"Can a congregation based on a community of special concern develop a
ministry of racial reconciliation which both contributes to needed
social change and relates helpfully to the ministries of other
congregations?" Such was the thesis to be tested by the experimental
congregations within the Ohio Synod of the United Presbyterian Church.
The Dayton experiment clearly failed to provide an affirmative answer.
In response to this conclusion in an earlier report, church
administrators in Dayton urged us to examine the experimental
congregation created from the same planning documents in the Cincinnati
Presbytery.
On paper, the two congregations appear nearly identical: city-wide,
nonresidential, and testing the same thesis. The same name, the
Congregation for Reconciliation, was given to reinforce their raison
d'etre. Yet, as they emerged, the two experimental missions presented
striking differences. While the Dayton group succeeded in contributing
to social change on the civic level, it failed to relate helpfully to
the ministries of other congregations. The Cincinnati mission,
contrariwise, functioned as interpreter and endorser of social change to
other congregations while dealing in little direct secular social
action. It tested the thesis successfully, lived out its experimental
time span, and died peacefully.
How can two experimental congregations, developed from the same design,
mature in such different ways? In chapter 3 we argued that the planners,
the organizing pastor, and the charter members all made important
contributions to the evolution of the Dayton organization. The
character, personality, and mission of
the congregation were molded by the priorities, skills, and style of its
three parents interacting within the limitations of environment and
happenstance. The two experiments had only one parent in common and
adapted to different community environments. In this sense, similarity
would have been more surprising than disparity. Yet it is important for
church leaders to understand how such totally different realities can
and did emerge from the same paper-and-pen plan.
