Download a study guide for this article (free to print/Web subscribers) at www.
thelutheran.org (click on “study guides”).
best undone by sitting and praying and liv- ing and serving the world side by side.
• T e best theologies emerge by the chal- lenge of taking each other’s stories seriously.
• We haven’t read the Bible correctly if it doesn’t impel us to go out to love and serve
• Jesus invites both personal transforma- tion and cultural transformation into God’s
our neighbor.
peaceable kingdom of nonviolence, inclu- sion, healing and wholeness. “We have more than 100 families, maybe
250 members,” said Laurie Larson Caesar, the ELCA pastor of MoTA. “We are probably two-thirds Catholic, though denominational diff erences aren’t what fi rst come to people’s minds. People love to say that they forget who’s Catholic and who’s Lutheran. We even had a Catholic member preach on Reformation Sunday some years back, and she talked about how she was catechized to see Martin Luther as a heretic, and how through these Lutherans in her life, she’s come to see Christ more clearly than she ever had before.”
Brought together by money woes MoTA got its start in 1960 as Atonement Lutheran Church. Twenty-fi ve years later, declining membership and dwindling fi nancial resources leſt it with two options: close or share the building with another congregation. Members chose the second option, and the other
worshipers would come from St. Anthony, Cannard’s old home church. Beginning in early 1986, St. Anthony and Atonement members (about 50 families from each con- gregation) met over a four-month period to get to know each other and talk about how they might work together. T e fi nal decision: “We want to be one community,
not two diff erent sets of people worshiping in the same room,” said Caesar, who’s been with MoTA for 13 years. “T e Holy Spirit blew through the room. T ese people were obviously called to be together.” In July 1986, Mo TA had its fi rst “simultaneous yet
separate” worship service. T e “community,” as it’s still called, included about 30 Lutheran families and 20 more who had come from St. Anthony. An early decision by members, which still stands,
was that the fi nal Sunday of each month would be led by laypeople and not include communion. “We continue to be very lay-led,” Caesar said. “Early
on laypeople were leſt on their own a lot, and everyone says that was a blessing in disguise. T e laypeople have defi ned who we are and how we are from the beginning. T ere’s a real grassroots power.”
MARK YLEN
Proving that serving together can be fun, Laurie Larson Caesar (left), the ELCA pastor of Atonement, and Neil Moore, priest moderator, poke their heads through caricatures of Martin Luther and the pope.
Aſt er a somewhat tumultuous couple
of years that saw multiple changes in the leadership of both denominations— including the merger that formed the ELCA in 1988—MoTA continued to build on its foundation of ecumenism. Over the last 18 years, which have seen the arrival of both Caesar and Neil
Moore as priest moderator (in 2003), the community has enjoyed a growth in membership; facility improvements and additions including a labyrinth and memorial gar- den; and the arrival of Kathy Truman as the new Roman Catholic lay leader in 2011. Each Sunday there’s an 8:30 a.m. service with commu-
nion that’s either Roman Catholic or Lutheran-led, and a joint service at 10:45 in which the denominations split off at the end for the eucharist. “When the Catholic priest leads the early service, the
assumption is the eucharist is for Catholics,” Caesar said. “Same goes for Lutheran communion, though our table is open, and we commune any baptized Christian.” T e separation at the later service pains Caesar: “It’s
like a ripping of the body of Christ, a tearing of the fabric. We face the center aisle so we can bless each other before we separate—that’s a liturgical innovation of the MoTA laypeople, and a powerful symbol: recognizing the pain of the physical separation of our ‘communion.’ “Christ’s body is not yet whole until we all unite as
Christ’s people, and we make that ecumenical gap visible every Sunday. Some new members cry at that point. But it also makes it real, and in singing a blessing over each other, we invite God’s Spirit to fi ll that gap, that broken- ness, as well. Not one of us has perfect integrity or integ- rity all on our own. We need God’s wholeness to fi ll us.” Cannard, MoTA’s last remaining original Roman
Catholic member, feels that wholeness in his church home so much that “even if the archbishop said no, you can’t do this anymore, I’d still be here. And if he did say no, the Lutheran members would be the fi rst to fi ght to keep us, to say you can’t do that, just like the Cath- olic members would be if Lutheran leadership tried to tell them they couldn’t be here anymore.”
Author bio: Lundeberg is the editorial page editor of the Albany (Ore.) Democrat-Herald.
May 2014 29
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52