Speech by Rev Dr Rod Benson to NSW Ecumenical Council Fundraising Dinner, Coptic Orthodox Church, Guildford, Sydney, Friday 13 June 2025.
Esteemed bishops, ministers, pastors, priests, deacons, members of religious orders, sisters and brothers in Christ, ladies and gentlemen:
It is a wonderful privilege to serve you as General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council, and it gives me great joy to share this excellent dinner with you, hosted by the Council in partnership with the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church.
My executive committee has asked me to speak to you tonight on the grand theme of “The Path to Unity.”
You may be asking, what is ecumenism? Simply stated, ecumenism is a global movement toward Christian unity and cooperation among the various traditions and denominations of the Christian Church. The movement seeks to overcome divisions within the Church, heal its wounds, and work together in promoting faith, engaging in vibrant worship, and engaging in mission.The ecumenical movement celebrates what we all share together through our love of God, our experience of the grace of Christ, and our fellowship in the Holy Spirit.
Ecumenism is also about respecting our theological and cultural distinctives, and seeking to understand our various emphases and differences, in order to be more faithful to our God, and more effective in our following of the Way of Jesus.
Seventy-six years ago, in 1949, as a new world emerged from the bloodbath and chaos of World War II, and the dying embers of the old world order, the Anglican bishop and theologian Oliver S. Thomkins (1908-1992) wrote these words:
God has given his people in our days a new insight into what he wants them to do; one fruit of it is the official, organized ecumenical movement, with the World Council [of Churches] as its chief expression; but the essence of it, ecumenicity, is something which happens in the souls of Christians. It is a new understanding of the Body of Christ, … a deep spiritual traffic, a bond of spirit so strong that it will not allow to fly apart those who are under great pressure to become separated.[1]
We are better together.
Ecumenicity has its origin in the great prayer of Christ, where he sanctifies his faithful disciples by his word of truth, and sends them out into the world to continue his mission. Then he prays for others who will later believe, in many places and through the centuries up to our own time, and he further prays, “May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me” (John 17:21).
So the call to pray together, and worship together, and serve together comes from the mouth of Christ and the heart of God. That essential unity was increasingly hard to discern as time passed, and the recovery of that spirit of unity is what inspired the twentieth-century ecumenical movement.
We are coming back to it today, when we gather for fellowship and food as we are tonight, and in all the ways in which we collaborate and participate in Christian unity rather than remain in our separate fortresses, cut off from each other.
There is much that keeps us apart, and there is much that draws us together. The ecumenical impulse, enlivened by the will of Christ, and empowered by the breath of the Spirit of God, is to lower the separation barriers, and strengthen the fellowship we share together as God’s redeemed and reconciled people.
We are better together.
I was raised in a Christian tradition that placed great emphasis on teaching the Bible, and prayer, and evangelism. But my tradition also developed rigid rules about maintaining the purity of the church, and dress codes, which version of the Bible is acceptable, which hymn books are authorised, and other peripheral matters. The leaders genuinely feared all other church traditions, and did everything possible to maintain separation from what they saw as bad theology, bad practice, and different rules.
Sadly, not one of the congregations I knew as a child exists today: in Wollongong city, at Mt Keira in suburban Wollongong, in Goulburn Street in Sydney’s CBD, and in the Sydney suburbs of Arncliffe, Lidcombe, Turramurra. All gone.
There are many reasons for the decline and demise of churches and other forms of social engagement. But I am convinced that if these vanished congregations had developed vital links with their brothers and sisters from other traditions, so much would be different. And by different, I mean better, God-honouring, spiritually vital, and missionally effective.
In the mercy of God, I found other Christians, and other church traditions, where ecumenical fellowship was natural, and where cooperation and unity produced lasting fruit for the glory of God.
None of us is perfect, and no human community, however holy, will be perfect in this veil of tears. But here are three shifts we can all make, wherever we find ourselves on the path to unity, to overcome our divisions, and work together, and so capture the essence of ecumenicity for our churches and congregations:
- A shift from fear to fellowship;
- A shift from isolation to cooperation;
- A shift from competition to mission, welcoming the kingdom of God among us, extending its presence in our communities.
These are shifts that I long to see in our local communities today, shifts that are forming and flourishing in our churches, positive and life-giving changes that develop as we work toward a more robust ecumenical community in NSW.
We are better together.
In a world divided by fear, greed, and inequality, amid the clash of rival ideologies bent on power and control, comes the humble rabbi Jesus, who is Lord of all, with news of forgiveness and freedom, justice and peace, grace and generosity, and hope for a better world for our children. We hear the prayer of Jesus for Christian unity, we confess our failure to do more to facilitate that unity, and we follow him on the path to unity.
Please, determine tonight to play your part, to invest your time and resources, in widening the path to unity, and aligning your Christian community more intentionally with the ecumenical impulse, as together we follow the Way of Jesus and bring others with us on the great journey to the kingdom of God in its fullness.
We are better together. God bless you as you partner with us in pursuing the mission of God.
Thank you.
Sermon 812 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Speech to NSW Ecumenical Council Fundraising Dinner, Coptic Orthodox Church, Guildford, Friday 13 June 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
Reference:
[1] Oliver S. Tomkins, The Wholeness of the Church (London: SCM Press, 1949), 13-15.
Image source: ChurchLeaders.com
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