Dear Families and Friends of Peace,
On Sunday our Confirmation students had their fall retreat. Aligning with the year’s theme, “What is Church?” we visited two ELCA congregations that are very different from Peace, and each other—Central Lutheran and Fabric, both in Minneapolis.
Pastor Stephanie Friesen described Central’s history for us, saying:
“The short story of Central is that we are a 107-year-old congregation that was started by 12 local, Lutheran businessmen who saw the need of a unified Lutheran church in Minneapolis. There were congregations all around us who worshipped in the language of their immigrant population (Norwegian, German, Swedish). Central was built and established to be a Lutheran congregation in the history of the ancestors, but in the language of the children. Thus, we have always been an English-speaking congregation—a unique characteristic compared to the Lutheran churches around us.”
Conversely, Fabric is a mission development congregation from Bethlehem Lutheran in Minneapolis that was started around 20 years ago. Their primary goal is to be a church for non-churchy people, and they meet in the auditorium of an elementary school. Pastor Ian McConnell writes, “Compared with most congregations, we have very little formal liturgy, but share a baseline theology with the best of what the ELCA believes, even though many of our folks aren’t attracted to the theological/churchy language we were trained to use.”
It was very cool to watch the students share new experiences, and it was fascinating to compare the experiences after.
One thing was clear: God is moving in many different ways, and God’s Church gathers in many different ways too!
Grace and Peace,
Joe