This aspiration to create deep oneness among the religious populations, one family of humankind, is perhaps the most challenging of all that Reverend Moon has assumed. Where do religions divide? Not in ideals, not in values, not in shared hopes for peace. They divide when they worship. Worship is where religion brings people before God, and each religion does this with different scriptures, methods, music, words, rituals and so forth. To articulate shared ideals and values is a good first step. But we then return to our separated houses of worship to meet the divine and form our communities and families. Does this make a lot of sense? We ultimately must harmonize worship.
How can we possibly generate shared worship? There is of course one major obstacle: worship is led by dedicated professionals supported by members to speak and minister from the deepest core of their being. The leaders’ job is to keep the people doing what they are doing in worship and to bless them through it. They are very unlikely to change; they are among the least likely candidates for conversion to a new way. People set in their separate ways before God will not accomplish the ultimate peacebuilding. But the populist church style offers hope. Why? Because the populist church style is built for change. It is designed for people who are growing out of the old formats and dealing with new cultural realities.
The populist church style is built for change. It is built for people who are growing out of the old formats and dealing with new cultural realities.
The populist style is not wedded to tradition, formality, symbols and doctrines. The populist style allows youth to step up as the resource for spiritual vitality. I suggest that the way to merge worship is by turning ownership of it over to youth whose affection and trust for each other surpasses their commitment to the traditional forms of their own religions. The hope for merging worship lies with turning it over to young people in an empowered local community and letting the God-experience come first.
Miller’s comments are helpful here. He states, “mainline churches need to begin to experiment with worship styles and music and communicate to a new generation of young people.”1 His research leads to the conclusion that the key is giving leadership over to the youth: “The services need to be led by young men and women whose lives have been transformed by their experience of the sacred.” The youth represent the future, “…new churches led by a new generation of young people, and these youth (even as adults) may choose to meet in entirely different types of worship spaces and may organize their churches in radically different ways from those of their parents and grandparents.”2 Extending Miller’s insight beyond Christianity, why not let the Buddhist, Christian, Unificationist, Muslim, Jewish etc. youth work out shared worship, a “radical restructuring of liturgy”? This is possible in a flattened organizational structure that allows local ownership. This is the only way it can work, because it will break traditions, drive down new avenues, and turn out differently everywhere as local participants feel their way forward.
The goal is to move from a spirituality smorgasbord to meltdown worship. The key is inspired preaching and teaching that connects people of all faiths to God and to each other. From these connections will emerge new forms of ritual. While a very challenging task, I believe that in the long run it will succeed. It also is consistent with Reverend Moon’s explicit hopes, stated in 1991: “I will… hold worship services transcending all denominations. After this, I will go to spirit world. I will go there after completing that trans-denominational worship.”3 Unification communities can drive this process once they open out into populist space and time. After all, Unification Church members tend to be very affirmative of other traditions, and to be flexible about their own. While our tradition is in its formative stage, it can do this. From such worshiping communities will come young adults who will marry across religious boundaries, which, Reverend Moon believes, is “even more difficult than international marriage.”4
Tuna Melt, Not Salad Bar
The Unification Church tradition already is an amalgamation, emerging from a heterogeneous culture that wedded Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism and Christianity. It is no surprise that UTS welcomed members of Jewish backgrounds leading Shabbat services at Passover, nor that the new temple in Seoul features the founders of four great world faiths in the sanctuary with the church’s own founders. The course of Hyung Jin Moon, youngest son of the Founder and president of the worldwide church, is emblematic. His path of faith included several years of devotion to Buddhist meditation. The important point is that he never abjured Unification faith; Moon found Buddhist spiritual disciplines to be a path to express his Unification identity. He brings this experience into his Unificationist worship in Korea. Prior to that, he led well-received “Chun Hwa Dang” workshops in spiritual practice on the Unification Seminary campus. As a participant, I found his Buddhist-informed expression of the Divine Principle to be highly effective, in particular in addressing the call for mind-body unity.
Hyung Jin Moon’s path to faith included several years of devotion to Buddhist meditation. His focus on the internal mind-body dynamic is refreshing.
Similarly, two young leaders in America, Jaga Gavin and Dave Hunter, spent years worshipping in independent Bible churches. Hunter was active for four years in what he calls a “dynamic youth ministry and Sunday worship service” at the Mt. Oak United Methodist Church in Maryland. That church’s web site identifies itself as solidly contemporary in style: “a Biblically based, multi-racial fellowship, located at the corners of Mt. Oak & Church Roads in Mitchellville, MD. We love Jesus. We strive to equip folks to live as His disciples.” It emphasizes the simple points: loving Jesus, Bible-based, open-minded, warm and inclusive, equipping people for discipleship. And, oh yes, it’s local — “on the corners of Mt. Oak & Church Roads.”
