There is an almost unique situation in our local Episcopal and Lutheran churches. Messiah Episcopal Church in Murphy has a Lutheran minister, the Rev. Dr. Maggie Rourke; and the Lutheran church in Andrews has an Episcopal pastor, Father Horace Free. And Good Shepherd Episcopal Church has a Lutheran pastor hanging around as Theologian in Residence - who also recently served as the interim pastor of a Presbyterian Church. To many of us this ministerial jumping across denominational lines feels like something very new. In a book on Lutheran church history in North Carolina I discovered it isn’t so new after all.
In the mid 1700’s a young man named Robert Miller was born in Scotland. Although the state Church of Scotland was Presbyterian, there was also a small Episcopal denomination in Scotland, derisively called by the Scots, “The English Church.” The Miller family were members of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Young Robert was very religious, so much so that he was an active participant in the Methodist Society weekly meetings in his local Episcopal parish and became a certified Methodist Lay Preacher. He intended to go to University to study for the ministry but an economic downturn in the country led him to emigrate to America with his family. Not long after they arrived, the Revolution broke out and he served in the Continental Army. After the war, he settled as a farmer in western North Carolina, in what is now Lincoln County, northwest of Charlotte. There he became active in White Haven Church, an Episcopal parish whose priest had left for England during the war. The congregation’s situation was dire: they had no priest and there was no Episcopal bishop or even a diocese in North Carolina to provide them one. On the plus side, the local Lutheran church worshiped in German and the younger people in that church wanted to worship in English so they came to White Haven for services. Most of the White Haven church members had been active in the Methodist Society before the war, but they didn’t want to join the newly formed Methodist Episcopal Church, preferring to remain Episcopalians. So, when they found out young Mr. Miller was a lay preacher, they persuaded him to lead worship and preach.
All was well for a while, until the congregation began to yearn for communion more frequently than the occasional visits of a wandering priest or Lutheran minister, and for someone to baptize their babies. Though the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA had been formed, there was still no bishop or diocese in North Carolina, so the good people of Lincoln County hit upon a very practical plan - they petitioned the North Carolina Ministers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church to ordain Robert Miller. And the six Lutheran pastors meeting together in Concord NC in 1794 agreed to do so, writing in German on the back of his ordination certificate, “We hereby ordain Robert Miller to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Episcopal Church;” a very interesting choice of words. Pastor Miller spent the next 24 years serving a number of Lutheran congregations as pastor, well as several years as Synod President (Bishop). When the Episcopalians got organized in North Carolina in 1820, Robert Miller was ordained as an Episcopal priest and served among them for another 15 years.
Why did the Lutherans of North Carolina ignore all rules and precedent to ordain a Methodist lay preacher as an Episcopal priest? Because it seemed to them, at the time, the right thing to do under the circumstances for the sake of the gospel. In Lutheran terms, it was an “emergency decision,” bending the rules when to do otherwise would deprive people of the Gospel. They took seriously the idea that people needed the preached Word and the celebration of the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion in order to live; that these things are as necessary to the life of the soul as air to breathe and food to eat and water to drink are to the life of the body. They looked at the situation and decided that ordaining Robert Miller was the only way these essential needs of the people of White Haven Church in Lincoln County, NC could be met.
In 1998, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America finally caught up to the far-sighted wisdom of the Metho/Lutho/palians of Lincoln County. Our two church bodies entered into CALLED TO COMMON MISSION - an agreement that clearly stated it was created to make it easier to find and share clergy in places and situations where people would be deprived of the gospel without it.
I invite us to do two things. 1) Celebrate and pray for our sister congregations in Cherokee County as they move forward in mission and ministry in these excitingly creative circumstances. 2) Open ourselves to the leadership of the Holy Spirit as it invites us to think creatively about what other “emergency measures” we might take to make sure everyone around us hears and experiences the Good News of God’s love for us in Jesus who is the Christ.
Peace, Delmer