Our movement has always been about change. It’s in our DNA as well as in our name. As times have changed, so have we, adapting our methods and message to meet new needs. Frank Buchman was an innovator of genius. He found a modern language, in the 1920s, to express the ageless truth of the Christian gospel. He adapted again in the late 1930s, as the world rushed towards war, with his message of moral and spiritual re-armament, a message addressed to all people of good will. These changes were not welcomed by all his friends. Some followed him, some chose different paths.
A quarter of a century ago, a new generation relaunched the idea of MRA as Initiatives of Change. Those initiatives, in many lands, have been as varied as they have been fruitful.
In the UK, as elsewhere, the movement has wrestled with the dilemmas and opportunities it inherited. What to do with substantial properties that had, in some cases, outlived their purpose? How to honour an aging cohort of people who had given long service, often without salary or pension provision? How to meet the professional expectations of the 21st century, in terms of employment, accountability and the new demands of charity law? How to be relevant, compelling and effective? How to communicate our message in the infinitely crowded digital market place of ideas?
Part of the answer, in Britain as elsewhere, has been the development of managed programmes, addressing particular needs and challenges, with salaried staff (This change, too, was not universally welcomed). Creators of Peace, in many countries, has drawn on Buchman’s tradition of small groups, enabling participants to reflect on deep experiences, as a path to personal and wider healing. In the UK, Refugees as Re-Builders followed a more educational model, training people who have lost everything to become agents of creative change.
Our new strategy will draw on the best of everything we have done, seeking fresh ways to express unchanging truths. After a careful process of strategic review, we have decided to move away from employing staff who run our own internal programmes. Instead we will operate as a grant-making charity, supporting many initiatives of change not directly managed by us.
We are doing this for two big reasons. The first is financial. If it is true that ‘where God guides, God provides’, it is surely also true that where God has provided, God must be our guide. We are the stewards of assets built up through decades of generous sacrifice. If we continue as we are, with significant annual deficit, these assets will disappear in a few years. Our responsibility is to protect them so that they grow and empower future generations for good work – even great work – in the Lord’s service.
The second reason to change our way of working is that we can learn from others to be even more effective. Some friends have asked if we plan to stop doing outreach. On the contrary, we want to find new ways to make a positive impact in challenging times. We believe we can be even more fruitful with a less structured, more collaborative approach.
What makes us so confident? We know that we are not alone in wanting to make a difference. There are all kinds of initiatives which seek to build a more just and peaceful world and to do so in ways rooted in the Christian principles which are our bedrock. Some of them are even better at this than we can claim to be.
We are still developing our new operating model but it will work something like this. Potential partners, with or without an IofC label, will apply to us for funding to support specific, fixed-term objectives. We will do the due diligence to ensure that we will only fund charities, programmes or projects which are perfectly aligned with our ethos and have the highest standards of governance and leadership. We will hold them accountable for the fruitful use of the help we provide, setting clear targets and engaging closely with them to monitor the quality of their work.
This means that without carrying the fixed costs of our own staff and being locked into long-running patterns of activity, we can use our resources flexibly, focusing funds from year to year where we believe they can create most benefit.
In this way, Initiatives of Change will reach out even more widely to address the needs of our times: to work – as Buchman did – with anyone who shares our goals and our values. Let’s remember that many of the best things to come out of Buchman’s legacy have not been owned by us, or carried our label. Alcoholics Anonymous had its origins in Buchman’s early experiments in pastoral group work, with the humble sharing of personal failure and acceptance of the need for a higher power. It has transformed the lives of millions, in all faith traditions and none. Or think of the post-war reconciliation between France and Germany, seeds of which were sown at Caux. Buchman did not ask Schumann and Adenauer to join MRA. He gave them the friendship and encouragement that helped them take immense, historic risks. More recently, consider the impact of the Balfour Project, which sprang from the moral conviction of a couple of individuals and has grown into a significant body, challenging the conscience of the nation on its legacy in Palestine. There is a big world in all kinds of crisis; we have resources and stories to share with it; but, if we are honest, our own skills and energies are limited. However, if we can learn to work with – and to learn from – others, we can be bigger and better than we are.
We will learn to be more outward-looking, connecting with aspects of society currently beyond our reach. We will be enriched by the wisdom of other groups and communities. With them we will find new, joyful ways to fulfil our foundational Christian aims.
There is nothing exclusive about this vision. We remain committed to working inclusively with people of many faiths, who share our principles. We will also deepen and strengthen our international commitments. Recent events at Greencoat Place, on justice in the Middle East and on freedom in Russia, have been shared with hundreds of people in many lands. Our podcast episodes include editions with Dave Belden in California, on restorative justice; with Andrew Dawson in Australia, on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his connections with the Oxford Group; and with Yukihisa Fujita, who has started a two-year research project at Oxford on democracy, particularly in Japan.
There is so much to look forward to. In all of this we need your prayers and the wisdom of all those willing to work with us to see this charity flourish.
