Here you can see Ulf Ekman preaching at last sundays service at Livets Ord church ("Word of Life") in Uppsala, Sweden. He explains why he and his wife Birgitta are in the process of converting to the Catholic Church.
For those of us who have followed the development at Livets Ord over the last few years this does not come as a great surprise, even though it must have been a bit of a chock for a lot of members in the church (and all over the globe) that the Ekman couple do not end by just showing a mere interest and openness toward the historic Churches, but actually choose to leave the church they have founded and pastored for 30 years and join the Catholic Church (Ulf Ekmans motivation in the Swedish main paper Dagens Nyheter).
I personally consider this a very thrilling turn of events! I can honestly state that as for me, being a christian, it is subordinate which church or denomination I belong to. I am totally convinced that it is possible to be a devoted and bornagain (a carismatic expression) christian, no matter which church you belong to! I could concider being an orthodox, a catholic, a lutheran, a methodist, a hutterite, a pentacostal, a baptist of a carismatic ("livetsordare"="wordoflifer") and what other -ist or -an you could think of. As long as the Bible is the guideline, and the Apostolic Confession (and also the Athansian, which states that Jesus is at the same time 100% God and 100% man).
For me, it is not the visible rituals, the doctrines, the way you organize the service / mass, or who is the leader that matters, but the personal faith and relationship with the Lord. I am alos convinced that it in all churches are warm and zealous believers which also means that the docrines can be understood in connection to the context, even though they can be concidered strange and appalling to others. In the same way there are in all different traditions (even at Livetsord) a "cultural christianity" where people belong just because the are born and grown up in the church and have never really made any personal decision neither "for" nor "against". Naturally this form of religiosity is more common within catholic circles it is such a big and old church where so many generations have been raised with this identity rather than they have made a chose out of their own convincement.
I which Ulf and Birgitta Ekman all the best on their future path. Only a few weeks ago we had a sensational report from a Kenneth Copeland conference i the US. Kenneth Copeland has been a key figure in the "faith movement" and inspired Ulf Ekman in the beginning. At the actual service one of Copelands earlier coworkers, Tony Palmer, gave a speech, including a greeting taken up on Palmers' IPhone to the conference. So similare processes are taking place in several places.
Saying all this I would like to wish all the best to Joakim Lundqvist, the new pastor at Livets Ord, Uppsala. Ulf and Birgitta leaving the church should not be seen as a rejection of Livets Ord or as an act of alienation, which they also themselves pointed out. Ulf Ekman is very satisfied with the development and contents of Livets Ord. But now Joakim will be there and he will as the pastor point out a clear heading for the church as an evangelical, carismatic church, even though a lot of the members are feeling insecure about the future development. I think everything will be just fine! The best is yet to come!
This is a transcript of my Swedish-speaking blog!!
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