Ecumenical Worship

This afternoon, we joined four other churches in town for an ecumenical Epiphany service billed as "The Last Noel" (yes, I had to ask the other pastors what Epiphany was). Each of the churches brought a musical group and sang some of their Christmas music. It was a really great service. It started out with the Evangelical Free church's worship team singing a bluegrassy Silent Night and then leading us in several worship songs (a nice flashback to the songs we sang growing up). Then the Catholic church's choir sang a couple of songs. One Lutheran church followed up with a bell choir that was just outstanding. Then it was our turn. I hope that we didn't scare them, but our Christmas music is songs like "Oh Praise Him" by David Crowder. We were followed by the children's choir from a different Lutheran church.

What was really fun for me was the spirit in the room. Even though everyone was coming from markedly different church worship experiences, everyone really enjoyed all of the other expressions of worship. It was great to see people from such different backgrounds all centering their worship on Jesus. It's always exciting when a community gathers to worship, and especially exciting when some of the barriers of denominations and traditions and theology can be set aside in order to focus on the more important things (Jesus, worship, community, unity, etc.) We decided to make this an annual event. I can't wait until next Epiphany.