WCC Ecumenical Prayer Cycle: Ethiopia and Eritrea

Keren, Eritrea

As I wrote about in a post a few months ago, part of my vicarage at Saint Peter's Church this year is providing a supplemental paragraph about countries in the weekly Ecumenical Prayer Cycle created by the World Council of Churches. We pray for each country listed in the prayer cycle during the Intercessory Prayers at Saint Peter's on Sundays and the paragraph is included in our bulletin insert to provide context for those intercessions.

This week's countries (4/28 - 5/4) are Ethiopia and Eritrea. While the paragraph below provides some recent information, check out their WCC page for additional prayer resources.  Due to a recent change in the relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American and the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, we decided to focus specifically on Lutheran issues this week, although that is atypical.

We pray for the people of Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea and other religious minorities living faithful lives under difficult circumstances. We pray for mutual understanding and reconciliation between Lutherans in Ethiopia and the United States, as the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus recently voted terminate our fellowship agreement due to differences related to human sexuality.

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.