wfn.org | Worship Celebrates New Lutheran-Reformed Relationship

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18-September-1998 
98301 
 
    Worship Celebrates New Lutheran-Reformed Relationship 
 
    by Ann Hafften, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America News Service, 
    and Jerry Van Marter, Presbyterian News Service 
 
CHICAGO-Four U.S. churches will celebrate their new relationship of "full 
communion" with a gala worship service Oct. 4 at Rockefeller Chapel in 
Chicago. 
 
    The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.), Reformed Church in America and United Church of Christ agreed to 
enter into full communion with a series of votes from June 1997 through 
March 1998.  The agreement was sealed earlier this year when the 
presbyteries of the PC(USA) ratified a set of enabling amendments to the 
church's constitution. 
 
    "This celebration marks an important ecumenical step for these four 
churches," the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA) 
General Assembly, told the Presbyterian News Service.  "It marks the making 
whole of a division in the body of Christ that has existed for far too 
long." 
 
    "Moreover," Kirkpatrick added, "this service and the unity it 
represents is a witness to the whole world that we are serious about and 
determined to work further for the unity of all of Christ's church." 
 
    A highlight of the worship will be a ritual of four processions moving 
from four directions and meeting at a central baptismal font to affirm the 
churches' mutual recognition of baptism, to confess the divisions of the 
past and to pledge "to live under the gospel in mutual affirmation and 
admonition that respect and love for each other may grow." 
 
     Full communion is not part of a plan to merge - it commits the 
churches to share locally and internationally in their mission and to 
develop procedures whereby clergy in one church body may serve as pastors 
in congregations of another church body. 
 
    The Rev. James Kenneth Echols, president of the Lutheran School of 
Theology at Chicago, will be the preacher.  The Rev. Cynthia M. Campbell, 
president of the PC(USA)'s McCormick Theological Seminary, will preside at 
the service of Holy Communion. 
 
    The Rev. Paul R. Nelson, director for worship in the ELCA's Division 
for Congregational Ministries and chair of the Lutheran-Reformed worship 
committee, said the liturgy has been planned to demonstrate full communion 
in a number of ways.  First, he said, "by taking representatives of the 
four church bodies who are moving into a relationship of full communion and 
blending them together or braiding them into a single procession following 
a service of baptismal renewal around a baptismal font." 
 
     Second, Nelson continued, "by drawing from liturgical resources from 
all four of the church bodies, as well as commissioning some brand-new 
liturgical material.  Third, by drawing on the rich musical traditions of 
each of the church bodies involved in the celebration.  So there will be 
music drawn from the Presbyterian tradition, from the Lutheran tradition, 
from the traditions that make up the United Church of Christ and also from 
the Reformed Church in America." 
 
    Musicians will include organist David Eicher of First Presbyterian 
Church, LaPorte, Ind.; pianist Dennis Friesen-Carper, Valparaiso, Ind.; 
percussionists from Valparaiso University, an independent Lutheran school ; 
the Sanctuary Choir of Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago; Hope 
College Choir (RCA), Holland, Mich.; the Tower Brass from Fourth 
Presbyterian Church, Chicago; and bell ringers from Bethany Lutheran 
Church, Batavia, Ill., Augustana Lutheran Church, Hyde Park, Chicago, and 
the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. 

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