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| Church service fosters understanding |
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| Written by Aaron Cedeño | |||
| Wednesday, 25 November 2009 09:00 | |||
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If Thanksgiving is all about bringing family closer together, shouldn’t that philosophy extend to a family built on shared faith as well? That’s a philosophy followed by the Louisburg faith community anyway, since at least 1938. Every fall, parishioners from the 13 member churches of the local Ministerial Alliance gather for a non-denominational Thanksgiving service. The site of the service rotates to a new church each year, giving many of the attendees a chance to experience their Christian faith in new and different ways. “I don’t mean to speak so firmly for all the other clergy in town, but we believe we have more in common than we have differences,” said the Rev. Sandy Harris, pastor of Louisburg First Christian Church. “It’s good this time of year to get together and affirm those things that we have in common.” It was First Christian Church’s turn to serve as the host parish this year, and on Sunday more than 150 people packed the pews, eager to learn more about the faith of their neighbors and friends. In his opinion, the reason for the tradition’s longevity is two-fold, Harris said. First and foremost, it gives people a chance to worship with friends and neighbors who don’t belong to their own church, and find out how folks on the other side, so to speak, go about celebrating their faith. How do they sing their songs? What is the pastor like? How is the service structured? These are all questions that the multi-denominational service helps answer, Harris noted, paving the way for the second secret of the tradition’s success. “That leads us into a real ecumenical activity that allows that to happen,” he explained. “We’re all different flavors, obviously, but we have the same motive, the same core values, the same basic beliefs. We just practice our religions differently.” The Rev. Donna Voteau, pastor of Louisburg United Methodist Church, said that several members of her own congregation attended the Sunday service, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It’s not often that members of virtually every branch of the Christian faith come together in such a manner, she said, and her parishioners appreciated the chance to celebrate with so many new faces. In the spirit of the Thanksgiving season, she added, the service provided a great opportunity to give thanks for each other. “I think, for lots of us, we’re just sure that this is one of the times we remind ourselves that we’re all a community together,” Voteau said.
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