After church this coming Sunday, I hope you will join me for an Adult Forum during which I will share some of my personal faith journey. Tongue firmly in cheek, I have tentatively entitled it “Why I am a ‘Lutherpalian’: How a fellow named after the Great Reformer, and who was baptized into the ELCA, ended up an Episcopal priest, only to return home and fall in love all over again with the Lutheran church.”
I am a firm believer that sharing faith stories is an important aspect of building Christian community. I hope that by sharing a piece of my journey, we can begin to get to know one another on a deeper level.
I also want to use this discussion as an opportunity for us to explore together the rich possibilities of the Lutheran-Episcopal partnership we are embarking upon. In the course of reflecting on my own journey, I will share with you what I find compelling and beautiful about both traditions, and will invite you to offer your own perceptions of the similarities and differences between our two denominations.
It has been over two decades now that Lutherans and Episcopalians have been in “full communion,” an agreement first ratified by the ELCA in 1999 and then approved by the Episcopal Church in 2000 at its General Convention. Entitled “Called to Common Mission,” the work of living into the relationship is now carried forward by the Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee.
In the introduction to “Called to Common Mission” there is an important statement about the spirit of this agreement: “Our churches have discovered afresh our unity in the gospel and our commitment to the mission to which God calls the church of Jesus Christ in every generation. … Our search for a fuller expression of visible unity is for the sake of living and sharing the gospel. Unity and mission are at the heart of the church’s life, reflecting an obedient response to the call of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
My hope and prayer is that our life together at Holy Trinity in the years to come will be a creative and vibrant example of such ecumenical partnership. I am convinced this is the future of the wider church: learning to find unity in difference and working together to build bridges among the different varieties of Christian community in our world.