8-year-old and took her under their wings. Two months later, the pastor helped Young bury her beloved father (once a Lutheran). In another two months, mother and daughter were baptized and have been at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Salinas, Calif., ever since.
The power of the liturgy
Katherine Loyd, St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Walnut Creek, Calif., was reared in a Christian home. Her father was even a pastor. But she was taught that liturgy was “meaningless babble” and “everything had to be thought up in the moment to be sincere.”
Her Lutheran fiance sang in the church choir, so on her first visit she did too, making her way through the liturgy and a strange hymnbook. “It didn’t take many weeks before I was in love with
the liturgy,” she said. “I could meditate instead of won- dering what was going to happen next. I was a part of the service. The words of the liturgy were easily memorized, becoming ingrained in my life. The idea of Christians all over the world using the same biblical texts that same day made me feel connected to them all.”
Jim Riddle had a similar experience. Steeped in the Southern Baptist tradition, he was lost trying to follow the liturgy at Newberry [S.C.] College’s Wiles Chapel as a freshman in 1968.
“[But] as I learned new hymns and responses I began to understand and appreciate the rich Christian tradition behind the order of worship. … The comfort level in litur- gical worship is now so deeply ingrained, I truly cannot
JONNI ZUKAUSKAS
A spot on the team Burke Wallace’s introduction to Lutheranism came when he was
recruited to play football for California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks. He followed that by attending a conservative evangelical seminary and teaching in nondenominational schools, but “my time in those circles ultimately ended by being excommunicated for being gay,” he said. Years later the ELCA’s 2009 “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” social
statement and his own changed theology brought him back. “Having been hurt by the church and feeling like a wayward traveler, the focus on radical grace and living God’s love in the world drew me in,” said Burke, a member of St. John Lutheran Church, Sacramento, Calif. “I understand the 2009 decision has cost the ELCA dearly, but each week as I enter the doors of the church … I am grateful the ELCA counted the cost and continues to move forward in God’s grace.”
February 2015 19
imagine any other way of fulfilling my needs in worship,” said Riddle, a member of St. David Lutheran Church, West Columbia, S.C. “I have begun to think that maybe I was Lutheran all along, but just didn’t know it.” It’s not unusual, of course, for Roman Catholics to find a home in the Lutheran church with its similar liturgy yet a more agreeable institutional structure. Jim and Helen Welter had “Catholicism at the core of our being,” with nuns in the family and raising their chil- dren in the church. After Jim dropped out of the corporate world, went back to school and worked for the Archdio- cese of Indianapolis, Helen one day suggested he slip into a Lutheran service “and see what they do.” They said they found “everything important to us in a Christian community”: sacramentally focused tradition, a church that is open and accepting of all who come, and a liturgy that’s vibrant and alive.
The only thing more painful than moving away from the church that formed them would have been not finding Resurrection Lutheran Church, they said. Suzette Kollman’s Mormon mom and Roman Catholic dad wanted their children to choose their own religions when they grew up. When she married a Lutheran, Koll- man realized how important baptism was as she sat alone while everyone else took communion. At 30, she was bap- tized, and they’re raising their sons differently. “My sons don’t always enjoy going, but I tell them they
get to go to church and that I didn’t have that opportunity. With no disrespect to my parents, I’m trying to turn the way families should be with regard to having a faith life
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