By Phil Haslanger
Collaboration Project Story Team

Once upon a time - before the growth of evangelical and non-denominational churches, before the surge of people identifying with no particular religious tradition - an organization known as the Wisconsin Council of Churches was at the heart of connecting and representing mainstream Protestant denominations in this state. 

Today, it is at the heart of the movement among churches to connect in new ways, to not let the institutional and even theological differences that can divide people get in the way of finding ways to work together to serve the community - and to better reflect the ideals when people talk about the body of Christ.

Rev. Kerri Parker, the executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches since the fall of 2017, uses that metaphor of the body to underscore some of the new directions she and other church leaders are pursuing. She starts with some of the gaps of the past.

“I am acting as if this limb over here doesn’t matter,” she explained. “But scripture says it is part of the body. Over here, I have this other part of the body, but I really don’t have any idea how it operates. It looks a little funny to me, but it’s part of the body.”

That’s not good for the body, she noted. “For the body to be whole and healthy, I need to have a care for it, I need to know how it relates to the rest of the body, I need not to ignore it, I need not to pretend that it is not there.”

So in the past few years, building on some of the work of her predecessor, Rev. Scott Anderson who is now the pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Madison, along with the intent of the organization’s board of directors, Parker has worked to create what she called “a bigger table, a wider embrace” for the Council. 

One part of that involved bringing on Rev. Breanna Illéné as the Curator of Content and Ecumenical Innovation Coordinator - a job that includes building relationships with churches and church groups outside the normal mainstream Protestant orbit. (You can read the biographies of Parker and Illéné here.)

The genesis of Illéné’s hiring actually occurred at the 2019 Kingdom Justice Summit when Parker and Illéné were chatting during breaks about ways to increase collaboration between more mainstream Protestants and the wide array of Christian traditions represented in that room.

The Wisconsin Council of Churches traces its roots back to the 1930s, when some Milwaukee churches crossed denominational lines to meet some of the human needs during the Great Depression. By 1947, in the post-World War II era when congregations were facing new demands, eight Protestant denominations incorporated what is now the Wisconsin Council of Churches. Then and now, Parker pointed out, “It is too hard - especially in these times - to pretend that you can do it alone.” The work she is doing now, she said, “is a continuation of that legacy.”

The breadth of that legacy has grown. Where once it was traditional denominations like Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ and the Reformed Church in America, in more recent years it has brought in an African-American Pentecostal denomination and has official observers from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Dioceses of Green Bay and La Crosse. 

It has associate members that include the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, the Madison-area Urban Ministry, the Benedictine Women of Madison. Its members include the Coptic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, the Moravians and the Church of the Brethren, among others. (The complete list of members is here.)

The table had gotten wider. But where some of the divisions among parts of the Body of Christ remain is between the more mainstream denominations and the more evangelical and non-denominational churches. That was a gap Parker and Illéné hoped to bridge.

Illéné explained what propels her forward: “How do we learn from the diversity of the Body of Christ? Because if I only stay in my own little corner with the people who agree with me, the world is pretty boring and not reflective of the beauty and the vastness of God’s creation.”

She added, “I need those people who are going to challenge my theology because it makes my understanding of God more robust and more well-rounded.”

Parker recalled that a few months after she took over as executive director (previously, she was pastor at the United Church of Christ congregation in McFarland), she got a phone call from Adam Clausen, the senior leader at Life Center Madison, a non-denominational congregation with evangelical roots.  He had heard of the Council and wanted to know more. They met for coffee and at the end, Clausen asked if Life Center Madison could become a member.

“The Council had no mechanism for a single church to become a member,” Parker said. “We found a way to do that. This opened up possibilities because of the network of this one new member.”

When an organization wants to join the Council, either as a member or an associate or an observer, the Council’s Unity and Relations Committees reviews the request, then it goes to the board and finally to the membership at an annual meeting, 

 “It requires prayerful discussion at every stage,” Parker said.  Alignment with the Council’s mission “is really key to join the council.”

The Council describes itself this way: “Exercising holy imagination, we help one another make courageous choices that lead toward peacemaking, social and economic justice for Wisconsin’s most vulnerable residents, the vitality of the church, and the well-being of our neighbors.” 

The Council has a history of advocacy work, led by Peter Bakken, particularly around issues of poverty and gun violence, that could become an obstacle for some churches. But Parker and Illéné still seek ways to connect those disparate parts of the Body of Christ.

 “We have an obligation to get to know one another,” Parker said. “I know we’re not going to agree on everything and some of those disagreements are going to require some very, very deep conversations because they are not just surface disagreements about form. But that doesn’t excuse me from the obligation to explore some sort of relationship and the degree of the relationship that we can entertain.”

A while after Life Center Madison became a member, conversations were underway with 1HOPE in Kenosha, an organization that began five years ago when 30 churches in Kenosha began working together. It is now as an organization focus on community building, advocacy for those in need of services and a Foster Family Support Network. Last December, the annual meeting voted to bring in 1HOPE as an associate member of the Wisconsin Council of Churches. 

Parker said there is currently one application for membership before the Unity and Relations Commission, one waiting for its own leadership body to discuss membership and a third in what she described as the “curious” stage.

In the meantime, the work of the Council has been amplified by all the work it is doing around the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on faith communities. Its worked has served not only its own members but faith communities across the state and outside the borders of Wisconsin. It developed a resource guide for funerals and burials, for churches as the state begins to reopen activities, for ways to stream worship and much more. (The resources are all on this page.)

As part of the pandemic response, the Council has been hosting Zoom calls once a week where clergy can share ideas and concerns. It partners on a second call with the Collaboration Project that aims at reaching clergy who may not be part of the more mainstream denominations. The two groups have worked together to cross-promote things like the Council’s annual meeting and the Kingdom Justice Summit.

Jon Anderson, executive director of the Collaboration Project, noted that both organizations have been looking at ways to bridge some of the divides in the church in programmatic ways. He said he appreciates the Council’s willingness to experiment.

“We have built trust with different communities that are part of the same church,” Anderson said. “We have distinct missions that complement each other well.”

Parker talked about moving beyond the traditional church organizations headed by bishops or executive ministers to what she described as “newer expressions of church in order to embrace the fullness of the body and what the Holy Spirit is doing to meet the fullness of the needs of God’s people today.”

Or as Illéné said, “I see a lot of the work we are doing is leaning into the future.”

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