Rev. Reed Lee Pedersen's
This past Lenten season a community of churches from our school district banded together to have noontime ecumenical services every Friday. Each church would host a service and invite a minister from a different church to preach. I was unable to attend all of the services, but I did make many of them. What these ecumenical services did was give our churches the practice of being the Church. The Church (notice the capitalization) is the community of all believers of Jesus. For some they call it the Christian Church. For others (including the ELCA) they call it the catholic (notice the lack of capitalization) Church. This is not the Roman Catholic Church, but rather it is the catholic (meaning universal) church. All in all, the Church is the meta-version of believers which exists above any denomination. There is a common misconception that the Church used to be one singular entity of believers. Anyone who reads the epistles and the book of Acts can see that this is not true. Through the history of the Church it has spurned denominations. The denominations of the Church are vast and numerous. Today there are even denominations within denominations (e.g. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). There is even a denomination which claims to be non-denominational. All these denominations are then made up of churches. A church (non-capitalized) is the ground floor of ministry. I serve the Church by serving a church, Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church. While all believers are part of the Church, some also belong to a specific church. Each church has its own identity, location, and history. The Church, on the other hand, is identified with Jesus and the story of his life, death, and resurrection. The Church has no set location. Instead, like Christ, it is everywhere. I am saying all this to get to a point: the Church, and thus Jesus, is greater than our churches. This is most certainly true. So how often do we treat it in the reverse order? How often do we choose not to interact and try to understand people of other denominations because they interpret Scripture differently? Ecumenism (working together across denomination lines) is the center at what it means to be the Church. When we can sit down and praise Jesus together as children of God we make a statement that Jesus is the true center of our identity. I do not want to belittle denominationalism. As a proud Lutheran it would be hypocritical of me to do so. I believe that people should attend church and learn about God from a church and denomination that best helps their faith pilgrimage. I also understand that some denominations have non-negotiable stances that don’t play well with others. Imagine you are gay or a woman and the church a couple blocks down does not think you have authority to be there. I am an ELCA Lutheran because I could not see myself in any other denomination, but I also recognize my membership in the community of all believers. That is why I believe it is important that we can work ecumenically as a church so that we can truly be the Church. Whatever our differences, it says more about the power of the love of Jesus when we can work together rather than strictly stay only to ourselves. Points to Ponder:
1 Comment
Sally Rehn
4/29/2019 10:15:42 am
I lived in Park Forest IL from 5th grade through high school (Park Forest was an interesting concept, very planned housing). The church we attended was the main church Faith United Protestant, a generic mixture that covered most of the bases (not Jewish or Catholic all the rest--I think). I haven't been back there in years so I don't know if it's still there.
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AuthorPastor Reed is a first call pastor at Augustana Lutheran Church in Andover, Illinois. Archives
July 2019
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