I had just graduated from college and married to Kathy in the summer of 1980. I was an "intern associate pastor" at my home congregation in Dayton, Ohio. I came back from my honeymoon (a road trip to romantic Kansas City, with a return via Hannibal, MO), and the senior pastor left for five weeks for General Assembly, and then vacation.

The first week was Vacation Bible School -- with a "hired program" that I knew nothing about. We somehow survived. But what I really remember was a visit from Rev. James Hudson, the regional director of Central America at the time. Dr. Hudson had just come from the General Assembly. The 1980 General Assembly approved the internationalization of the Church of the Nazarene. Dr. Hudson had been one of the key architects behind the move to internationalization. I was intrigued. During a meal in our little apartment, he admitted that he had taken the model for this agenda from Roman Catholicism. To this day, I don't know any other Christian disciplined community that seeks to live in the same ruled polity other than the Church of the Nazarene and Roman Catholicism. In other words, while Nazarenes speak of "internationalization", this is a translation from its historical roots within "catholicity." I have never forgotten this, and even wanted to deepen these commitments. I have come to understand that one cannot separate the church's internationalization/catholicity from other signs of its catholicity -- the sacraments, Scripture, ecumenical Creeds, the lives of the saints -- and its catholicity is the end time gathering of persons from every tribe and every nation as we witness now to the kingdom now present until it comes in its fullness.

It seems to me that unless the Church of the Nazarene can adopt catholicity in the second sense above, it will be doomed to fail in its internationalization, for the national, cultural, linguistic factors all lead to fragmentation, or the reduction of the various parts of the church to an "interest politics." With this in the background, three items from the General Assembly come to mind.

First, the General Assembly rejected, with no one speaking for the motion, to require baptism before one is admitted into church membership. This places church membership in the Church of the Nazarene as a more basic initiatory rite than baptism. Not only does this violate the membership ritual itself, it severs the Church of the Nazarene for its anchorage in the sacraments (not to mention the words of Jesus). It shows the inability of the church to think outside the heritage given by Charles Finney who believed that the "mourners bench" was the same as baptism. It shows the Church of the Nazarene's schismatic (even, in Finney's case, heretical) origins in revivalism and subjective anthropological experience, and its fundamental struggles to find an ecclesiology.

Second, the General Assembly unanimously changed the name of the "General Rules" to something like "The Covenant of Christian Character." This again shows how the church has forgotten its story, its origins. Within a liberal society, a "rule" is a restriction of individual freedom -- the ability to choose what one wants. But within the history of the church catholic, a rule is a monastic-type discipline for a very different type of freedom -- submitting to certain formative practices to allow one to live holy lives. The phrase had survived over 250 years from John Wesley's "Rule for the United Societies" that drew upon this monastic tradition for his Methodist Societies. By changing the title, the General Assembly drifted farther from the perfectionist heritage that we represent. It moved us farther from a genunine catholicity, and our movement within the church catholic to remind the church of the importance of sanctification and Christian perfection.

Finally, in the assembly, a resolution was passed by about a 7 to 1 margin that said that the leadership of the church should reflect the diversity of the church through the world. Then the Assembly elected to General Superintendents from the same congregation -- three now have their origins in Olathe College Church. It shows that the intent of the church to internationalization is there, but that the church has not been sufficiently formed in order to live out its intent. I want to suggest that the only means of being adequately formed to live out the Church of the Nazarene's intent is to recover a rich sense of internationalization as a sign of the church's catholicity. But to do this means that church leaders are going to have to give up understanding themselves as a Protestant denomination.

What I'm afraid that the early visionaries of internationalization didn't understand is that one cannot just lift the Roman Catholic polity from its theology and heritage. Internationalization is not merely a means of the church's practical administration, but a sign of the integrity of its theological witness.

Benedict XVI had a wonderful sermon for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul last week. While ultimately collapsing catholicity into a doctrine of the Chair of Saint Peter (though recognizing that the Eastern Orthodox have a different understanding of what this entails), the sermon is worth reflecting upon by those with any interest in the Church of the Nazarene, and those interested in internationalization. The following excerpt is lifted from zenit.org/english:

The feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul is at once a grateful memorial of great witnesses of Jesus Christ and a solemn confession in favor of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. It is above all a feast of catholicity. The sign of Pentecost -- the new community that speaks in all tongues and unites all peoples in one people, in one family of God -- became a reality.

Our liturgical assembly, in which are gathered bishops from all parts of the world, people of many cultures and nations, is an image of the family of the Church spread over the whole earth. Strangers have become friends; beyond all borders, we recognize ourselves as brothers. With this, the mission of St. Paul has been fulfilled, who knew how "to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles ... so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:16).

The aim of the mission is a humanity that has itself become a living glorification of God, the true worship that God expects: This is the most profound meaning of catholicity -- a catholicity that has already been given to us and toward which we must continue to orient ourselves. Catholicity does not express only a horizontal dimension, the coming together of many people in unity; it also expresses a vertical dimension: only by turning our gaze to God, only by opening ourselves to him can we truly become only one.

