An Open Letter to Rev. Dr. Doug Harvey, Executive Director, Disciples Heritage Foundation

(The following letter was emailed to Rev. Dr. Doug Harvey, the executive director of the Disciples of Christ spinoff organization Disciples Heritage Fellowship, which was formed from the network of pastors that founded the conservative Disciples Renewal movement in 1985, one year prior to my birth.  Despite my significant doctrinal differences with DR and DHF (especially regarding gay and lesbian persons), I have never felt any immediate need to reprove them...until now.  -E.A.)

Rev. Dr. Harvey:

You probably don’t know who I am, and that’s okay.  I am one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pastors of small Disciples of Christ churches throughout the country to whom you mailed postcards recently encouraging our churches to join your Disciples Heritage Fellowship, the phoenix organization that arose from the ashes of your evangelical Disciples Renewal movement that was ended ten years ago, when you and the Disciples Renewal movement decided that the only thing left for you to do was to leave the Disciples of Christ denomination.

I am writing to you as a younger pastor within the Disciples of Christ who does not adhere to many of the earlier ways of the church.  Even though Disciples are a noncreedal denomination (which I like), I want us to be more deliberate in articulating exactly what it is we believe.  I wish we would jettison preaching from a lectionary, I wish we were more aggressive in our branding and marketing efforts, and I wish we weren’t so afraid of evangelism in a variety of forms.  Believe me, there is a lot about the denomination I belong to that I wish I could change.

But you know what I really wish?

I really wish that other, more seasoned pastors like you would stop being so disingenuous with us.

The postcard you sent me contained this particular gem: “We do not encourage churches to stay or leave the Disciples of Christ denomination.”

If this is so, then why does the DHF website offer its visitors a twelve-page eBook of interviews with, and articles about, former Disciples pastors and churches entitled, “Why We Left?”

If this is so, then why does the DHF website also offer its visitors a thirty-page eBook entitled “In or Out?” that claims to be advice for churches discerning withdrawal from the Disciples, but the middle section (pp 13-17) reads not as advice for congregations, but as a list of grievances against central Disciples leadership?

If this is so, then why do you take gratuitous shots at the declining size of the denomination in an article about Disciple Renewal’s closing, as though to say that others are joining you?  (By the way: in the past two years, our monthly average worship attendance has nearly doubled, and we have added two Sunday School classes and an additional Bible study class.  FCC Longview is living proof that a church can grow in both numbers and spirit within the Disciples.)

And if this is so, why are you sending out these postcards to begin with?  Are you hoping that this is your version of Inception, where you are Leonardo DiCaprio planting the tiniest version of an idea in my head that you are hoping and praying will grow into me deciding, against my best interests, to lead the congregation I love out of the denomination that has raised the both of us?

So please, sir, forgive my immense skepticism when I read the line, “We do not encourage churches to stay or leave the Disciples of Christ denomination.”  It certainly feels like you do, and if so, I think it is necessary to call a spade a spade, especially considering that in this same postcard, you lay claim to the mantle of our shared Stone-Campbell heritage: “We are a fellowship of churches committed to the Campbell/Stone core values of biblical faith and unity around that faith.”

Unity around faith is indeed a core Stone-Campbell value: Barton W. Stone famously exhorted us to “let Christian unity be our polar star.”  What then, exactly, is unifying about attempting to sow seeds of discord within the Disciples denomination?  On a local level, many pastors rightfully decry “sheep stealing” (a term that I actually find troubling, since my congregants are my faith family, not my “sheep,” but have yet to find a better equivalent), the practice of one church actively trying to recruit members from another church in town.  How is what you and DHF doing any different, except on a larger scale?  Instead of actively recruiting members of another church, you are actively recruiting members of another organization to join your own.

So please, sir, spare me the platitudes that you represent unity in the name of the Stone-Campbell movement.  Unifiers do not try to incite the rank-and-file to desert.  And please, spare me the postcards and any other active attempts you may make at trying to get me and my church to abandon the denomination that we have considered to be home for 85 years, if for no other reason than self interest in that it reflects poorly upon you and your organization.

And finally, I gently exhort you in Christ to please engage in prayerful self-reflection over whether or not your current ministry is, in fact, living up to the ideals of not only the Stone-Campbell movement but also of the very Bible itself, whose truth you, like me, profess to love and hold firm to.  For, as Paul writes in Ephesians 4:

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all…We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”

I, for one, will have no part in being tossed to and fro by every wind of DHF’s doctrinal differences with the Disciples.  Please do not send such wind in my direction again.

Sincerely in Christ,

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Pastor, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Longview, Washington