The Confessions of an Ecu-Maniac

I grew up during the hard-scrabble times of the Great Depression. My biggest pay was $1 a day, shocking wheat or pitching hay. But usually I received no pay for we worked as neighbors, helping each other. Our community, farm and town, was made up of Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, those of other faith groups, and those with no declared faith.
We took no thought of doing things together - threshing, banking, baling hay, filling silos, shopping, going to school, fighting Fires and grasshoppers, or pitching in to help in a crisis. It was the natural, logical and common sense thing to do. We survived because we did things together. On Sundays we split our ways and entered separate buildings to celebrate out faith.
When I began to work in the larger Church I transferred that logic to the work. I have almost absolutely refused to work with or for any work that was not of a cooperative nature. Some of my peers began to call me an "ecu-maniac." I proudly accept that title.
The word ecumenical comes from "oikoumenikos," which means "God's world is all one world" or "All things are in common." In my logic it means that life is a lot better if we work together than if we compete.
We are ecumenical at PET(http://www.giftofmobility.org/) in the most full and broad sense of the meaing of that word. The wonderful volunteers at PET come from a wide variety of faith groups, secular groups, individuals and business groups. They all go into the same bank account. PET itself is not Democrat, Republican, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Liberal or Conservative. It is simply an instrument of God to serve God's needy.
I close with a great story that illustrates ecumenism:
Ray Truhn, a PET volunteer from Michigan, was in Uzbekistan distributing PETs and wheelchairs. A mother came in carrying a handsome boy of ten years. He had polio when he was two and she had been carrying him since. The boy tried out a child-sized PET and was absolutely exuberant with his new mobility.
Ray told the mother how to care for it, and then he reports, "She looked me in the eye and said, 'Ray, there are five things we Muslims think you have to do to go to Heaven, and the most important one is to go to Mecca. But because of what you have done for our boy, you do not have to go to Mecca."
That Muslim woman and that Christian man unwrapped religion and revealed it in its truest form (Matthew 25: 31-46). God's world needs more of that.