General Council 38 (2003)

A Short Interview with the Moderator-elect

By Jim Cairney

Encourage and be encouraged!

That was the theme of the United Church's Moderator-elect, the Rev. Peter Short, as he gathered his thoughts on his future the morning after his election, having clocked only about an hour's sleep.

"I care about congregational life -- that's what I've done all my life. So my job is to encourage the folks -- to tell us who we are -- to help us know there's no reason we shouldn't be proud of ourselves," said the Moderator-elect.

"Encouraging people is important to me. Courage is one virtue that makes all the others possible," said Short, who was elected on the fourth ballot August 12 by the 38th General Council meeting in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

He brings who he is, rather than any particular agenda, to his three-year term.

"I'm a spiritual leader and that's what I do. That's who I am and I have no particular program to offer," said the 55-year-old Fredericton, New Brunswick, minister.

"What I would like to do is to turn on the lights of our mission work, the critical work for justice, peace, reconciliation."

Short said one of the ways he wants to do this is by recapturing the language of faith and not abandoning it to those who use the words in ways that don't fit with who we are as the United Church.

"Our principal activity is not thinking, although that's important, it's going where [Jesus] has gone."

In his pre-election address to the Council, and in his morning conversation, he talked about victory as one example of recovering the language of faith:

"We need to be able to talk about victory without assuming we are talking about winning," he said. "We need to know that we belong to the victory of Christ. The victory doesn't belong to us. But we can belong to a victory.

"Our work for human rights and social justice has the heart to go on because we belong to that victory and we need to talk about it in that way," said the Moderator-elect.

For Short, victory is a word of encouragement: "The victory is a gift. Life is a victory; you don't always win. It's not something you have -- it's something you belong to, because it's a gift of the grace of God.

"It's the knowledge that there's a sustained source of life -- presence of life -- that is holding you. It doesn't all depend on you, and on your strength, and on your wits, and on your capacities.

"You belong to a victory that has been given in the life of Jesus Christ. You don't have to make it, but you do have a choice of whether or not you want to belong to it."

Short says United Church people need to take their lumps and know why they have to take their lumps.

"Most people have not been able to articulate in our gospel words why we are out there and getting involved in all this [sometimes controversial] stuff. My sense of all that is [it's] because we are following Jesus across the boundaries he is willing to cross.

"Our principal activity is not thinking, although that's important, it's going where he has gone," says Short.

"Jesus interprets me. I don't interpret him, as much as he interprets me. In that sense, I have crossed over. I belong to Christ, and He interprets who I am.

"It's a statement of the perception of my place in the world. It's God's world. I belong in it, because I belong to Christ."

Short explained the sense of call that ultimately led to his election:

"I've been asked to do this before and I've never had the sense that it was something that I ought to be doing. There was just no fit there -- no compelling sense in it.

"But this time -- having worked on the Executive, particularly as chair of the Business Committee of the Executive, and been very close to all the difficulties and all the challenges of the General Council Offices -- this time when someone asked me, somehow I just knew that I would not feel good about myself if I did not say yes to the church and to offer what I had to offer.

"I felt called to offer my name to the church, and I knew that was right. I did not feel called to the office of moderator, I felt called to offer my name amongst others so that the church could make its choice about who would hold in trust that office of moderator," said Short.

"The election of a moderator is not a question of meritocracy -- which candidate is the best. It's always a question of timing as commissioners look at the candidates, get a feel for who they are, and what they bring to the church at this time and to match up the context in which the church lives with the gifts that are being offered and ask themselves 'what time is it?' and then make a choice from there.

"It's a hard choice amongst good people," admitted Short.