Like Paul, Peter also came to Rome, the city that was the place of convergence of all peoples and which precisely because of this could become the first of all expressions of the universality of the Gospel. Undertaking the journey from Jerusalem to Rome, Peter surely felt himself guided by the voices of the prophets, by the faith and by the prayer of Israel.

Also a part of the proclamation of the Old Covenant is, in fact, the mission to the whole world: The People of Israel were destined to be light to the Gentiles. The great psalm of the Passion, Psalm 21, whose first verse "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus pronounced on the cross, ended with the vision: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him" (Psalm 21:28). When Peter and Paul came to Rome the Lord, who invoked that psalm on the cross, was risen; this victory of God would now have to be proclaimed to all peoples, thus fulfilling the promise with which the psalm concluded.

Catholicity means universality -- multiplicity that becomes unity; unity that still remains multiplicity. From Paul's word on the universality of the Church we already saw that part of this unity is the capacity of peoples to overcome themselves, to look toward the one God.

The true founder of Catholic theology, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, expressed this link between catholicity and unity in a very beautiful way: "This doctrine and this faith the Church, disseminated throughout the world, guards diligently, forming almost one single family: the same faith with only one soul and one heart, the same preaching, teaching, tradition as if having one voice. Churches of Germany do not have a different faith or tradition, as neither do those of Spain, of Gaul, of Egypt, of Libya, of the East, of the center of the earth, as the sun creature of God is only one and identical in the whole world, so the light of true preaching shines everywhere and enlightens all men who wish to come to the cognition of truth" ("Adversus Haereses" I, 10,2).

The unity of men in their multiplicity became possible because God, this one God of heaven and earth, showed himself to us; because the essential truth of our life, of our "from where?" and "to where?", became visible when he showed himself to us and in Jesus Christ made us see his face, himself. This truth of the essence of our being, of our living and our dying, truth that by God was made visible, unites us and makes us become brothers. Catholicity and unity go together. And unity has a content: the faith that the apostles transmitted to us on behalf of Christ.

[. . .]

We said that the catholicity and the unity of the Church go together. The fact that between them the dimensions are rendered visible to us in the figures of the holy apostles, indicates to us already the subsequent characteristic of the Church: she is apostolic.

What does this mean? The Lord instituted Twelve Apostles, just as twelve were the sons of Jacob, indicating to him by this as tribal head of the People of God that, having now become universal, from now on comprises all the peoples. St. Mark tells us that Jesus called the apostles "to be with him, and to be sent out" (Mark 3:14). It seems almost a contradiction. We would say: Either they are with him or they are sent and undertake the journey.

[. . .]

The Church is apostolic because it confesses the faith of the apostles and seeks to live it. It is a unity that characterizes the Twelve called by the Lord, but there exists at the same time continuity in the apostolic mission. In his first letter St. Peter described himself as an "elder" with the elders to whom he was writing (5:1). And with this he expressed the principle of the apostolic succession: the same ministry he had received from the Lord now continues in the Church thanks to priestly ordination. The Word of God is not only written but, thanks to the testimonies that the Lord in the sacrament has inserted in the apostolic ministry, remains a living word.

[. . .]

In this hour of the world, full of skepticism and doubts but rich in the desire for God, we acknowledge again our common mission to witness together Christ the Lord and, on the basis of that unity that is already given to us, to help the world believe. And we entreat the Lord with all our heart to guide us to full unity so that the splendor of the truth, which alone can create unity, will again become visible in the world.

Today's Gospel speaks to us of the confession of St. Peter from which the Church took her beginning: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). Having spoken today of the one, catholic and apostolic Church, but not yet of the holy Church, we wish to recall at this moment another confession of Peter pronounced in the name of the Twelve at the hour of the great abandonment: "We have believed, and have come to know, that you are the holy one of God" (John 6:69).

What does it mean? Jesus, in the great priestly prayer, talks about consecrating himself for the disciples, alluding to the sacrifice of his death (John 17:19). With this Jesus expresses implicitly his function of true Supreme Priest who realizes the mystery of the "Day of Reconciliation," no longer only in the substitutive rites, but in the concreteness of his own body and blood. The word "the holy one of God" in the Old Testament indicates Aaron as Supreme Priest who had the duty to accomplish the sanctification of Israel (Psalm 105:16; see Sirach 45:6). Peter's confession in favor of Christ, whom he declares the holy one of God, is in the context of the Eucharistic discourse, in which Jesus announces the great Day of Reconciliation through the offering of himself in sacrifice: "The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (John 6:51).

Thus, in the background of this confession, is the priestly mystery of Jesus, his sacrifice for all of us. Better still, it is always sanctified again by the purifying love of Christ. Not only has God spoken: He has loved us very realistically, loved us to the point of his own Son's death. It is precisely from here that we are shown all the grandeur of the revelation that has the wound inscribed in the heart of God himself. Now each one of us can say personally with St. Paul: "the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Let us pray to the Lord so that the truth of this word will be profoundly imprinted, with its joy and responsibility, in our hearts; let us pray so that irradiated by the Eucharistic celebration, it will become ever more the force that shapes our lives.