How Will COCU Resolve the Church’s Real Problems?

The burden of proof rests always with the affirmative. This is a law of forensics which is unalterable. Today we have COCU’s proposal for church union, but many people wonder why. What problems will it solve? The real question is not whether the present proposal for union is acceptable, but whether any proposal of merger can provide answers to the real problems of the church, which are legion.

COCU had its birth when, riding the crest of a merger, Eugene Carson Blake made his proposal in California ten years ago. The newly formed United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. then felt that merger was the answer to problems that were hardly in focus at that time. Reduced overhead would, it was thought, make more money available for mission. One central government would eliminate complications. The evangelistic thrust would be sharpened. Divisions would be healed.

But merger did not achieve any of these. Indeed, each of the problems was enlarged. Missionaries have been withdrawn from the fields by the hundreds since 1960. Overhead has zoomed upward. Division has been aggravated. Evangelism in our denomination has become almost nonexistent. The church has lost its influence. Religious dropouts have skyrocketed in number. Merger has in no way resolved the church’s real problems.

Can structural unity answer the needs of today’s church? All evidence is to the contrary. The Roman Catholic Church has enjoyed structural unity since its inception, yet its problems are as bad or worse than those of protestantism. While strong leaders within romanism are seeking to decentralize its government and to achieve a more democratic structure, having seen that structural unity does not answer its needs, nine protestant denominations are seeking to move in the opposite direction. They propose to establish a church government which will place the power in the hands of a few, namely one pastor and two elected representative laymen for each congregation; these persons to be a part of a “parish council” which will handle the government for the people, rather than government by the people. Nor will the “parish council” have any geographical order or sense.

Why are we going in this direction? No proof has been offered that the new merger will resolve any of our real problems. The only reason we have the COCU proposal today is that it seemed the thing to do in

1960. But the past decade has made the proposal obsolete because we now see that our problems are beyond the reach of merger. Why do we proceed with a plan which a decade of experience has proved will only lead to greater complexities, greater waste, greater loss, greater defeat and no advances? This the proponents of the plan have apparently not dealt with. They have not fulfilled their simplest forensic responsibility. They lay before us a plan born out of an obsolete hope, that the union of denominations would add strength. A decade of time has proven that a forlorn hope.

Perhaps what we have missed is that we can have union without structural unification. The Christian community is growing more and more solid without merger. Brothers don’t have to be twins. They don’t even need to be members of the same family. Nine strings of pearls combined on one thread will unify them and make them longer, and will also make them more apt to tangle and become unusable. And, more expensive.

Wars are fought and won by many battalions fighting under different flags but under the same general.

Perhaps we should start emphasizing that common generalship rather than structural unity. And it might be well to do it quickly before we lose too many battles and endanger the outcome of the war.

How can COCU solve our real problems? It seems highly unlikely that it will resolve any, but rather add to their complexity.—WILLIAM R. MCGEARY, JR., pastor. Sunset Hills United Presbyterian Church, Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Reprinted by permission from Monday Morning (February 8, 1971)..

RESOLUTION

I could live friendless

(except for a friend)

Homeless

(except I know home)

Live forever as case in point

(except for the obvious tomb)

Then

I should live silent

(except for a word)

Stilted

(except for grace)