Covenant News

Combined Worship Will Be An Historic Event

ST. PAUL, MN (June 21, 2000) - The 115th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) will be especially significant as our denomination will worship together with the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) in two combined services during the week's events at the St. Paul River Centre here.

The EFCA, with national offices in Minneapolis, is celebrating its 116th annual meeting in St. Paul in the same conference facility at the same time as the ECC sessions. Former ECC President Paul Larsen and former EFCA president Paul Cedar were instrumental in bringing the two denominations together for the occasion. Given the denominational histories, it seems to make sense.

How alike are the EFCA and ECC? Perhaps as close as the schools each sponsors. EFCA-sponsored Trinity International University and adjacent divinity school in Deerfield, Illinois, stands just thirty minutes from the ECC headquarters, North Park University and North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago.

"We have very similar roots," says Wes Johnson, executive assistant to the office of the president and a regular attendee at Park Avenue Covenant Church in Minneapolis decades earlier. "The realization that they both came out of the Revivalist movement and Mission Friends movement is important for both the Free Church and the Covenant, he continued.

"It's interesting that some of the groups that organized here became Covenant churches and some became Free churches," Johnson observed. "It certainly wasn't anything biblical - it was mostly about structure," Johnson believes. "The Covenant church had more structure than we did in the late 1800s, but we've developed more structure in later years and are very much like the Covenant," he continued.

Larsen and Cedar were attending a prayer summit when they first discussed the idea of meeting in combined sessions for the respective 2000 annual meetings. Bob Rickers of the Baptist General Conference also met with the two and agreed that meeting in a plenary worship session was a viable idea. The Baptist General Conference will have the opportunity to be part of the combined worship on Sunday, June 25.

"It will be the first time in the history of the three bodies that they will meet together, a celebration of the fact that we're children of the same awakening," said Larsen. "These are the three surviving denominations of the Scandinavian awakenings in the United States," he continued. "Movements tend to differentiate and branch off and there's no basis for polemical controversy. They've become separate identities. There are partnerships, not mergers. There are affirmations, not disputations. There are encouragements, not criticisms."

The EFCA, which had its formal beginning at an 1884 conference in Boone, Iowa, has some 1,250 churches and has extended its mission influence with 500 missionaries in 42 nations. It also sponsors Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, the largest Christian school in Canada.

Both the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association had influence in the denomination's early years. Like the ECC, the EFCA churches took a while to convert to English-speaking services, with many churches keeping their Scandinavian languages intact during worship services well into the 1940s.

The two churches didn't combine forces officially until the EFCA set up a 12-point statement of faith in a merger conference in 1950. Dr. E.A. Halleen, president of the Swedish Association, became the first president of the EFCA.

A year later, Dr. Arnold T. Olson, the former president for the Norwegian-Danish EFCA, was elected EFCA president. "He was a strong leader and really was needed for the merging of two very strong-minded groups of people," Johnson said. Olson's tenure lasted until 1976, when Dr. Thomas McDill became president. McDill's legacy included much church growth and an increase in spiritual influence throughout the denomination.

From 1990 until 1996, Cedar served as EFCA president before becoming the first full-time president of Mission America, a national networking and evangelism ministry. "He (Cedar) was what I call a World Christian - he tied us up with a lot of national church groups and structures," said Johnson.

Dr. William Hamel serves as the current president, and although there has been no formal change in governmental structure, Johnson said that the EFCA's Superintendents Council (including 22 district superintendents) has had more of a leadership role in denominational strategy. In many ways, the governmental structure of the ECC and EFCA mirrors each other, Johnson said.

Larsen believes most people wouldn't recognize the difference between an ECC worship service and one in the EFCA. For two sessions during the respective groups' annual meetings, there won't be as the two praise God together.

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