News Releases of the Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee

Ecumenical disaster relief efforts in Iowa  
From the October 14-15, 2008 meeting in Des Moines, Iowa.

Common Mission Moves Forward
From the June 15, 2003 Issue of The Living Church
By C. Christopher Epting
Used by permission of The Living Church, a national weekly magazine serving Episcopalians

As we approach the General Convention, we also mark the first full triennium of our full communion relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Unfortunately, most of the headlines - to the extent that there have been any - concerning this new partnership have had to do with the notorious by-law passed by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly allowing, under unusual circumstances, presbyteral rather than episcopal ordination of pastors. In other words, in certain circumstances to allow a pastor, rather than a bishop, to ordain a pastor in the ELCA, knowing that this particular pastor would not be eligible for service in the Episcopal Church.

As of this writing, there have been four such exceptional ordinations out of more than 500 ordinations done in conformity with the intentions of Called to Common Mission (CCM). All new ELCA bishops have been installed in historic succession. Sharing in these liturgies of ordination/installation in both churches has often been a powerful experience for bishops and has led to a new sense of communion between synods and dioceses.

But what about the "mission" part of Called to Common Mission? What is happening on the ground as Episcopalians and Lutherans begin to live into this new relationship? The intention of this article is to address those questions. While it would be impossible to do justice to all that is beginning to happen, I will attempt to highlight a few examples on the national and local levels.

National
It is important to note that "full communion includes the establishment locally and nationally of recognized organs of regular consultation and communication" (CCM, paragraph 2). In the case of the Episcopal Church and the ELCA, this means the Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee (LECC). Each church body is represented by seven voting persons, serving at the will of the individual¹s parent body and meeting twice each year. Its purpose is "to encourage the development of new levels of trust, cooperation, and mission between the churches, to encourage and assist in the planning of new cooperative mission and ministry work ... to encourage communication ... and prayer in support of living into full communion by our two churches" (Charter of LECC). LECC has met in Salt Lake City to hear of joint ministries in the Pacific Northwest, in Miami to learn of Hispanic ministry development, and at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, to talk about shared theological education between our two churches in a multicultural context.

In research for a paper prepared for the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, Jon Enslin of ELCA's ecumenical office has discovered that leaders from partner churches (including the Episcopal Church) meet twice each year, learning new ideas from each other and dreaming of new possibilities for working together. Amazing stories come from the ELCA Domestic Disaster Response. In Mississippi, the Episcopal Church has become fully engaged; the number of Episcopal congregations participating has risen from 33 to 88. So strong has our commitment been that the program is now officially titled "Lutheran/Episcopal Disaster Response in Mississippi."

Under the Division for Ministry, Mr. Enslin reports a strong Lutheran/Anglican theologians' group has been invigorated. Lutheran and Episcopal chaplains celebrate their common mission with a joint Eucharist at a gathering of professional pastoral care associations in Toronto. In addition, our church has invited the ELCA to learn about "Fresh Start," a program for new ministry. Under global mission, an ELCA pastor has recently been called by the Episcopal Church to serve a congregation in Taiwan. And nationally the Leadership Program for Musicians Serving Small Congregations is a cooperative program between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church.

In many of these national programs, of course, some will say, "This could have been done without CCM." In many (though not all) cases, that is certainly true. However, the question remains: Why didn¹t we do it before CCM? The answer is, we were not in full communion and could therefore continue to ignore one another. Now we cannot.

Local
The local expressions of this new relationship more often depend upon full communion. For example, in Portland, Ore., an Episcopal priest serves as a full-time campus minister at Portland State University, half time for Episcopal students and half time for Lutherans. In the Diocese of Eastern Oregon is a three-congregation cluster of one Episcopal and two Lutheran churches. Their recent search was done jointly leading to the call of a Lutheran pastor who was installed and instituted by the Lutheran and Episcopal bishops. And in Sunriver, Ore., Lutherans and Episcopalians serve in the Sunriver Christian fellowship, a yoked ministry of All Saints¹ of the Cascades Episcopal and Shepherd of the Mountain Lutheran Church. They are also in the process of developing a joint mission for LaPine-Gilcrest residents some 30 miles away.

In Lancaster, Calif., the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA and the Diocese of Los Angeles have joined in commissioning a lay Associate in Ministry to serve a Lutheran and Episcopal congregation, Our Savior Lutheran and St. Paul's Episcopal. In Maryland, an Episcopal priest is under a two-year contract serving a predominantly African American ELCA congregation and in Baltimore a joint Lutheran-Episcopal venture by two congregations has contributed to the establishment of a Center for the Arts and Youth on a vacant lot midway between their buildings.

While recognizing that our two churches' understanding of the diaconate has developed somewhat differently, CCM states that "some functions of ordained deacons in the Episcopal Church and consecrated diaconal ministers and deaconesses in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America can be shared insofar as they are called to be agents of the Church in meeting needs, hopes, and concerns within church and society" (CCM, para. 8). An informal conversation has begun on the national level between the two offices of ministry development as to how this might be carried out most effectively. Among many examples which could be cited, in the Diocese of Iowa an Episcopal deacon from St. Paul's, Marshalltown, serves on a ministry team with the Lutheran pastor of Trinity Lutheran as both churches work together to reach out to a rapidly changing town. And the Deacon Formation Program of the Diocese of Maine has assigned one of its candidates to Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bangor for her congregation-based field work experience.

In the concluding paragraph of Called to Common Mission, the drafters stated: "We do not know to what new, recovered, or continuing tasks of mission this Concordat will lead our two churches, but we give thanks to God for leading us to this point. We entrust ourselves to that leading in the future, confident that our full communion will be witness to the gift and goal already present in Christ, "so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). Two years into this new relationship, we are beginning to know "to what new, recovered, or continuing tasks of mission this Concordat will lead our two churches," and the future looks bright.