Address of The Rev. Dr. Nancy Jo Kemper to the 55th Annual Assembly of the KCC

Executive Director's Oral Report
55th Annual Assembly, Kentucky Council of Churches
October 17, 2002

What an honor it is to stand before you each year as we come together to find ways to bear witness to the God of peace and justice, the God made known to us in Jesus Christ, through our shared life as Christians in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It has been a full morning already, and I do not want to tax your patience-nor keep you from the lunch that the folks of Pax Christi have arranged for you. From our morning prayer to Jeff Gros' presentation on the Church in the middle, we have been experiencing church in greater fullness than any of us may ever do in our separate congregations or even in our denominations.

I want to than you personally for coming here, for giving two days of your time for this gathering. I also want to thank Dr. Henry for the outstanding work that he has done as President for these past three years-he has been an exemplary exhorter for our witness and life together-whether it be at Board meetings, at these Annual Assemblies, or at EcuCamp where he and his wife Wanda have been willing and helpful counselors, helping to raise up a new generation of ecumaniacs.

I want you to know how proud I am of every member of our staff: from our bookkeeper, Sharon Timperman, who has been with the Council longer than anyone currently on staff, and of whom our auditors say, annually, don't lose that bookkeeper; to Jeanie Hartman-our Office Manager-who takes care of more details than God, I sometimes believe, and does so with grace and commitment, and good humor,; to John Kays who will have been our KIDRP Coordinator for 8 years; to our Chris Skidmore, who, I must tell you, is making huge contributions out of our experience here in Kentucky, to the shaping of the ecumenical life of the emerging Cooperative Baptist Fellowship nationally. This is my 11th year with you, and it is a ministry which continues to challenge me and ask for my utmost abilities.

You ask me each year to report to you on the state of the Council and the state of the churches in Kentucky. There is a written report on pages 13 and 14. But it is a privilege and responsibility to attempt such an oral articulation. Our theme this year, The Church in the Middle is so ambiguous as to mean anything. We have seen how Jeff has interpreted that phrase.

I want to try to apply it with more particularity to our own life here in Kentucky. Let me suggest to you that the middle is precisely WHERE the church needs to be in our time. When I first told some one the theme of this year's assembly, my listener joked: "in the middle or in a muddle?" Good question. A muddle is a state of confusion, a confused mess; and moving into that definition, a quick look in the dictionary reveals that the verb, confuse, means: to bring to ruin; to make embarrassed; to disturb in mind or purpose, or to make indistinct by blurring or jumbling.

Many factors about church life in Kentucky would suggest that we are in more of a muddle than in the middle, in the midst of life, at the center of life, feeding, strengthing, carrying the burdens, pumping the energy into God's people, Christ's church, and offering hope to a faltering world. The middle is the core, the center. It is the provides the energy and power for all action. The middle positions us toward the edges, or directs us toward our mission.

If we are in a muddle then it includes our difficulties with sexuality and personal behavior, our ongoing numerical membership declines and our sometimes frantic appearances at being willing to try most anything, and to avoid everything demanding or disciplined (a word that stems from the root word "disciple) that might create a slight degree of hesitancy in those we name "seekers". Our muddle includes the shifting roles and function of expressions of church life at the state or regional level, with a lot of local churches not caring much either positively or negatively about what goes on in their larger political or perhaps denominational environment. Our muddle might be defined by the objective observer as a paucity of Christian action and an unceasing flow of 19th century words in a 21st century world. Our muddle could be characterized by our difficulties in American society with money and greed, and the churches' clear failure to have shaped a generation of corporate executives who have a scintilla of stewardship sense. In our congregations, giving has not increased by any noticeable percentages, and more and more funds are staying at home to keep our churches staffed for our own needs. Our people seem to love to argue about sex but unwilling to talk about virtue, much less to perform virtuous deeds in the secular society. We have clergy and congregational conflicts that belie the very notion of Christian communion and reconciliation and grace.

Are we in a muddle-or in the middle? If we are in the middle, we will argue with politicians, media, our neighbors, and our brothers and sisters in the pew, that it is not so much nations-representing people like you and me-that are the axis of evil, but, as Bill Coffin said not long ago, "pandemic poverty, environmental degradation, and a world awash with weapons" of mass destruction, or just weapons and ideas about how to kill other human beings constitute the real evils of our time. If we are in the middle, we will draw near to Christ, and inevitably be led by Christ's spirit to put our ecumenical lip service into deeds, so that our commitment to engage in common witness and ministry together except where by reason of conscience we may have to act separately, will not be the first item we eliminate on our budgets or in our priorities for finding the right people to serve in roles of leadership.

If we are in the middle-as regional denominational entities truly are-we will find ways to facilitate the mission of our whole churches throughout our portion of the world neighborhood. We will see that what happens in the 12 contiguous blocks of our church, or in the new suburban development from which we hope to find our seekers, is dependent on what happens in our state and nation. If we are in the middle, we will not hesitate to let our hearts beat with passion for justice, our lungs in their respiration breathe out the winds of peace, our core muscles to embrace the wounded and the angry with our reconciling care, our hands to reach out to feed the hungry and dress the poor, our eyes and minds to be used to defeat the devastating effects in our state of Kentucky of illiteracy-nearly 40% of our adult population is functionally illiterate. We will adopt schools, and family resource centers. We will turn off the televisions in our homes. We will build Habitat houses, create clothing banks, operate soup lines, work to eradicate racism wherever we find it.

If we are in the middle, our voices will be heard in Frankfort and in Washington. If we are in the middle of the Gospel life of grace, we will not stop until we have eliminated capital punishment as a means whereby the state erratically tries to demonstrate that problem people are best treated by killing them. If we are in the middle of Christ's circle, we will take the gifts we have, and say to those who are stumbling-whether it be our Governor, or executives at Ashland Oil, or persons who serve within our own churches: "Come, repent, I've had to, we've all had to… and we will help you stand up and walk in decency and moral and physical integrity."

If we are in the middle of God's love, we will not ignore our brothers and sisters in Christ, either within this Council's membership by saying we have more important things to do than to be with you, nor will we act as if those who are not now part of our struggles to find our unity in Christ and to bear visible witness to it, are not worth our efforts. If we are in the middle of a vast transition within Christianity, we will need one another more than ever, to learn from each and to share with each the truth and grace that God has given to us. We will risk taking the fruits of long years of dialogue and try to live it out-in our congregations and in our local communities.

Will we be in the middle, with Christ, who was always in the thick of human life-never avoiding the sinners or the controversial issues? Or will be in a growing muddle-our witness blurred, our testimony shy and half-hearted, our deeds in the world of work and politics belying the words we pray each week at our churches: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth. (There is no comma in that phrase, except the one that we hesitant, muddle-headed Christians keep trying to put in between "thy will be done," and "on earth".)

From my perspective, we are in a time of deep and important questions, which all basically confront us with this challenge: shall we be in the middle, or shall we let muddles and muddle-headedness be the characteristics of our life as Christians in the Commonwealth of Kentucky?

-Nancy Jo Kemper

[NB: The line about the real axis of evil-"pandemic poverty; environmental degradation; and a world awash in weapons" came from Bill Coffin, in a sermon he gave at the Washington National Cathedral last spring at the consecration of Bishop John Chane as Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C. ]