CR Lutherans, Methodists worship together

CEDAR RAPIDS - When the congregations of two denominations worship together for the first time on Sunday, it will mark the formalization of something the Rev. Craig Brown has known was there all along.

“For me personally, I think this is what Christianity is all about,” said Brown, associate pastor at First Lutheran Church, 1000 Third Ave. SE, in Cedar Rapids. “When I look around the Lord's table - literally, the image of the Lord's table - I'm not looking at who is the Catholic and who is the Methodist and who is the Lutheran. There were no distinctions, we're all in one.”

The combined worship service of First Lutheran Church and St. Paul's United Methodist Church at Sinclair Auditorium Sunday marks the first service since both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church approved resolutions calling for “full communion” of the two denominations. According to the resolutions, the denominations recognize their theological similarities, participate in joint decision-making on critical matters and “express a common commitment to evangelism, witness and service.”

“Full communion affirms what we've known for a very long time, that Jesus is the Christ and that we worship God in a Christo-centric manner,” said the Rev. Harlan Gillespie, pastor of St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 1340 Third Ave. SE, in Cedar Rapids. “It also formally recognizes what we have known before but now gives us the means that we can live that upfront with ourselves and with others.”

The resolutions also allow for the sharing of pastors, congregations and lay leaders, Brown said. That will be especially important in rural areas where churches of all denominations are struggling to fill full-time pastoral roles.

“I see this as a benefit that can help everyone, particularly in those rural areas,” he said. “Mainline churches nationally are on the decline, I think whatever we can do to come together for Christ is a good thing.”

The two congregations will share a worship service at 10 a.m. Sunday in Sinclair Auditorium, on the campus of Coe College in Cedar Rapids. Choirs from each church will sing and lay leaders from each church will work side by side. Gillespie will deliver the sermon and the Rev. Dan Kolander, senior pastor at First Lutheran, will preside over the Eucharist.

The resolutions allowing for full communion were approved by the ELCA during its churchwide assembly in August, and by the United Methodist Conference in 2008. The practices that will come out of the resolutions, Gillespie said, are ones that Cedar Rapids churches have been doing since the Flood of 2008.

“Personally my hope is that it will be one of those signs that working together as partners across denominational differences is the best way,” Gillespie said. “The flood taught us that - there's no way that any one of us can meet the needs of this community and help it flourish, we all have to work together for that.”