If faith were a three-legged stool, those three legs might be community, action/service, and contemplation/meditation/spiritual practice. All three legs are necessary for a healthy faith life, as modeled by Jesus. Jesus preached and taught, he healed, and he cared for those in need and on the margins of society. He spoke truth to power. He lived an active life of service as we do today. Jesus formed community with the disciples who were drawn to him in town after town. And the scriptures say that Jesus often spent the entire night in prayer to God. The entire night!
The “Becoming a Church of Contemplatives in Action” 2021 United Church of Christ (UCC) Resolution (link to pdf of Resolution) calls for the United Church of Christ to be a church of “contemplatives in action.” The Resolution seeks the church’s integration of action for justice alongside intentional commitment to the life of prayer. Through fostering spiritual practices that deepen us in love for God, neighbors, ourselves, and all creation, this Resolution aims to empower the church to root its collective life of activism for justice in the prayerful life of contemplation. This resolution aims to resource the wider church in the diversity of spiritual disciplines, emphasizing the necessity of experiential grounding in the love of God alongside our common witness for justice and peace.
The Resolution says, “The UCC affirms that ‘God is still speaking.’ To hear God’s still-speaking voice, the church must follow the contemplative exemplars of our Christian tradition in ceasing from endless activity and stilling our individual and collective bodies so that we are willing and ready to listen.
“A contemplative consciousness changes us to become more aware of ourselves, the interdependent nature of all life, and the presence of the Divine in our lives and world. Contemplation without action fuels narcissism, and action without contemplation is a recipe for bitterness and spiritual depletion.”
The 2021 UCC Resolution “encourages local churches to become churches of ‘contemplatives in action,’ remembering the essential disciplines modeled by Jesus of silent prayer, meditation, and practices to commune with the Divine Mother-Father, and letting contemplative depth inspire our forming and sustaining of life-giving, spiritually-generative community and our church’s action in the world through works of charity, social justice, peacemaking, earth-stewardship, and making disciples on the path of God’s unconditional, agape love.”
Similarly, the Resolution “encourages training of future clergy and lay leaders in the ways of contemplation, spiritual practice, and Christian mysticism, providing experiential grounding for the sustained life of faith; living into our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ and as children of God to see the Divine in everyone and everything in all creation, beginning with ourselves and expanding our love into ever-widening circles.”
The “Becoming a Church of Contemplatives in Action” Resolution invites local churches to “commit to being a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ church- a church that prioritizes contemplation, spending time communing with God in various forms of prayer; and a church of activism that seeks to make God’s love and justice real in the world; thus a church of both contemplation and action—a church of ‘contemplatives in action’ where our love of God through contemplative practices informs how we live and act in the world, and where our interior and exterior spiritual practices complement, ground, and inspire one another.
Out of this Resolution, the “Thirty Third General Synod calls upon all settings of the United Church of Christ to invest in curriculum and resources to support Conferences, Associations, local churches, clergy, lay leaders, General Synod and seminaries in practicing and teaching a foundational life of spiritual practices, as modeled in the life of Jesus. In this resourcing, all settings are called to remain committed to the UCC’s diversity as a Multicultural, Multiracial, and Anti-racist church, thus honoring the diversity of spiritual and contemplative practices and teachers from many and varied cultures through whom the spirit works in different ways.”
Lastly, the Resolution “encourages all settings of the UCC seek to live out the foundation of contemplative practices in the ministry of God’s work in the world—making inclusive, participatory spiritual practices and teachings that cultivate being, introspection, reflection and growth an integral part of National gatherings, including committee work, children’s, youth and adult ministries, ecumenical partnerships, and General Synod.”
This is no small task! A small group of clergy and lay persons created this webpage following up on the “Becoming a Church of Contemplatives in Action” Resolution. This group continues to discern next steps for how we can move the church into living out the calling to be contemplatives in action. If you’d like to join the conversation or offer your gifts, please email ucc.contemplatives@gmail.com.