August 20, 2008

BOSSEY, Switzerland/GENEVA – "Church is first and foremost worship," and every understanding of the Church has worship as its point of departure. This emphasis on the central role of worship for the Church was made at a recent international ecumenical conference of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), which ushered a new LWF study program that seeks to interpret, from a Lutheran perspective, the ecclesiological formulation of the Nicene Creed.

Theologians from different Christian traditions attending the conference affirmed that all other church activities and social services, as well as organizational structures and staffing were subordinated to the celebration of worship. Church is worship whenever people gather in the name and presence of the Triune God and celebrate together, noted participants in the meeting, focusing on the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church – the Protestant understanding of the Church in an ecumenical horizon."

The LWF Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) organized the 12-16 June meeting at the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, attended by 20 theologians from Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. Worship, they concurred, was the yardstick against which every other church activity was measured.

However, as pointed out by Prof. Eberhard Juengel from Tuebingen, Germany, worship in the Protestant understanding has a dual nature. On the one hand "we have worship in its liturgical form and on the other we have worship in everyday life (cf. Rom 12:1). What defines an individual church in terms of its confession is how it worships God and serves the world," he explained.

A Church on Earth

"The church is needed on earth so that Christ's work of salvation and the Holy Spirit's action can take concrete shape and change the world," said Rev. Dr Hans-Peter Grosshans, DTS study secretary for Theology and the Church. Serving God and serving the world, therefore, are the general tasks of the Church, he noted.

Participants agreed that Reformation theology should place more emphasis on the visible realization of the salvation promised to humankind than was generally assumed. They stressed the need to counter any false identification with Jesus Christ as belonging to any individual church. They insisted emphasis must be placed on the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church in the many Christian churches.

Church's Missionary Task Continues

Rev. Dr Cheryl Peterson from the United States pointed out that the Church's mission was not fulfilled, but still continues. This mission affords churches the sole means by which they can look toward the future rather than merely perpetuating traditions. Mission together with worship, she explained, are what essentially defines the church's profile.

Participants also discussed the diverse ways in which churches carry out their missionary tasks – dialogue with other faiths; diakonia through assistance to persons in emergency situations and development-related activities; and in the prophetic denunciation of injustice and falsehood in a specific local context or at international level.

The mission of the Church – and its means of achieving holiness – includes being "a divine instrument of peace and justice in society," said Zambian theologian Rev. Rolita Machila. One criticism raised was that this aspect of mission was seldom addressed in ecumenical dialogues.

More of the Nicene Creed

Participants also deliberated the visibility and profiling of Lutheran commitment to ecumenism in the specific cultural and religious contexts of the LWF member churches. In order to ensure that existing expressions of unity were not neglected, the international group of theologians urged that congregations recite more often the commonly shared Nicene Creed, as it can be a visible and audible sign of communion with Christians from other confessions.

"Lutheran ecclesiology must not seek to assert itself in opposition to other Christian confessions, but with them," said Grosshans, pointing also to the participation of Baptist, Orthodox, Reformed and Roman Catholic theologians in the LWF consultation.

The theologians affirmed the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" confessed in the Nicene Creed contains the seeds for the future critical development of Lutheran ecclesiology.

Follow up meetings of the DTS study program will explore the four hallmarks of the Church – oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity – and their meaning and relevance for the life of Lutheran churches within their diverse cultural, religious and social contexts.

For more information on the new LWF/DTS study program, see, http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/Dts/Programs/DTS-Theology-Church.html.

Lutheran World Information