Fraternity-Testvériség, 1998 (76. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1998-07-01 / 3. szám
Page 8 TESTVÉRISÉG Continued from page 7 Church of Christ denomination. “It’s mainly an administrative role. You are merely first among equals,” he said. The United Church of Christ denomination was formed from the merger of four other churches, each of which contained other churches that previously merged. The Hungarian Reformed Church was part of the Reformed Church in the United States, which merged in 1934 in Cleveland with the Evangelical Church. This combined body joined with two other bodies to form the United Church of Christ in 1957. Most of the churches in the body are formed into geographical synods, but the Hungarian churches comprise their own synod, which stretches across the country. Like Medgyesi’s Fairport Harbor church, most of the churches worship in Magyar and English, reaching out to recent immigrants and the children of those who came before. “They want to praise the Lord in the language they grew up in,” he said. “We have third- and fourth-generation worshippers.” “We must see ourselves as part of the grand mosaic of Christianity,” he said. “I would like to see the Hungarian Reformed Church become more evangelical. I would like to see us share the unique liturgy that we have.” Medgyesi also wants the churches to reach out in more charitable ways. “The denomination must become more socially aware,” he said. “Not simply for what we can do as Hungarians, but what we can do for the world as Christians.” Bishop Medgyesi’s solemn Ordination will be held on October 11, Sunday at 4:00 p.m. in the Fairport, Ohio church to be followed by a banquet at 6:00 p.m. at the La Malfa Party Center. Timothy J. Gibbons News-Herald Religion Editor, Lake Co. (OH) In a series called, ‘The Myths of Marriage, ’ Dr. Glen Knecht, Pastor of Congregational Care has prepared a piece for the church publication of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Bethesda, Maryland, in which he examines some of the muddled thinking about marriage that keeps us from taking advantage of this most exciting and wonderful gift that God has given us. With his permission, we have reprinted his article that reads as follows: “A fallacy about our married lives might be put this way: ‘Each of the mates deserves his or her own space.’ And we may be thinking that we need ‘room’ in our marriages, to be apart a little and to have a breather from this one who is so close to us. But that is to miss the agenda of marriage, which is to draw us out of our aloneness, our separateness, into community with another person. Our desire for ‘space’ is a retreat from that process back into separateness and solitude. The great temptation in married life is to renege on our decision and commitment to be one flesh with another person and to turn back towards being an individual again. A person I know has likened the presence of our mate in the home to a great tree around which a house has been built. It is there in the center of the living room now. It is a beautiful thing and adds charm and beauty to the living room and a loveliness to the whole house. But it is also a problem to us. When we want to walk through the room, we must go around it. It affects the way we can arrange things in that room and how we must clean that area. It requires adjustments, and it will not go away. In something of the same way, our husband/wife is always there. Sometimes it seems they are right where we want to be - and in the way, as it were. This is their place, their home with us, and they are always there. We must learn how to live with the reality of their presence. We gave up our right to ‘space’ when we married. Now we are in a new condition, and we must build our lives around the ‘tree’ that is always there. The constant and ubiquitous presence of our mate in the home is a reminder of God to us and of His purpose in our lives. He, too, is always there. And we must live our lives in the light of that fact. This is what the Bible calls living in ‘the fear of the Lord.’ We cannot forget what He is doing in us through our mates. He is coaxing us out of the shadows of our selfish and private lives into the light and joy of fellowship and community. He is relentless in this and arranges it so that our mate is always there. When you begin to think of God’s hand in placing our mate at the center of our lives, you realize how deleterious to the oneness of marriage is the idea of ‘personal space.’”
