What does “Full Communion” mean for lutheran worship?
In 1997 and again in 1999 the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America approved important ecumenical agreements. These agreements established a new relationship called “full communion” between the ELCA and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ in 1997, and between the ELCA and the Moravian Church in America in 1999. In 1999 the ELCA also acted to approve a relationship of “full communion” with the Episcopal Church. In its policy statement Ecumenism: The Vision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which was adopted by the Churchwide Assembly in 1991, the ELCA described “full communion” this way: For the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the characteristics of full communion are theological and missiological implications of the Gospel that allow variety and flexibility. These characteristics stress that the church act ecumenically for the sake of the world, not for itself alone. They will
