RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

Rev. Douglas Lofton is the Senior Minister at
Southport Christian Church in Indianapolis.
First let me offer thanks for the opportunity to
participate with this group in this thoughtprovoking
and exciting conversation on Christian
Unity. I am also grateful to be asked to share my
thoughts with regards to the opportunities and the
challenges surrounding the topic of ecumenism in
the local congregation. I suspect I was asked, not
because of any significant global or national involvement,
but because of nearly 40 years of
participation in leadership in ecumenical and
interfaith conversations at the local level.
Some history . . . well actually a lot of history. I was
selected as a teenager back around 1969 to be a part
of the representative team from First Christian
Church in Keokuk, Iowa to discuss some of the
documents that were being circulated within the
COCU movement. If my memory serves me, which
is doesn’t always do, we were involved in conversation
about issues like mutual recognition of
members, communion, and a basic plan of
covenant. This conversation was going on in the
heat of the debate within the different movements
as they considered what union would mean. As I was
involved in these discussions within local
communities of faith for years, which documents
were available at that point, I am not clear.
What I do remember was a real sense of frustration
when it all fell apart, but our group kept meeting
with the new goal of covenant, or I think the word
might have been intercommunion. This was the
Ecumenism for
the Local Church
Douglas Lofton
26
model where we would keep our own identity but
would commit to some of the principles of the
documents I mentioned before.
Before long we got somewhat sidetracked, and the
real push then centered on Protestant/Catholic
cooperation. Now this was a very significant
discussion as in Keokuk, Iowa, diversity was not
ethnic or even economic, but religious. To give you
context, there were no ethnic congregations, two
Mormon families, a Russian Orthodox family (who
traveled to St. Louis on high holy days) and a Jewish
family (non-practicing). The rest of the town, in
church terms, was either Catholic or Protestant,
and a pretty even split at that. Mixed marriage in
Keokuk was still something people talked about.
They were referring to Catholic/Protestant.
Out of those conversations came one major
accomplishment, an annual Thanksgiving service at
the Catholic High School. The first service had one
of the priests presiding and preaching, and the
protestant ministers leading and reading other
parts of the liturgy. It was all male, all white, but a
move in the right direction. That service continues
today, but the participants have changed significantly
representing the richness of leadership in all
traditions.
My next experience was less theological and more
practical. When I was serving as minister of the
Yokefield Parish of Packwood, Iowa, I served the
only two churches in town (200 people couldn’t
support more than that). I also held dual standing
in the United Methodist and Disciple denomi-
I served the only two churches in town (200 people couldn’t support more than that). This yoked
relationship had existed for about 10 years as neither church could support a full-time minister.