A Free Church congregation in eastern Finland has marked 120 years of ministry with an anniversary service built around the conviction that a church should feel like home. Mikkeli Free Church opened its celebration with pastor Mikko Ohra-aho reading Psalm 23 together with his six-year-old daughter Enni, who had first taught the psalm to her parents when she was four. The words “a church that feels like home” stood on the wall of the hall, and the evening was arranged to show what that looks like in practice.
Mikkeli Free Church belongs to the Finnish Free Church (Suomen Vapaakirkko, SVK), one of Finland’s free evangelical denominations. The programme reviewed the congregation’s history in stages: the years before independence and freedom of religion, the interwar period, the growth between the Second World War and the 1960s, and the present day. Manu Rantanen, who compiled a new edition of the congregation’s history, drew laughter with an 1881 article from the Mikkeli Sanomat describing meetings led by Anna Massinen and Ilma Mansner in language that has not worn well.
Two former pastors, Hannu Hietaniemi and Jaakko Simula, also spoke. Hietaniemi returned to Matthew 5 — “you are the light of the world” — and argued that light is not meant only for the room it shines in. The sermon came from Tommi Koivunen, leader of the Finnish Free Church, who told how a childhood friend brought him to a youth meeting at Pori Free Church at 17, where he came to faith. Preaching on the three parables of Luke 15, he asked who should have gone looking for the prodigal son; the answer, he said, was the older brother, and congregations today must decide whether they will pay the cost of welcoming those who come home. Ohra-aho said the congregation’s strength is its wide circle of people who carry responsibility, including many whose work is rarely seen on a Sunday.
(Originally published in Finnish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Suomen Vapaakirkko / Suomen Viikkolehti — svl.fi/kutsuttuina-etsimaan-ja-loytamaan/
