SWEDEN: T

Treading a New Path By Eron Henry

he Uniting Church in Sweden (UCS) was formed by a merger of the Baptist Union of Sweden, the United Methodist Church of Sweden and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden on June 4, 2011 and adopted its current name during a conference in Karlstad on May 11, 2013.The combined entity has roughly 70,000 members in 730 congregations, making it the second largest Christian group in the northern European country. “Our name may be new, but we are deeply rooted in Christian history and the revival of Swedish Christianity,” UCS declares. UCS is in the process of forging a new path and identity while drawing from its various histories. “We are not a federation or anything like that. We are a new church and we have our headquarters and offices in Stockholm,” said Lasse Svensson, first president of UCS who was ordained a Methodist pastor. Though

Uniting Church in Sweden

Baptist, Methodist and Covenant church youth started relating to each other on the local and national levels, planning various youth events. In time, before their elders made a decisive move on the matter, the youth departments from all three national groups came together and formed one body, the Youth and Children Organization. Other initiatives toward forming one church body were propelling the three toward unity. Whereas each group had its own seminary, a combined theological school was established seven years ago. There were separate newspapers but eventually the decision was made to join together and publish one. By the time national leaders came together, much of the institutional framework to form one church body was already in place, pushed along by an ecumenical spirit and practical concerns and necessities: Baptists, Methodists and Covenant Christians forming congregations together; a single national youth body rather than three; one seminary formed out of several; and a single periodical publication instead of three. Administrative

structures and functions

“I think we’re actually the first denomination to be a part of the BWA and World Methodist Council.”

new, it is marked by the combined distinctives from the three traditions. “Methodists have their book of discipline, Baptists brought freedom and Mission Covenant brought good practice,” Svensson said. The forging of a new identity includes UCS relationships with regional and international entities, such as the European Baptist Federation and the Baptist World Alliance; the European Methodist Council and the World Methodist Council; as well as the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. “I think we’re actually the first denomination to be a part of the

BWA and World Methodist Council,” said Svensson. “I think we might be the first, and for many people that’s very strange. They think I’m saying it wrong or something like that but it’s actually the truth.”

The impetus to form one church out of the three goes back

more than 100 years. “The first meeting with representatives from these three denominations with the goal of forming something new together was held in Stockholm in 1905,” Svensson told the Baptist World Alliance. The process, though not followed through by denominational leadership, was taken up by the youth and various congregations. Svensson said there was a “special ecumenical climate in Sweden for 50, 60, 70 years where congregations worked locally

The youth had also taken the lead.

together and were actually forming churches together.” These local churches asked a question of national leaders. “If we can do this on the local level, why can’t we do this on the national level? And that was of course a very good question.” Others were more skeptical. “Sometimes I heard congregations

say, ‘this is going too fast, we can’t keep up in this process.’” In response to the skeptics, Svensson reminded them that the process to form one church has been going on for decades, beginning in 1905. It was not happening too fast. Rather, it was going on for quite some time. The youth had also taken the lead. Carin Dernulf, general secretary for the Youth and Children Organization of UCS, said

have now merged, with about 100 staff based in Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, and another 35-40 in regional offices. UCS immediate and

long-term priority is growth. “Out of our 730 congregations we have 200

that have 25 members or less,” said Svensson, who attended the 2015 Baptist World Congress in Durban, his second BWA event after attending the Annual Gathering in Izmir, Turkey, in 2014. These small churches struggle to even maintain their buildings and properties. “It’s not very easy,” Svensson declared. A primary focus will be on church planting. In May 2016, UCS made a commitment to plant 50 new congregations over the next nine years. “That’s quite a bold statement because we have not been that good in the past, as denominations, to form or plant new churches. But we see that this is very crucial in our time in our country.” A second focus is on youth and children. Dernulf revealed to

the BWA that UCS’s youth arm has about 20,000 members and a total of about 30,000 active participants. Working with a staff of 12 persons, she hopes UCS can overcome the religious malaise of Swedish youth, who have not been attending church in large numbers. One plan is to reach youth through scouting, taking advantage of the roughly 10,000 scouts in the various troops affiliated with the UCS.

“Scouting had been going downhill for awhile but now it’s

getting more and more popular again in Sweden, so that’s a good thing,” she said. “Everything we do is to present Jesus Christ to young people. Scouting, for example, is a good way because people in Sweden trust that kind of organization. They want to put their children in it, so it’s a good way to get in contact with people.” Youth and children are also being reached through sports, such as football, and the arts, including dance. Swedish Christians have, traditionally, been engaged in both justice and international issues, and this continues in UCS. “UCS wants to be a church with a strong involvement in present society,” the organization declares. “This applies to issues relating to refugees and migration, human rights, violence and abuse against women and children, as well as advocacy work for peace, security and sustainability.” Second to Germany, Sweden has taken in more Syrian and other refugees than any other European country. “We’re a country of 9.5 million people in Sweden and we accepted 160,000 refugees from the Middle East last year. That’s a lot of people and it’s had a huge impact,” Svensson reported.

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