Ecumenical Reception: a Cinderella Discipline?

I wrote about ecumenical reception  about a year ago and I return to it for just one post.  This links with recent posts about the Global Christian Forum  and its implications for local ecumenism.

A helpful text about ecumenical reception is Ecumenical Reception: Its Challenge and Opportunity  by William G Rusch.  It is rather dry although persistence might reward the reader with a few interesting insights.

It is important not to confuse ecumenical reception with receptive ecumenism .  I wrote a post a year ago making a distinction between these two and a third   type of reception I called 'transformative reception'  where I can see a gap in the thinking.  So:

1. Receptive ecumenism is between Christian traditions, where participants identify weaknesses in their own tradition and seek solutions in others.
2. Ecumenical reception is within traditions and is the way in  which local churches receive changes brought about through ecumenical councils.
3. Transformative reception is where the churches together receive from the non-Christian world, eg conversations with science.

My first point follows on from my last post , about participative approaches to ecumenism.  The traditional idea of reception, started within traditions.  A Council of some church will make a decision and then there is the question of how this would be received by its constituent churches.  Reception will depend upon the ecclesiology of that tradition, but is a problem even for those churches with a congregationalist ecclesiology, as many issues relate to their identity as a tradition.

Ecumenical reception complicated traditional reception by adding the possibility that some councils will be ecumenical. 

There is a possibility reception will be practiced as top down.  I suspect most churches perceive it as top down although the reality must be that it is two way.  Local churches encounter some new issue and ask for guidance.  An answer is passed down after deliberation in the councils of the church.  This pattern must have been repeated many times.  Sometimes without any real discussion between the church authorities and local churches.

This one way model of reception may have little mileage left in it.  People want to engage with authority.  Some traditions might be content with a top down approach.  However, I suspect challenges come at them from many directions these days and some sort of dialogue will inevitably take place even if it is not acknowledged as such.

This model is challenged not only by a desire on the part of some for dialogue but also by the nature of modern ecumenism.

Ecumenical reception implies a relatively small number of traditions all of which look for guidance from the councils of their own tradition or ecumenical councils.

But what happens where the local church includes many small groups with no presence in ecumenical councils?  They may be local churches with no council to participate with others nationally but also they may have no desire to participate in ecumenical councils.

This may be the beginning of a new paradigm for ecumenism.  How do we decide together as local churches, when only some of us belong to organised traditions?  Christians will want to make decisions together and will need to work out how to do it for themselves.  They will also expect Christians working at national or global levels to be working on the same issues.  There is no question of national or international councils telling local churches what to do but there needs to be some way to communicate and debate the issues at all these levels.