Our Shared Work: KO Pastor Reflects on Visit to World Council of Churches Assembly in Germany
written by the Rev. Sheridan Irick
Left: Sheridan pictured with Bishop Heike Springhart at the reception celebrating the 200th year of the Evangelische Landeskirche in Baden
After 5,500 miles, two planes, and not nearly enough sleep, I arrived in Karlsruhe, Germany on a Saturday afternoon to begin my time at the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches. The next morning, I took a cab to the borough of Durlach to take part in a worship service at the invitation of our own Eleanor McCormick, a pastor in the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference who is currently working with our partners at the Evangelische Landeskirche in Baden. Eleanor organized and led the service along with two of her German colleagues—a Protestant pastor and a Catholic lay leader. I was honored to be asked to join a Methodist pastor from Hungary and a Mennonite pastor from Brazil in offering a short sermon on the Assembly’s theme: “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”
What does a usual day at the Assembly of the WCC look like? Our partners in Baden had organized a group of representatives from their various international, ecumenical partners, and we spent most of the day together. Each morning began in opening prayer followed by a plenary session with a panel discussion. After that, my partnership group met for bible study, and in the afternoons, there were a variety of workshops to choose from or the business plenary to attend. One of the joys of having the Assembly in Karlsruhe was that we were able to join with our partner church in Baden in celebrating their 200th anniversary.
Throughout my time there, I couldn’t begin to keep track of how many languages I heard spoken, sung, and read or how many different Christian traditions I saw represented. In our worship services, I experienced everything from Hawaiian worship music played on an ukulele to Coptic chants in Arabic to Taizé songs. The workshops were also an opportunity to learn from many voices. I heard from global members of the Evangelical Mission in Solidarity about the need for mission work to be done with a commitment to mutuality, ecumenical relationships, and respectful cross-cultural encounters. In another session, the German author Sarah Vecara offered a reading from her book Wie Ist Jesus Weiß Geworden? (How Did Jesus Become White?), examining racial justice in the church. I also attended a panel discussion featuring queer and marginalized Christians from around the world who told their stories and offered up wisdom from their own experiences.
Assembly worship in the prayer tent
One day during plenary, Rabbi David Fox Sandmel reminded us of the fitting words of Rabbi Sacks: “The greatest religious challenge is: Can I see God’s image in one who is not in my image–whose colour, class, culture or creed is different from mine?” Perhaps the greatest gift of the Assembly was getting to see the image of God in new friends from around the globe.
Friends like my hosts Suzanne and Matthias, who welcomed me so warmly into their house. Friends like Lesinda, a nurse from South Africa who is the director of Elim Home, a residential facility where they care for disabled children and young adults from disadvantaged communities. Friends like Noel, a pastor from south India who talked with me about what it is like to pastor in a country where Christians are a minority facing intense political persecution. Friends like Frank, a pastor from Ghana who moved us all when he shared about his day trip to nearby Switzerland where he saw the first bible ever written in his language on display.
Rev. Eleanor McCormick at the Sunday Morning worship service in Durlach
Despite Jesus’s prayer in John that his followers “may all be one,” Christians have never found harmony very easy. But my experience at the Assembly did make me feel like maybe it was more possible than I thought before. Maybe, as the Assembly’s theme says, Christ’s love really can move the world, and even the church, to reconciliation and unity. This is the hope of partnerships like the ones we have with Protestant Church in Baden, and I hope that we continue to engage and expand those relationships in order to learn from one another.
Rev. Sheridan Irick is the pastor of Community United Church of Christ in Partridge, Kansas.