“It takes an hour and a half to write every three minutes of a good sermon,” says the Rev. Bertram Apman, pastor of the small Holy Cross Lutheran Church in the Seattle suburb of Newport. Overworked at his job of counseling, fundraising, youth work and admin stration, he has little time left to pr pare his preaching, which is why “some of my sermons have been so crummy.” Apman feels that most small-town ministers share his problem, and that the solution is to merge weak little churches into a few big ones, regardless of the cost in denominationalism.
His congregation is inclined to agree, and next spring, if the hurt feelings of Holy Cross’s parent body, the American Lutheran Church, can be soothed, the parishioners will join with the congregation of a nearby Episcopal church, St. Margaret’s, to form a new Holy Cross Episcopal Church.
Splitting the Work Load. It was a member of Apman’s own church council who suggested the merger with St. Margaret’s. “That way we’d have two ministers to split the work load and twice as much money coming in,” he said, more or less in jest. Apman tried out the idea on St. Margaret’s pastor, the Rev. Paul Christensen, who agreed. Eventually, both ministers decided that it would be best if Holy Cross’s Lutherans become Episcopalians. The councils of the two churches then drew up a formal merger plan. If all goes well, the Lutherans of Holy Cross plan to be confirmed by Episcopal Bishop Ivol Ira Curtis of Olympia, while Apman will seek ordination as an Episcopal priest.
So far, Lutheran officials are outraged by the plan. They could not get Holy Cross parishioners to oust Apman as their pastor, but have persuaded them to delay approval of the merger until March. Recently the Rev. S. C. Siefkes, president of the A.L.C.’s North Pacific District, visited Holy Cross to warn parishioners of the doctrinal dangers involved in the plan—chiefly the Episcopal belief in the apostolic succession of bishops.
Church of the Future. Apman thinks that a majority of his parishioners will follow him into the merger, since they, like millions of other U.S. Protestants, are generally indifferent to the old theological quarrels of their churches. In many communities, Lutherans have no qualms about attending Methodist, Presbyterian or Episcopal services when a church of their own is not available. Moreover, Apman is already thinking ahead to a possible union of the eleven other churches in the Newport area into three larger, united congregations, each with a team of four ministers who could specialize in youth work, counseling, administration. He has already talked with several other Newport ministers, who shy away from formal merger but are willing to discuss some kind of share-the-work program. Apman concedes that his rather-switch-than-fight approach to ecumenism is unorthodox but insists that unity will “never be anything but a holy dream unless we act. It has to start somewhere.”
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