LETTERS: ELCA COMMITTED TO BUILDING BRIDGES

To the editor:

I would like to thank you for the coverage your paper has given to issues relating to faith and spirituality, especially the recent coverage regarding the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I am grateful to be a member of a church body that, in this day and age of road rage and market segmentation, is taking Jesus at his word, that he is "the way, the truth and the life." The ELCA is committed to building bridges and not walls between people of faith.

The Lutheran church, both Missouri Synod and ELCA, have manifested one of the greatest examples of this emphasis on unity in their disaster response. The floods of 1993 and 1995 in Missouri and the terrible floods in the Red River Valley in 1997 have taken a toll on many people. Fortunately, we have been able to work together with ecumenical groups to meet the needs of boys and girls, women and men.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed that his followers might be one just as he and the father are one. The members and leadership of the ELCA are committed to making Christ known through word and deed. Our recent Churchwide Assembly affirmed our desire to follow Jesus by approving full communion with the Reformed churches and by coming to an agreement on justification with the Roman Catholic Church.

As ELCA presiding bishop, H. George Anderson, has written, "It is a good time to be the church."

CHARLES H. MAAHS, Bishop

Central States Synod

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Shawnee Mission, Kan.