Michael Jagessar & Lawrence Moore interview: Getting ready to take risks
Kay Parris meets up with Michael Jagessar and Lawrence Moore, moderators elect of the United Reformed Church General Assembly
When the names Lawrence Moore and Michael Jagessar were announced as moderators elect at the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church in July 2010, someone was heard to comment: “Mmm, not a safe pair of hands between them – we’re in for an interesting ride!”
Neither Lawrence, who is director of the URC’s Windermere training centre, nor Michael, currently URC secretary for racial justice and intercultural ministry, were surprised to learn of this reaction.
They hail respectively from Zimbabwe and Guyana. Lawrence was born into a Presbyterian household, while Michael is the product of multiple religious heritages, including Islam and Hinduism as well as Christianity. As relative latecomers to the URC, says Michael: “It’s like you have a sense of the history, but you are not part of that history.” Lawrence comments: “We both come with passions that we’ve brought from other contexts. And with a deep sense of what the church can be, as well as what it is.”
They seem to like the idea that they might rock the boat a little during their two years in office, which begin at the next General Assembly in July 2012. “Risk for me is what the faith is all about,” Michael points out. And both are determined they will find new ways to get the URC talking honestly and dynamically – in order to engender more trust and more hopefulness within the church.
The chosen theme for their moderatorship is “For Christ’s Sake” – a theme that conveys urgency, they hope, while challenging the denomination to embrace afresh the purpose of its mission. The sub-theme, which they return to again and again during our interview, will be “Living Conversations”.
Why are you both so keen to get these “Living Conversations” underway in the church?
LM: I think we are at the stage where we are realising some of the implications of the changes we made in getting rid of districts and moving to biennial assembly. I think the radical welcome campaign has exposed those, because it was the first difficult thing to come to the church after the changes. It was clear that communication was really hampered. It is difficult now to get the same piece of information to everyone in the church. But more than that, those conversational spaces are where trust is built.
Trust is not big in URC culture – we don’t trust each other easily, but when that is put under further strain, the conciliar process breaks down. The church needs to take risks, and that means it needs to build trust and have real conversations about real issues.
So URC people don’t trust each other easily?
MJ: It’s not just in the URC, it’s a cultural thing in wider society at the moment as well. We want to develop how we deepen the habit of trust, as critical to living that life that God has called us to in Christ. We may differ here in that – perhaps the conciliar process has been tested with radical welcome, but I think it has been tested before too.
For instance when the church declared itself a multicultural church, it was already saying: we are radically welcoming, but not everybody bought into it. So you have the conciliar process working for some things but then not working for others, when it gets too risky.
This is an extract from the December 2011 issue of Reform.
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