To illustrate, here is what Dave Hunter informed me about his years at Mt. Oak. It is all “healthy church 101.” His first point was about ministry for and by the youth, “the necessity for vibrant youth ministry led by young adults [‘not older adults’] that emphasizes fun over theology, practical rather than theoretical/theological content and meets the needs of the youth, not the church.” Second was about worship and cracking the culture code: “the importance of worship and that as long as the message is ‘holy,’ any style is acceptable.” Third was about building community: “people need a connecting point with others. The church I went to did it through small groups, study groups, and retreats based on age demographic.” Fourth was about flat organizational structure and gifts-based ministry. Dave wrote that the Mt. Oak leader was “well-spoken and charismatic” but not “a pastor who tries to do it all. …In this church, the senior pastor was not as good of a public speaker as the assistant pastor. The senior pastor recognized this and therefore allowed the assistant pastor to give most of the sermons. The senior pastor guided the pastoral team internally, and allowed the pastoral team to do their jobs with very little oversight. As long as the pastoral team was internally aligned, they were free to do their ministry in whatever way God led them externally.”5
As long as the pastoral team was internally aligned, they were free to do their ministry in whatever way God led them externally. (Hunter)
Jaga and Tami Gavin were members of the Rock Church in Asheville, NC, and worked with the young adult ministry leadership for several years before the call to Lovin’ Life. A glance at the Rock web site shows us that their mission is: “Love God. Lift people. Change the world.” “That’s what we’re all about,” they say. “We love God and His Son Jesus - we love walking with Him daily and coming together weekly to worship Him and grow together in Him - we love serving and building His beautiful church. We want to connect with each other, encouraging and lifting each other to new levels as we share life together. And we want to change the world through our relationships - feeding the homeless, seeing people come to know God, building orphanages in other countries, comforting the broken hearted, and simply loving our neighbors.” Unlike the Mt. Oak UMC, the Rock is an independent Bible church, more typical of the contemporary approach. Jaga and Tami made a seamless transition into the Unificationist context from the Rock, showing the inclusive nature of the UC spirituality. Jaga runs the New York City young adult ministries and Tami is the volunteer coordinator.
Dave and Jaga participated with numerous Unification Church youth and veterans in a series of “witnessing summits” led by Sheri Rueter. These led to the founding of an experimental young adult ministry in (where else?) Los Angeles, in the summer of 2008. That ministry came to be called the Hub. Jatoma and Camia Gavin, co-founders of the Hub, sought “to pilot the fresh and creative ideas from the Witnessing Summits to effectively outreach to American young adults …and start a revolution.” Soon, young adults from the L.A. community stepped up to join them on the pilot team. As would be predicted from the record of all populist efforts, numerous programs were floated, including such things as “TrueQuest — monthly outdoor adventures, Community Concert Series — a monthly concert for LA’s up and coming musical talents, Artists Showcase — a night of local art and music, The REAL Relationship Seminar — a Divine Principle based seminar on relationships, The Lasting Imprint — a Divine Principle retreat focusing on the gifts we each have and our responsibility to share them with the world, and Project Connect — a young adult worship service, [and] financial IQ workshops.”
But most importantly, the Hub, Camia writes, is “a community outreach center where young adults can share their faith.” It has “given hundreds of guests and hundreds of young adult Unificationists a place to call home. …It is the local volunteers who make the HUB a place to call home and make L.A. a community of support, creativity, self-expression, and tremendous adventure.” The Hub experience led Jatoma to declare that what leads to success is “trust and giving creative space.”6
The Hub experience led Jatoma Gavin to declare that what leads to success is “trust and giving creative space.”
For the youth in the modern world, forms are not set in stone and personal relationships trump institutional commitments. So the idea is that a real interfaith worshiping community can come through a young, locally-empowered pastoral team internally aligned with the ideal of True Parents, partnering with peers from diverse traditions to build a worship experience. Young adults can readily integrate what the adult sees as incompatible faiths into something other young adults see as cool. I want to think this way: meltdown worship inclusive of diverse tradition strands is not a stopgap measure in response to the crisis our world is facing. No — far from it! It is what makes life exciting. It’s what we want! It can expand ministry into something hugely powerful, once we wrap our minds around it — and gain a little education about each other.
Unification youth are not wedded to traditional religious styles but are very open to spirituality and religion in general. They can link with young people of all faiths and, in the right context, build new forms of worship, locality by locality. I think this will take place naturally as the Unification Church evolves as an authentically open populist community, because our core value is, after all, one family under God. It is where God wants to work!
Take a Time, Peace, and Do
We Unificationists are always in a hurry. Perhaps it is Reverend Moon’s Presbyterian background. Everything is scheduled to be completed very quickly. It is good to know that the eschatological clock is ticking. But at the same time, we need historical perspective.
