaith Australia in the 21st century. 

The conversations and prayers identified ‘what if’ questions to encourage future theological work: 

·       What if - there is not any choice to be made between ‘this’ or ‘that’? What if diversity and inclusion mean living with multiple understandings on a range of issues? What is the place of equality and acceptance fully in the life of God’s people? 

·       What if - all we can or need to know is that God’s creative and re-creative acts of loving- kindness and mercy are the foundation of all relationships and communities? 

·       What if - that is all we need to know, and we don’t need to insist on one way or the other, God makes those decisions? 

·       What if - God’s gift is that there is a path between our absolutes, and paradoxically the Christ ‘who in his own strange way constitutes, rules and renews them as his Church’, walks with all of us, with all our profound differences, complex safety barriers and means of exclusion, all of our rich and enriching insights, views of truth, and hopes for wholeness? 

·       What if - such a middle path is not a passive path, a sitting on the fence avoiding struggle, difficulty, and some form of perceived theological purity? But rather is a very active, insightful and wise path that provokes significant change in our minds and transformation in our lives, and is another step in God’s intention for the redemption of all creation? All of which challenge the fall motif. 

·       What if - God is calling us to faithfully journey, and the learning and faithfulness is not in our answers, but in our being a ‘one-anothering community’ in Christ, with a full and honoured place for all? 

Outcomes and Conclusions

Space for Grace is continually being developed and refined. It served our group of culturally and linguistically diverse leaders well over a number of years and helped us stay in community, despite our different backgrounds, theologies and worldviews. 

Making decisions in a Space for Grace involves a commitment to: 

•      Go beyond our normal boundaries of safety into a space where we trust the Spirit of God to move us into sacred relationships. We call this "the grace margin". This requires a trusted facilitator who assists in holding people to respectful behaviours. 

•      Form a community of respectful listening by using a system of mutual invitation to speak - and allow room to listen. 

•      Avoid judgement and analysis or deconstructing of people’s stories. Instead recognise that they are subjective and represent the reality that person has experienced. 

•      Identify themes in common and differences to be further explored. 

•      Share hospitality and faith (e.g., break bread, share a meal, share the Eucharist). 

•      Respect each other's stories as sacred - safe and treasured, because they are the stories of the children of God - only to be shared with the express permission of the storyteller. 

•       Continue to work together as a group to identify what can help people to pursue discernment while still maintaining respect. 

When Space for Grace is created, groups usually get imaginative about what they do next. Groups may enter into relational covenants or make commitments about what kind of relationships they continue to pursue. We pray that the future of the UCA is a future of diversity, inclusion and belonging.

 

 Diversity: a seat at the table,

Inclusion: having a voice, and

Belonging: having that voice be heard

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resource List

 

Koh-Butler, Amelia. 2015. Communal Singing off the Menu: A ‘Meal to Music’ Approach to the Formation of a Missional Cross-Cultural Urban Community. Dissertation, FTS, Pasadena, Cal. 

_____. 2016. Framework for Reporting Areas: One Body, Many Members – living faith and life cross-culturally: Resolutions from the 2012 Assembly

_____. 2020. “Becoming We: Exploring Liminality” in When we pray, Ed. S.Burns & R. Gribben.

Koh-Butler, A & Floyd, A. 2017. Space for Grace Facilitators’ Guide, UCA, Sydney. https://assembly.uca.org.au/images/Space_for_Grace_Facilitators_Guide_- _A5_v1.pdf (last accessed December, 2018) 

Kwok, Pui-lan. 2016. Postcolonial Practice of Ministry: Leadership, Liturgy, and Interfaith Engagement. Lanham : Lexington Books, 

Law, Eric H. F. 1993. Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural    Community.  St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press.

_____. 2000. Inclusion: Making Room for Grace. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press. 

See chapters 2-4, where trust in God’s grace in the face of the unknown or uncertain can work reducing the barriers of fear and anxiety and creating space for that grace to be manifest and effective.

_____. 2002. Sacred Acts, Holy Change: Faithful Diversity and Practical Transformation. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press. 

Uniting Church in Australia.

[Reports arising from the Multi and Cross-cultural Reference Committee’s work]

_____. 1985. "We Are a Multicultural Church." In Policy Statement. Melbourne: Uniting Church in Australia.

_____. 1992. The Basis of Union. edited by The Uniting Church in Australia. Melbourne: Uniting Church Press. 

_____, 11th Assembly (2006) Vision statement: “A Church for all God’s People” https://assembly.uca.org.au/images/assemblies/minutes11thassappcvision.pdf

______. 2012. One Body, Many Members – living faith and life cross-culturally and Resolutions from 2012 Assembly (See Minutes of the 2012 Assembly)

_____. 2015: Space for Grace - living in the ‘grace margin’ in respectful, empowering, and inclusive decision-making.”

 

 

 

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[1] Here, the authors were operating as facilitators in our roles as the National Director and National Chairperson.

[2] Fundamental to the developing journey towards “Space for Grace” in an understanding that central are trusting, transparent, respectful relationships which reflect the community nature of Godself (Trinity). However, when the Guidelines for Space for Grace were rolled out, they were frequently treated as another ‘package’ to be programmed into an Agenda, rather than a journey of patient discernment to be entered on.

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[1] Here, the authors were operating as facilitators in our roles as the National Director and National Chairperson.

[2] Fundamental to the developing journey towards “Space for Grace” in an understanding that central are trusting, transparent, respectful relationships which reflect the community nature of Godself (Trinity). However, when the Guidelines for Space for Grace were rolled out they were frequently treated as another ‘package’ to be programmed into an Agenda, rather than a journey of patient discernment to be entered on.