June 25, 2010

MUENSTER, Germany/GENEVA – Lutherans believe the unity of the Church is based on the gospel and the sacraments, not on how churches are organized, how the ordained ministry is structured, on rules of ethics or on specific forms of worship. This understanding in the Augsburg Confession was strongly affirmed by Lutheran theologians from around the world meeting in Muenster, Germany earlier this month.

"Realizing the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church," the marks of the church as confessed in the Nicene Creed, was the theme of the consultation organized by The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS). Eighteen theologians took part in the conference, co-sponsored by Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Muenster in Germany.

Participants included Dr Wai Man Yuen, who teaches at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong, China. In her presentation titled "Is Church an Opium of God's People?" she called for churches in her context to move from being sermon-centric to becoming more "table-centric" and relevant by responding to issues that deal with people's daily lives.

Presenting a paper on "The Church and the Holy Spirit," Rev. Yonas Yigezu from the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) pointed out that "when moved by the Spirit," the church becomes an active embodiment of Jesus Christ in the world, expressed through peace, justice and reconciliation. He explained that the EECMY's liturgy is structured in a way that allows charismatic practices to emerge within, rather than remain outside the worship.

The theologians stressed the oneness of the church, at a time when tensions arise between and within the various confessional families such as Lutherans, Anglicans or Reformed, over such issues as ethical understandings and who can be ordained. "Ordination of women is not necessarily a criterion but it is a decisive step toward oneness – after all, we are talking about half of humanity!" remarked Dr Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, where the church ordained the first woman over 60 years ago.

A communiqué from the meeting stated that the diversity that exists between churches "is not threatening because we believe the Church is one." The theologians emphasized that the unity "needs to be made more visible (embodied) through networks of communication, responsibility and accountability, including through praying for and with one another."

Mission Today

The "holiness" of the church is a gift from God, the theologians said, and is reflected in the world as churches become "places and agents of reconciliation, forgiveness and healing." Dr Eckhard Zemmerich, a German working in Jakarta, Indonesia, proposed that "a church that must be believed as holy must be believable as holy." Holiness must be lived out visibly, in word and deed.

While "catholic," a word meaning "universal" is often used to refer to the whole church around the world and across time, the catholicity of the church is "realized locally through a congregation's worship, when the gospel is communicated and the sacraments are received by believers," the communiqué stated. The "catholic" or universal aspect of the church is present when "a sense of the universal church" is reflected in local congregations.

The consultation strongly urged continuing discussion on what it means for the church to be "apostolic," that is, carrying forward the work begun by the early church after Christ's resurrection. Today, said the theologians, this involves "continuing the mission of Jesus Christ, bringing hope to a hopeless world, justice seeking compassion for those who suffer, healing and liberation for all people and the rest of the creation."

Dr Hans-Peter Grosshans, professor of systematic theology at the Muenster university organized the consultation along with LWF/DTS. In addition to participants from the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, the Ecumenical Institute (Strasbourg) and DTS, the other theologians came from Argentina, Brazil, Hong Kong (China), Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Slovak Republic and Tanzania.

Lutheran World Information