Why I Appreciate Trinity #8: Evangelical & Catholic

When I asked how many of you came from any kind of Lutheran experience, about 20% of you raised your hand. Some of you have Roman Catholic experience and some of you Evangelical experience, but that is not exactly what I am talking about with this appreciation. Both terms can be slippery because they mean different things to whoever is using them. 

I am using them in a radical way. Radical comes from the Latin radix meaning root. Evangelical is people marked by the evangel or the good message, the Gospel. You want to hear the evangel. You speak evangel. You want Jesus to be front and center in the message and ministry at Trinity. This make me fall in love with you over and over again. I want to tell the old, old story for some have never heard the message of salvation from God’s own holy Word. I want to tell the old, old story to those who know is best, seems hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.

Catholic, radically gets at an embrace of the wholeness of the church. Because of our varied backgrounds, we can’t help being more whole. We are not one race or ethnicity. Ole, Lena, and lutefisk jokes don’t work at Trinity. We are not one denominational family background. We have a total mix of generations. We are contemporary in the sense that we recognize God has seen fit for us to live and minister today. But we are not novel. We don’t reinvent doctrine, liturgy, classic catechesis, and Biblical morality. We can say with the ancient church, “we believe...”

Trinity, I love your kind of evangelical catholicity.