We can learn something from the role of Reverend Moon and his movement in the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of communism was a sudden and unexpected historical shift, but research such as Thomas Ward’s shows that behind it was a sustained, systematic educational and activist strategy carried out over decades. The movement published books and pamphlets offering careful analyses of the flaws of communism in terms of ideology and social practice. It sponsored seminars and conferences on the subject for decades, in Korea, Japan, the US, South America and Europe. It held countless rallies with a very clear message on college campuses, confronting Marxist student groups to the point of violence. It gathered 1.2 million people in Seoul in a rally against communism. It created the CAUSA movement, educating tens of thousands of American ministers and political leaders from all parties in the early to mid-eighties. It sent journalists on all-expenses paid fact-finding tours to Russia, where they developed relations with the Russian media, some of whom were hungry to get onto the world stage. The teaching was well informed and the presentation was technically advanced and persuasive. In other words, Reverend Moon conducted a focused, ideologically grounded, strategically intelligent campaign to overcome communism, spanning decades.
The lesson naturally would be that in order to grow the Unification Church, the membership needs to conduct a focused, ideologically grounded, strategically-intelligent campaign spanning decades, with objectives as clear and simple as that wrapped up in the phrase “the end of communism.” That objective was easy to measure: the collapse of the communist empire centered in Moscow. The objective of church growth has to be equally simple: grow the church.
Rodney Stark’s research reveals that early Christianity did not grow by leaps and bounds. It came to dominate the Mediterranean world by sustaining a growth rate of 3.42% per year, year in and year out. That means that a church of 100 would grow to 103 or 104 in that year, and to 107-108 the next. Stark’s conclusion is that Christianity did not grow due to miracles, state legislation, or the impressive acts of martyrs. Rather, “the primary means of its growth was through the united and motivated efforts of the growing numbers of Christian believers, who invited their friends, relatives and neighbors to share the ‘good news.‘”7
In reality, religious do not grow by miraculous intervention unless it leads to sustained open networks, compassionate care, human love and acceptance, healthy values and a spiritual message of God over generations. So too, Reverend Moon does not rely on miracles, but on human interaction. Regarding miracles, he states that they “tend to confuse people …A faith that relies on unexplained or miraculous occurrences is not a healthy faith. All sin must be restored through redemption. It cannot be done by relying on spiritual powers. As our church began to mature, I stopped talking to members about the things that I was seeing with my heart’s eyes.” In his words, his new members “…believed what I taught and kept coming to me. The reason was that I opened a way for them to resolve their frustrations. Before I knew the truth, I, too, was frustrated. I was frustrated when I looked up to heaven and when I looked at the people around me. This is why I could understand the frustrations of the people who came to our church. …Young people who sought me out found answers in the words that I spoke. They wanted to come to our church and join me on my spiritual journey.”8
Reverend Moon’s new members “…kept coming to me. The reason was that I opened a way for them to resolve their frustrations. …They wanted to come to our church and join me on my spiritual journey.”
Long-term growth can happen with reference to a messianic social impact of Reverend and Mrs. Moon and the Unification theological vision. To learn from history, this requires sustained strategic investment focused over decades with clear and simple objectives. The Divine Principle, finally, is clear about this. The Messiah, it states, “will emerge from among a group of reborn believers to become the leader of Christians.” In fact, the Principle text prophesies that he will be persecuted as the movement he generates “sprouts and grows amidst the final phases of the old age and comes into conflict with that age.”
At Christ’s Second Advent, because he will be born on the earth, the Kingdom of Heaven will be realized first in the hearts of those who believe in him and follow him. When these individuals increase in number to form societies and nations, the Kingdom of Heaven within will gradually be manifested in the world as an outward, visible reality.9
May God grant us individuals the power and grace to realize the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts, believe in and follow the Messiah, increase in number and form societies and nations embodying God as an outward, visible reality.
Footnotes
Footnotes
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Miller, Reinventing, p. 187. ↩
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Miller, op. cit., pp. 188-190. ↩
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Sun Myung Moon (Cheon Seong Gyeong) pp. 291-2. In this speech Father Moon referred to the realm of Christian denominations. Assuming that the same would apply to the realm of all religions, I posed this question to Dr. Peter Kim, Reverend Moon’s chief assistant: “My question is: here Father is referring to Christian denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, etc.). Can we say that Father now is committed to holding worship services transcending all religions (i.e. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.)? My feeling is that the answer is YES, but I want to check with you.” I received in response, “Dear Dr. Hendricks, My answer to your question is ‘YES’ too. Peter Kim.” ↩
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Global Citizen, pp. 223-4. ↩
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Dave Hunter e-mail to the author, February 11, 2010. ↩
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Hub literature, Spring, 2010. ↩
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Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 208. ↩
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Global Citizen, pp. 135, 139. ↩
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EDP, pp. 394, 107, 388. ↩