Sharon Watkins M.Div. ’84, head of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), keeps an eye on the big picture—the work of healing brokenness in a world of bad news.
The first woman to lead a mainline Protestant denomination, Watkins is general minister and president of the Disciples, a 700,000-member church body that declares Christian unity a core value.
To lead such a church body in an era of global divisions and violence requires a certain resilience. But she learned something about hopefulness during her YDS days, especially from a favorite professor, the late theologian Letty Russell.
“Advent shock”
“Her understanding of ‘advent shock’ is still with me,” Watkins says. “It’s a powerful teaching: the idea of living in the world as if God’s reign is at hand, and having the discipline to recognize the signs. It means looking for a genuine sighting of the living God, who is making the world anew, and finding courage to live that way.”
The quest for a divinely infused unity—a human world made anew—keeps Watkins busy. Besides her denominational leadership, she is at the center of the contemporary ecumenical movement. She is chair-elect of the National Council of Churches’ governing board. In 2013, she was reelected to the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches.
Repairing the human family
As the 21st century unfolds, much about the ecumenical conversation has changed. More and more, she says, the meaning of unity focuses on repairing the human family, not just mending doctrinal fences. A series of interfaith conversations with Islamic leaders, for example, represents one of the World Council’s major projects.
“Ecclesial issues used to preoccupy us more,” she says. “Today the challenge of the ecumenical movement is the very brokenness of humanity itself: poverty, racism, violence. These are the fractures to be healed and made whole. I think we’re seeing a movement away from a primary focus on doctrinal issues and toward a focus on the movement of God, a movement of the spirit.”
Her 2014 book, Whole: A Call for Unity in Our Fragmented World (Chalice Press), articulates the Disciples’ mission of mercy and justice to a larger world weary of religious and sectional conflict.
“In the Disciples of Christ, we speak of unity for the sake of mission, for the sake of the world, the human family,” she says. “The world’s story is the story of God who made one human family and who asks us to help mend creation and each other.
“I hope Christians can say that: we are one family, and we should treat each other that way and show each other the love God gave us. There is something foundational in our love of God through Jesus Christ that unites us whether we agree doctrinally or not. We don’t make our unity. It’s already been created by God. Our job is to accept it.”
Fighting poverty
Earlier this year, Watkins was a signee of the most recent Circle of Protection statement, an anti-poverty effort that has the backing of more than 100 Christian leaders (YDS Dean Greg Sterling is one of them). They call on all the presidential candidates in the 2016 election season to create videos that spell out their own vision for eradicating hunger and poverty.
“We are praying for a president who will make ending hunger and poverty a top priority of his or her administration. Are you that leader?” a Circle of Protection statement says.
This follows the movement’s success during the 2012 election season, when Circle of Protection advocates persuaded President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney to release their own anti-poverty videos for wide distribution. Watkins says Circle of Protection efforts have helped win congressional favor for anti-poverty legislation, or at least ease the budget cuts that affect hunger programs.
A lifelong Disciple, Watkins was raised in Indianapolis, receiving an undergraduate degree in French and economics from Butler University there. She didn’t want to go into business or finance, the usual path after such training. Instead, she taught adult literacy for two and a half years as a Disciples missionary in Congo.
Discovering divinity school
Back in the U.S., she journeyed to Connecticut to enroll at YDS and the University of Connecticut with the intention of doing a graduate degree in social work. But she soon made the switch solely to the Divinity School, embracing its mission and community.
“What I saw at YDS was the church and the academy in genuine conversation,” she says. “I discovered that daily worship in chapel, with its great diversity of models, was central to me. I didn’t know it then but corporate worship would become my most important spiritual discipline.”
She met her future husband at YDS, Rick Lowery, who would become a biblical scholar at various Disciples-oriented seminaries. She also interned at a local congregation, a fateful turn for her.
“I had decided I better try parish ministry—and the experience made me realize I was coming home,” she says.
In 1984, the year she graduated, she was also ordained. Over the next 20 years she held various positions in Disciples of Christ life in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma. She served as a local pastor for eight years in Bartlesville, Okla., and in administrative positions at Phillips Theological Seminary and Phillips University, both in Enid, Okla.
In 2005 she was elected General Minister and General President of the Christian Church, winning re-election in 2011 to a second six-year term.
2020 vision
As the Disciples’ lead pastor and administrator, Watkins is overseeing an ambitious denominational church-growth initiative, 2020 Vision. Launched by predecessor Richard Hamm in 2001, it aims to form 1,000 new congregations by 2020, call new leaders to church transformation and work harder to overcome racism and other divisions.
In that time, 850 congregations have been started, about two-thirds of them flourishing. The effort has given Watkins insight into the dynamics of the broader church future in an unpredictable age of technological revolution and cultural shifts.
“In the future I think there will be fewer congregations that have their own building and pastor and programs, the norm for the 20th century. I see more storefront churches, more bi-vocational pastors, more house churches.”
She warns that the familiar narrative of decline surrounding mainline churches is too simple. The future will be more complicated than that, and more interesting.
“Decline is not the only story,” she says. “It’s also about metamorphosis and change and what church will look like at the other end of these times, and we don’t know yet. Neither do other Christian groups. Today is a time to figure out what we take with us, what we leave behind and what we invent.”