Sanctuary Off Limits

Re: Sanctury Off Limits

There was much that was positive about the modern Church in your January issue including Suffer the Ninety Nine on the lure of power, the work of the Presbyterian Church in Haiti and how small, struggling congregations are determining how to be vibrant. And then there was the article on Presbyterians fighting with each other, Sanctuary Off Limits.

The writer, Amy Maclachlan, did her best to explain why the Ottawa Presbytery felt obliged to lock the doors of the 83-year old St. Giles Church to “discipline the warring Congregation.” She noted how the “secular press jumped on the unique measure.” The Ottawa Citizen article to which she refers did indeed portray the dispute with a certain amount of gusto dealing with things such as the actions of the “interim moderator”, the barring of a particular Bible study on Church property and the Congregation being required to worship in the basement. Presbyterians emerged looking, well, a bit odd.

The reaction of readers was equally vibrant with letters to the editor predicting the end of “faith based institutions” and on line comments such as: “a very unChristian demonstration of ego”; “the Church acting in a petty and heavy-handed manner” and two Ottawa students writing “this is why I am not a Christian”.

While St. Paul tells us in Romans “not to be conformed to this world”, we cannot ignore it and should be conscious of what the so-called secular world thinks of us as Christians. While disputes within the Church are as old as his Epistles, St. Paul did instruct us in “the ministry of reconciliation” (2Corinthians 5:16) where we are to be the “ambassadors for Christ”. One can hope that in the months that have passed since St. Giles closed its front doors both the Presbytery and the Congregation have had time to consider whether they have adopted the right course. They might well consider borrowing something that the secular world for decades has found effective for disputes between everything from married couples to nation states–an outside mediator to help find a solution.