Reflection: The 2011 Inter-Presbytery Conference in Cardenas, Cuba

Last Updated (Wednesday, 20 April 2011 18:37) Written by John Walter Wednesday, 20 April 2011 18:21

Eighteen delegates from Baltimore Presbytery, and World Mission Division’s Regional
Liaison to the Caribbean, Jo Ella Holman, attended the January 2011 Inter-Presbytery
Conference held in Cárdenas, Cuba. From the Cuban side, pretty much all the pastors
and leaders of El Centro Presbytery attended, as they had in 2009. This was the second
such conference we have convened to present new faces, better know each other, and
engage in the business of creating a mutual vision by means of intense, week long
relationship building.

Sometimes the hard work of coming to understand and appreciate another culture’s
habits and history through the filter of two distinct languages seems like the single
most daunting challenge we face, one that because of its sheer size and complexity,
ultimately helps to keep humans separated despite our essential commonalities.
The amount of time required to assimilate and understand another culture is measured
in decades when one takes into account the few times per year we are in physical
contact with each other as mission partners. Nevertheless, what was particularly
inspiring (to me personally) about this last conference was a sense of preparedness
on behalf of both country’s delegates, to be ready to see and hear new ways to life
in faith and then to begin to use that input as a springboard to delve further into
the often pithy questions surrounding beginning and maintaining worthwhile
congregational partnerships. 

As a result, two Baltimore Presbytery churches are now looking at creating congregational
partnerships with El Centro’s churches. They are: Faith Presbyterian Church in Baltimore City
 – Meneses, Iguara; and First Presbyterian Church of Howard County – (to be decided) 
A more distant possibility is Bethel Presbyterian Church in Harford County choosing to
become congregationally engaged with a church in El Centro sometime in the future.
All three of these relationships will begin with much more circumspection and oversight
than did Ashland and Cabaiguan, who together agreed to work out the details of their
partnership verbally while in the process of creating it.


Being the convener of this growing set of partnerships has led me to carefully access my
own reactions to time and change, additions and subtractions. At the offset of Ashland
Presbyterian’s relationship with the IPRC Church in Cabaiguán over a decade ago, the
conversations were assessed in terms of “I and my”, a few people sitting here on the US
side discussing what was important to us using the first person singular in most of our
 observations, declarations, and suggestions. One imagines that the Cuban community
was experiencing something similar.

 Over time as visits and familiarity accumulated, the verb tense swung from the first person
singular to the first person plural; “we” are now in a position to act in concert, using “our”
accumulated mutual experiences and trust to assist in extending the small inter-congregational
family to a larger extra- congregational group.


This change presupposes an intense foundation laying period with lots of questions and
doubts, none of which will be resolved without having found en route, or for having
discovered at the very beginning, a mutually acknowledged interest (dare I say passion?)
between two key leaders whose self imposed - and one supposes rewarding - task is to
instruct each other while disseminating all of what’s learned to the broader congregation
on each side.

 Over the past decade I have studied how presbytery to presbytery partnerships begin, how
they develop or wither, and what mission models determine those outcomes. While this isn’t
the place to delve into such a discussion, one thing is abundantly clear: If the presbytery
partnership was founded on the mutual interests of two people, and one of those people
leaves or dies, the entire program may fall like a house of cards if personal has outweighed
broader collective interests.


Such was the case when Mairolet Vega defected from Cuba in 2009. She had been the
principal actor in the development of Ashland and Light Street’s as well as Baltimore
Presbytery’s partnership; and when she left, a huge vacuum shook the Cabaiguan church
as well as El Centro’s leadership. Gladly, Miriam Naranjo stepped into the void Mairolet
created; she has showed tireless leadership skills, imagination, and the vision to think of
partnership as a valueless asset.


In The Four Loves, C S Lewis defines friendship as the highest form of love, one that is based
on mutual interests and ideas; not like-love, admiration, or Eros, all of which contain traps
 and pit falls. Frienship celebrates individuality without jealousy, and would not betray for
emotional gain since friendship profits from diversity within the scope of its stated interests.

 Intimate and cohesive friendship is what we’re attempting to create in all stages and levels
of our mission model structure: Friends finding commonality through their faith lives, inviting
others as the spirit moves, and moving always outwards, rather than trying to preserve
through isolation.

“Extra-congregational group” means moving into an even broader definition of inclusivity
beyond the borders of both congregational and presbytery partnerships - but also inclusive
of the two; one that in the most immediate sense brings us into a new potentially global
ecumenical order.  


The World Alliance of Reformed Churches puts it this way:  

Church renewal, justice and partnership are supported by the following commitments:
1. Deepening the church’s understanding of partnership and addressing gender injustices
     in church and society.
2. Empowering women and young people to take their rightful place in church and society.
3. Supporting member churches in promoting human rights, emerging democracies and civil society.
4. Building education/awareness to ensure that the impact of the economy on women and young
     persons is considered in covenanting for justice.
5. Facilitating holistic theological reflections regarding justice in the economy and the earth.
6. Working with churches in worship renewal that values the Reformation ethos in today’s world.
7. Seeking to deepen spiritual renewal by including the experiences and gifts of young people and women.   

(from http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp?news_id=790&part_id=0&navi=33)

To our credit, I believe Baltimore and El Centro Presbyteries have already laid the foundation for
such conversations, though admittedly they are adjusted for local circumstances. I invite you to
join us in this work; there’s much to do.