March 27th

Reflections on the Annual Delegate Sessions

Our 2024 Delegate session has come and gone. I enjoyed meeting more wonderful people in our MCA family. We ate some very good food (the true way to my heart) and believe it or not we also made some business/organizational decisions. It was a lovely two days, and I am grateful for having been able to participate.  

But all the while my mind hasn't gotten past the theme of the sessions this year: “Embarking on a journey to becoming an intercultural church.” This theme is a goal line, a statement of desired purpose, and certainly a noble and admirable one, but I can't help but wonder if it is too small of a dream. I find myself much more enwrapped with the idea of embodying rather than becoming as the statement of purpose. Because these ideas are not mutually inclusive, we can be intercultural, and yet not actually living into (embodying) that interculturality.

Putting it in terms of intercultural's close sibling, intergenerational, we can have people across generations in our communities, but that does not inherently mean we are truly embodying that idea in the life of our community.  Having young people present on a Sunday (the typical figure we reference to say we are inter-generational) can be a fact, despite those young people not being invited or engaged in the bigger and wider forming of that community. And I make the connection between intercultural and intergenerational on purpose.  I am on the young side myself, and thus am invested in the growing and flourishing of our young people, both in my community and beyond. And because of this I am very familiar with the degree that our generational differences have already become cultural differences.  

While pondering embodying versus becoming and intergenerational as a piece of intercultural, I am drawn to another phrase that was shared over this weekend. This phrase emerged during the Pastor’s gathering before the session, “fostering a theology of curiosity.” This phrase strikes me as the internal imperative of embodying interculturality. It names it in a way that we are always learning about creator, and so we can see that we have much to learn from our neighbours, friends, and family, and their different experiences and journeys. We learn more about the love and grace of creator God when more stories are brought to the conversation, when more paintings are shared at the art gallery, when more food is brought to the table. Maybe that is where we might begin, with a humble curiosity, not one that bears assumptions of those we are gathered with, and not one that assumes that a single individual needs to be singled out to speak on behalf of a wider and varied demographic. But rather one that takes a seat at the table with, that listens with love and intentionality, at the words God speaks through those we gather with.