Reconciliation?

Last night our church held a Reconciliation Service to which all former members of the church were invited. Over the past number of years quite a few people had left the church, often with a fair degree of hurt on both sides. Several former members did attend, and many conversations normal to the "meeting of once old friends after a long time" ensued. Many commented on how this had been "a lovely service" or "a wonderful gesture."

The genesis of the idea for such a service resided in the concept of a continuing cycle of corporate sin -- a cycle that would continue unless broken by an act of confession and repentance. Other churches had accomplished such a break by holding a Reconciliation Service, so why not try it?

I don't know how many people outside the leadership really understood what was behind the original idea. I suspect that most understood that the purpose of the Reconciliation Service was for us to build into the lives of those who had left, and to bless them in whatever congregations they had gone to. If that was one's understanding, then I'm sure it had indeed been "a lovely service" or "a wonderful gesture." And I'm sure that many people were indeed blessed as a result.

For my part however, the exercise actually became a source of considerable discouragement. I had become more and more convinced that the root sin in the cycle was a refusal to speak openly about matters of disagreement or pain. Instead of speaking openly and honestly, the pattern was to pretend that things were all fine and only to hint at the pain or disagreement below the surface. A further consequence of this habit of hinting at the issue, is that those who speak in such a way also listen in such a way. That is, they hear not what is being said in straightforward manner, but what they perceive to be the subtext being hinted at -- whether or not there really is such a subtext, or even if there is, whether or not they've guessed at it even remotely close to the mark. This, of course, leads to cycles of greater misunderstanding and offense, until either things boil over in a messy fight, or more often, in one party just disappearing from the fellowship.

While it is really impossible to have a full and frank articulation of all the accumulated hurt and disagreement, with all the manifold forms which it would have taken over the years, in a large public service, the explicit comments that "we do not want to get into specifics" just seemed out of place to me. However, the biggest letdown came at the core of the service, with the Act of Confession. This was a written response piece, which is somewhat atypical for our free form style, but the content was quite appropriate for the occasion. However, the guts of the confession was spoken not by the people, but only by the leader. Rather than the people actually vocalizing the words of confession, they only responded "Forgive us, O Lord." to what the leader, as priest, confessed on their behalf. But what really struck me as completely out of place was that the leader chosen for this central action in the service was a complete newcomer -- he had been among us for about two weeks. How could his speaking "We confess ..." really connect us to our sin?

Had we really made an action of confession and repentance that would break the cycle of corporate sin? Or had we just repeated that old pattern of pretending we had dealt with the issue so that everything would now be rosy, while all the time really just skirting the issue? Did anything that was done encourage in us a desire and determination to henceforth listen and speak to each other openly and honestly about matters of disagreement and pain? Or did it just give us another reason to keep on in the old mode? I wonder.

I would like to be able to believe that something of future value in breaking that old past cycle was accomplished last night. But I really do wonder.