Church formalizes rare blending of Episcoplians, Lutherans
West Bloomfield Township
On a recent evening, Andrew Seng dressed up in a suit to officially become a Lutheran and an Episcopalian.
The 16-year-old was raised in the township’s Advent Episcopal Church, which lost its building and in 2012 started holding services at nearby Sylvan Lake Lutheran. The congregations soon bonded and, in an unusual twist, eventually blended their worship.
After adding another Lutheran flock, parishioners in April voted unanimously to formally combine into a single assembly with full membership in two denominations.
So, the same ceremony at which Seng celebrated his confirmation also toasted the birth of a relative rarity in Metro Detroit: a Lutheran-Episcopal community now called Spirit of Grace Church with about 140 members — one of only four such mixes in the region and about 50 nationwide, church officials said.
“It just shows that people can come together and work toward something that is huge,” the teen said.
Click the Detroit News link to read the full story.
Source: The Detroit News Metro and State Section