Indianapolis, USA - Indiana members of the United Methodist and Evangelical Lutheran churches will meet for an important ritual that marks a milestone in their ecumenical relations and might signal a day when they share local congregations.
Members of the two denominations will celebrate their first together in Indiana at St. Luke's United Methodist Church on the Northside of Indianapolis at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The service is believed to be the first in the U.S. in which bishops of the two denominations concelebrate, or celebrate together, since the Lutherans approved an interim agreement on the two denominations sharing the Eucharist at their national conventional last August.
Bishop Michael Coyner of the Indiana Area United Methodist Church will preside at the service. Preaching will be Bishop James Stuck of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
While the two denominations remain separate bodies with distinct doctrines and rituals, they're breaking down some of the barriers that separate them through dialogue with each other.
"It's not just us Methodists saying you can come join what we do, but also affirming each other's rituals," said Coyner, whose approximately 213,000-member congregation is the largest among mainline Protestants in Indiana.
Rev. Rudy Mueller, an aide to Stuck who has been a key Lutheran representative in the planning with the Methodists, recalled Christ's prayer at the Last Supper, in John 17:21, "that they may all be one." Christ was saying the church will be better served when his disciples are united, he said.
"The whole bigger picture of this ecumenical agreement is the witness it makes to the world about the unity of the church and love of God in Jesus Christ," Mueller said.
Before they got to this point, however, the two denominations had a series of meetings to discuss their beliefs and find out what they had in common. In terms of the Eucharist, they found common ground that they both believe in the "real presence of Christ" in the sacrament.
The United Methodist Council of Bishops approved an interim Eucharist sharing agreement last May, before the approval at the Lutheran meeting in August. Plans call for the two to reach full communion with each other by 2008.
"I think these things always take a long negotiation to recognize each other and build some consensus," Coyner said.
Stuck initially proposed a concelebrated service to Coyner during one of the monthly meetings with other denominational leaders, Coyner said.
Stuck was away from his office most of the week and unavailable for comment.
Coyner said he hopes local congregations will emulate Sunday's example by the two bishops and arrange joint communion services. To the worshippers in the pews, "I think eventually it could mean more and more cooperation among Methodists and Lutherans."
Eventually, a full communion could lead to the sharing of clergy in areas where one or both denominations have shortages. Mueller said several of his 80,000-member synod's approximately 200 congregations in Indiana and Kentucky lack pastors, and his denomination has a clergy-sharing agreement with the Episcopal Church.