Sweden is too important for the church to remain in its own bubbles, says André Jakobsson, Regional Church Leader for Equmeniakyrkan Region North and pastor of Hedlundakyrkan in Umeå. Speaking on the podcast På jakt efter framtidens kyrka ("In Search of the Church of the Future"), Jakobsson returned repeatedly to one theme: the unity of the church is not a side issue but the very key to its future. "I love Equmeniakyrkan's conviction that we are a provisional arrangement," he said. "We took the step of merging three denominations, but we also said this is not the final step. For me, unity is the great calling."
Equmeniakyrkan was formed in 2011 through the merger of three Swedish free church traditions — the Mission Covenant Church, the Baptist Union, and the United Methodist Church — and has become one of the most significant ecumenical projects in European free church history. Jakobsson's father served as a congregational leader in the Pentecostal church in Umeå for 45 years and was an early advocate for ecumenical cooperation in the 1970s, an inheritance Jakobsson says shaped him deeply. "I received it with my mother's milk," he reflected. "I have always heard that the church is bigger than ourselves. But the dream also hurts, because we live in a time where both society and the church have become more polarised."
A concept that made a strong impression on Jakobsson at Equmeniakyrkan's recent church conference was the idea of the church as an oenighetsgemenskap — a "community of disagreement." He argues that the real challenge is not primarily between denominations but within each local congregation, where people with different backgrounds, opinions, and personalities must learn to live together. "When the church becomes a community of agreement where everyone thinks alike, something has already gone wrong," he said. "We must learn to live with our disagreements because we have a much deeper centre — we are one in Christ." For the global free evangelical movement, this vision of unity without uniformity resonates with the believers-church conviction that the body of Christ is bigger than any single tradition.
(Originally published in Swedish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Equmeniakyrkan / Sändaren — sandaren.se
