HOUSTON CHRONICLE ARCHIVES 

Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: SAT 10/17/98
Section: RELIGION
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR

Renovare / CROSSING BARRIERS 
TO RENEW THE CHURCH

By CECILE S. HOLMES, Houston Chronicle Religion Editor
Staff

Imagine the impact if six streams of Christianity flowed together into one mighty Mississippi of spiritual renewal.

That's the image that organizers of "A Renovare, An International Conference of Spiritual Renewal" hope to impart across Houston. It builds on the understanding of best-selling author Richard Foster, who founded Renovare in 1988 and who sees a long-awaited coming together of Christians once separated by ideological and sociological differences.

"We are no longer getting our theology along the vertical bars of denominational loyalty, but across the horizontal bars of interdenominational connections," Foster said, "and so we can listen to each other in ways that haven't been true for a long time."

Foster, a Denver resident, is well-known among Quakers, evangelicals and other Christians. His newest book is ``Streams of Living Water'' (HarperSanFrancisco, $20). It identifies six central themes of understanding, emphasis and practice among Christians: contemplative, a prayer-filled life; holiness, a virtuous life stressing daily acts of goodness; charismatic, empowered by the Holy Spirit; incarnational, emphasizing God's daily presence in the sacraments and the Bible; evangelical, a "word-center life" focused on the Bible and personal faith testimony to others; and social justice, the compassionate life emphasizing service to others.

His approach grew out of his own searching and the self-defeating behaviors he identified in the church. "I saw people being scattered and not gathered. I saw that Christians were functioning in isolation from each other rather than as a community of people," Foster said. "I saw people with a myopic vision, a very narrow vision, rather than a synoptic vision of Christian life."

Broadening one's vision to grasp all of Christian tradition can deepen faith, Foster said. In Houston, that outlook is sparking an effort that bridges racial, ethnic and denominational boundaries as 47 Christian churches and organizations cooperate to build the spiritual foundation and practical network for the citywide Renovare conference next summer.

The Christian Gospel thrives in such cooperation with greater opportunities for faith to change lives, according to participating clergy and laity.

"Transformation takes place through individuals. But that is incomplete unless that moves into some sort of ministry or change of social structure," said the Rev. Martus Miley, pastor to about 550 members in River Oaks Baptist Church in southwest Houston.

"It's kind of like life in ICU (a hospital intensive care unit)," he said. "No one cares what your denomination is. They just want to know if you are in touch with God. Renovare breaks down the walls that separate people and provides through small group movements a practical strategy for experiencing Christian growth."

Renovare offers that balance, bringing together long-scattered pieces of the Christian puzzle. The work of another well-known Christian theologian and writer, Dallas Willard, will form the backdrop for the Houston meeting. Willard's book, ``The Divine Conspiracy'' (HarperSanFrancisco, $22), stresses that God intended Christians to live in an intimate, ongoing relationship with Jesus, modeling how they live from the Sermon on the Mount.

Renovare offers a fresh message, yet manages to remain true to the Christian tradition, said the Rev. Melvin Gray, rector of the 1,500-member Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in the Memorial area. "The thrust of this movement is to transform people from the inside out," Gray said.

"The phrase is not original with me, but I think that what Richard has a real gift for is being passionate about the middle, in this case maybe about what's at the heart of the matter," he said. "Instead of external issues, he is passionate about what it means for us to live a Christlike life. In Dallas Willard's book, the goal is for us to apprentice to Jesus, the master teacher. That is a different way of looking at what it means to be the church or to be an individual member of the church."

Renovare's leaders say its strengths include its outlook, which is broad enough but specific enough to work in the 21st-century congregation as envisioned by church growth experts.

The days when denominations dominated all of American Christianity may be over. Although there are still more than 300 Christian denominations in the United States, not all Christians feel particular denominational loyalty. Instead, churchgoers and the unchurched seek communities of faith that meet their needs. Renovare strives to help people see the best in each denomination and to celebrate each denomination's distinctive strengths.

To survive in the next century, the experts say, the church must offer believers meaningful worship, individualized small group experiences, a deep reverence for prayer and Scripture, and social and ethical principles applicable to each person and to the wider community.

Renovare incorporates those ideas into its philosophy and structure. Its goal is taking Christianity's best - from hard-driving Pentecostal preaching to contemplative Catholic prayer - and showing believers how to transform the world around them by changing their own lives. A 12-person team serves the nonprofit ministry.

Last year, 1,100 people from 114 churches and 14 traditions attended at regional Renovare meeting here.

Local churches continued to work together in the months that followed, building prayer groups, holding joint worship services and hoping to sponsor corporate outreach projects. Area leaders asked Foster and the team to return in 1999 for an international meeting, the first of its kind led by Renovare. Anglos, Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians will participate,

"Preparing for the event has deepened my insight and understanding and given me a balanced vision of the Christian faith and tradition," said Margaret Campbell, a member of Tallowood Baptist Church and Metro Houston Conference Coordinator.

"The contemplative tradition, the prayer-filled life, has opened up for me through Renovare," she said. "Baptists come from the Word-centered (Bible-centered) tradition," she said.

Sister Janice Bemowski, a hospital chaplain from the Catholic order, Our Lady of the Cenacle, says she has learned the value of praise in worship and prayer. Renovare enriches Christian experience, she said, by urging Christians to move beyond their own tradition and appreciate others "without trying to set one up as better than the other."

Planned for next summer at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the four-day conference's general morning sessions will focus on worship and teaching. Afternoons will be devoted to spiritual formation, or taking the information learned and weaving it into one's theology, values, ethics and lifestyle.

Long-range plans call for initiating a series of small formation groups, organized within local congregations or among like-minded individuals.

Four decades ago, many evangelical Christians who rarely worshipped together got an early taste of such cooperation in Billy Graham's crusades, which rely heavily on local church cooperation and organization across traditional barriers. His work proved an "important precursor" to current trends, Foster said.

"Now we're seeing a kind of flow that is very powerful," he said.

For example, in African-American churches there is often "a natural link between social justice and spiritual fervor," Foster said. "In the Hispanic community, evangelical passion is tied to a kind of celebrative worship and a great hunger for spirituality. In the Anglo community, we see both an evangelical stress on the primacy of Scripture and the importance of the Bible; and, in some cases, the contemplative tradition. Sort of a Thomas Merton approach."

But don't come to Renovare seeking a magic formula for effective Christian living.

"The reason this is difficult for us is that there is no system in the American sense of that word," Foster said. "The key to this is how to fall wondrously, hilariously in love with God. We describe what the kingdom of God looks like and how we become an apprentice to Jesus."

He hopes the meeting will prove the catalyst for forming 1,000 small Christian groups. Already local team members see it molding their religious life.

For 18 months, the Rev. Juanita Rasmus , co-pastor with her husband of St. John's United Methodist Church, a 3 ,000-member congregation near downtown Houston, has attended a small Renovare spiritual formation group.

"It's enabled me to have some accountability in this walk I profess to walk. It's one thing to go around wearing a T-shirt and asking: `What Would Jesus Do?' It's another thing for someone to ask you, week after week, how has God made himself known to you in the last seven days, how has God shown himself to you in your spiritual life and your devotions?" she said. "That's where the rubber really meets the road."

...

The Renovare Conference will be June 30-July 3 , 1999. Organizers hope to attract 7,000. Churches, groups and individuals are needed. Sponsoring churches generally give $250 (or an amount proportionate to the church's size) to $2,000. For more information, contact the local Renovare office at 713-784-7040.

 

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