The Priority and Practice of Church Reconciliation

Abstract

This dissertation is a work of practical ecclesiology with a focus on city Church unity from a Free Church perspective. It is a practice-led initiative which aims to distill theological insights from the experience of working with the TrueCity network of congregations in Hamilton, Ontario. It argues that congregations play a crucial role in how God deepens and enriches Church unity and that the relational space between congregations is a crucial locus where this happens through the development of intercongregational trust. This is at the heart of the process of Church reconciliation. The problem this dissertation addresses is how to best understand the way in which enriched unity developed between the congregations that have been part of the TrueCity network. The trust that has developed between these congregations has made Church unity a more tangible reality. The foundations for a theology of Church reconciliation are put forward highlighting the priority Church unity is given in the New Testament; looking at how Church unity is understood to be in process; laying out how the nature of the unity God intends is differentiated; and observing God’s call to join with him in his reconciling work, a key frontier of which is reconciliation within the Church. Through using a critical realist grounded theory methodology, a five-phase boundary spanning process theory is put forward which explains how intercongregational trust develops by prioritizing practices which embed trust in congregational cultures. When such inter-congregational trust is cultivated, the calling to pursue Church reconciliation is engaged. Understanding this boundary spanning process equips congregations to better join with the Spirit’s work of pursuing Church reconciliation in specific locales so that a more robust catholicity comes to characterize the Church in those places. One in which differentiated unity continually broadens the wholeness and deepens the fullness of the Church in a city.