Karen Ward campus residency

Oct 20, 2008

Rev. Karen Ward enlightens and empowers Southwest community

 

The Rev. Karen Ward brought the faith-based, innovative world of Church of the Apostles (COTA) in Seattle to the campus of Seminary of the Southwest during mid-October.

During a four-day residency on campus, Pastor Ward talked about the church – the youngest mission congregation in the Episcopal Church – where its 170 members focus on God, Self, Community and the World in their own 98103 zip code and within one of the most un-churched cities in the United States.

Often described as an exemplary Emerging Church and “New Wave Byzantine Digital Orthodox,” COTA is “traditional yet relevant to today. We are rooted in ecclesiology, theology and missiology and speak the Gospel into the culture,” said Ward. “We are servants of the Reign of God and the apostolic center for Jesus Christ in the center of our universe.”

“Abbess Ward enlightened and empowered the Southwest community during her days with us. She lives out a wonderful blend of devotion to our faith traditions with an abiding commitment to make the church newer in our changing culture,” said the Very Rev. Douglas Travis, seminary dean and president.

Ward’s residency offered seminarians many chances to be with her. “ Karen's creativity and enthusiasm is infectious and even those who may be more comfortable with the tried and true will be gently pushed to share her vision for growth for Gen X/Y populations that has been largely untapped in many major denominations,” said Beryl Kenney, a special student.        

“Karen Ward brings poignant insight into what we can do to draw new people into the church. Her work does not stop there, she goes further by feeding new and old Christians with deep theo logical and sacramental significance that is lived out in the liturgy of her community. God bless Karen and her community at Apostles Church,” said Billy Tweedie, a senior from the Diocese of Texas.

Terming Ward’s residency “a blessing,” Lisa Mason recalled visiting Church of the Apostles two years ago. “Young people were engaging the Gospel with a deep level of commitment to learn what it means to be the Church in the world,” said Mason, a senior from the Diocese of West Texas.

She is one of five prominent women religious leaders to come to Southwest in the past two years. Phyllis Tickle, Diana Butler Bass, Barbara Brown Taylor and Dr. Amy-Jill Levine spoke on campus before Abbess Ward.

Tucked between two downtown universities, the six-year-old joint Episcopal and ELCA mission – www.apostleschurch.org – draws many students (average parish age 26) and 25 seminarians are congregants. Emphasizing the congregation’s monastic roots while reaching out to its Fremont neighborhood, the church located along Fremont Avenue is known as Fremont Abbey.

Replicating what the congregation did when it was first housed in a storefront business, the Abbey Art Center was created within the church and opened to the neighborhood for a variety of daily music concerts, yoga and art classes. “The space is well used by the community and gives me the evangelistic opportunity to talk with folks who often do not realize they are in a church,” said Abbess Ward, who coordinates the Commission on Emerging Mission for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. The abbey plans to open a café soon to further welcome the neighborhood. “We are here to help our community by being a part of our community,” Ward said.

Fremont Abbey offers daily prayer both in the church and online, in addition to church services planned by congregants and podcasts from its website. The Abbey is beginning to baptize babies of mission members and two ordinations have taken place.

Abbess Ward eschews the term “Emerging Church.” “I hope it goes away soon. Contextual Church is a much better name,” she said. A Lutheran seminary graduate and ordained pastor, she worked in the Lutheran Church Center in Chicago for ten years before being drawn to emergent ministry. Ward, who will be welcomed into the Episcopal Church later this fall, is the founder of Anglimergent – termed “a generative and generous fellowship among Anglicans engaging emerging church and mission – online at www. anglimergent.org.

 

Southwest seminarians reflect on their time with Karen Ward

“Karen's creativity and enthusiasm is infectious and even those who may be more comfortable with the tried and true will be gently pushed to share her vision for growth for Gen X/Y populations that has been largely untapped in many major denominations.” – Beryl Kenney, special student.

“Kathy Ward brings poignant insight into what we can do to draw new people into the church. Her work does not stop there, she goes further by feeding new and old Christians with deep theological and sacramental significance that is lived out in the liturgy of her community. God bless Karen and her community at Apostles Church.” – Billy Tweedie, senior from the Diocese of Texas.

 “Karen Ward has much to offer in her experience and knowledge of the current dynamics in a mainline denomination. Her ministry at COTA also has a lot to offer in regards to lay ministry empowerment and an incarnational presence in community. I worshipped at COTA almost two years ago, and the experience continues to linger in my mind as a powerful witness to an intentional presence of Christ in the world. Young people were engaging the Gospel with a deep level of commitment to learn what it means to be the Church in the world! Her visit has been a blessing.” – Lisa Mason, senior from the Diocese of West Texas.

 

 

 

Southwest pre-residency publicity

 

Emergent Church Leader Karen Ward

in residence on Southwest campus

 

Rev. Karen Ward is Abbess/Vicar of Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Wash., (www.apostleschurch.org) an “intentional, sacramental community in the way of Jesus Christ.” Karen also coordinates the Commission for Emerging Mission for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, WA, and is the founder of Anglimergent, “a generative and generous friendship among Anglicans engaging emerging church and mission,” online at www.anglimergent.org.

 

During her stay she will present classroom talks on the Emergent Church, her Seattle church and implementing lay ministry programs and preach during the Friday chapel service.

 

Writer-in-residence Greg Garrett (Class of 2007) on the Emerging Church

 

The emerging church movement (also variously known as emergence and the emergent church) has grown into an energizing force in contemporary Christianity. Major figures like authors and speakers Brian McLaren, Chris Seay, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones have led what emergents like to call a "conversation" on how to do ministry and pursue Christianity in a postmodern, post-denominational, and sometimes even post-Christian culture.

 

McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy in particular has been cited by many as a reliable guide to what the emerging church might be. Emergent communities tend to be contextual, growing up around the needs and passions of their communities. They tend to be relational, to value narrative and beauty, to encourage questions rather than enforcing dogma, and to embrace practice as more important than simple belief.

 

Generationally, emerging Christians tend to be Busters or Mosaics, from teens to those in their forties. Some emergents are refugees from another faith tradition; others have first come to faith through the emergent communities of which they have become a part.

 

Karen Ward, the "abbess" of the Church of the Apostles in Seattle, is another of the major figures in the emergent church movement. Although there is probably no such thing as a "typical" emerging church congregation, Apostles Church could certainly be thought of as representative: COTA describes its worship as “neither ‘traditional’ (50's) nor ‘contemporary’ (60's-80's) but ancient-future (today).

 

Ancient-future worship speaks to postmodern generations and draws equally upon ancient (hymns, chant, candles, communion) and techno-modern (alt. rock, art, ambient, projection, video) sources.” (“Ancient/future” is a phrase often employed in the emergent conversation to explain the pull both backward toward historic creeds, liturgies, and symbols, and forward to alternative and electronic music, video installations, and interactive websites.)

 

The emerging church remains just that--it does not yet command huge resources or institutional structures (and both are antithetical to the decentralized and localized focus of emergence)--but has already begun to influence both evangelical and mainline churches, who are hoping to incorporate some of the lessons of emergence into their own worship and practice.

 

While traditional churches are expected to continue to worship and work in the years to come, emergence is expected to exert a larger and larger influence on American Christian life, with author and religious sociologist Phylis Tickle estimating in her new book The Great Emergence that eventually around 60 percent of American Christians will be identifiable as emergent or some clear variant thereof.

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