WALKING TOWARDS A COMMON TABLE:  AN ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN UNITED METHODISTS AND EPISCOPALIANS

 

The center aisle of Bethany United Methodist Church in Durham is not particularly long, maybe fifty or sixty feet.  But it took us a little over fourteen years to walk that distance to meet at a common, waiting Table.  On November 27, 2006, for the first time in North Carolina, United Methodists and Episcopalians shared the Eucharist in a service presided over jointly by an Episcopal priest and a United Methodist elder.  For us, the journey to this interim Eucharistic sharing began in May 1992.

 

In the spring of 1992, responding to the international Anglican-Methodist Dialogue, United Methodist and Episcopal lay persons and clergy met at Duke Divinity School to explore the implications of the common history and the times of division in the two denominations.  Out of that conversation came the North Carolina Episcopal-United Methodist Dialogue, the only such statewide effort in the United States.

 

The Dialogue has offered engagement over a host of issues. How can we do campus ministry together?  What is the meaning of episcopae in our two traditions?  How do we confess the sin of racism in both denominations?  What can we do together in establishing new congregations?  How do laity view the relationship between faith and their life work?  Are there special needs for the small membership congregation?  What are our mutual concerns in terms of environmental justice?  What are theological sticking points in moving toward a richer shared life?  

 

 The Dialogue has offered resources (video, booklet, guidelines) for local community dialogues.  The Episcopal and United Methodist bishops led a service of reaffirmation of baptismal vows.  Groups met to study theological documents on baptism, on apostolicity, and on mission.  The Dialogue took a look at the movement toward common life between British Methodists and the Church of England.

 

The goal of the Dialogue is full communion, mutual recognition of one another’s ministry, and acknowledgment of the apostolic journey for both traditions.  There is no thought of organic union.  The brokenness in the family has been most apparent at the Lord’s Table.  Each of us willingly invites the other to come to “our own” Table, but we have not found a way to have a common Table.

 

Until now.  In the summer of 2006, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church approved a resolution opening the door to joint celebration of the Eucharist.  (The United Methodist Council of Bishops had given similar approval.)  Once the national Episcopal-United Methodist Dialogue established guidelines for implementing this interim Eucharistic sharing, our North Carolina Dialogue moved to have the service that found us in November at Bethany United Methodist Church in Durham.

 

 So, it took us fourteen years to walk that aisle.  Still, there remained questions of personal struggle (Do I go to drink from my traditional cup of wine or do I go to the line of those who will taste grape juice?).  But the recognition of a common Lord who waited to greet us with His Real Presence at that Table made the journey a means of grace.

 

BY PATRICIA N. PAGE, MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL EPISCOPAL-UNITED METHODIST DIALOGUE, SAINT TITUS EPISCOPAL CHURCH, DURHAM, N.C. AND F. BELTON JOYNER, JR., RETIRED ELDER, N. C. CONFERENCE, THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH