Friedens accepted into Evangelical Free Church of America
Friedens Evangelical Church in Port Washington was officially accepted as a member of the Evangelical Free Church of America at the EFCA’s Forest Lake District’s spring meeting on April 19 in Wausau.
The Friedens congregation voted last year to apply for membership in the Minneapolis-based denomination, ending 16 years of operating as an independent non-denominational church. The EFCA’s Forest Lake board of directors voted in February to approve Friedens’ application.
Friedens, which is a German word that translates to English as “peace,” was founded in 1854 by Lutheran German immigrants and was the first Protestant church in Port Washington. Worship and education were conducted in German until the 1920s. Friedens underwent several denominational changes, beginning in the 1870s when it joined the Evangelical Synod of North America. In the 1930s, the synod merged with a German Reformed denomination to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In the late 1950s, that denomination merged with the Congregational Christian churches, creating the United Church of Christ. Friedens was part of that denomination until July of 1991, when the congregation voted to leave it because of doctrinal and theological differences and become independent.
Friedens Senior Pastor Mark Voll said Friedens chose to align itself with the EFCA because their belief and mission statements are identical to Friedens’ and that being part of the denomination will help provide support to Friedens as it grows and works at fulfilling its mission to the community and in replacing Pastor Voll as he leaves for a new mission in Bella Vista, Ark.
The EFCA is an association of some 1,300 autonomous churches in 45 countries. It was formed in the 1950s after the merger of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association, which were both formed in the early 1900s.
For more information on the Evangelical Free Church of America, visit its website at www.efca.org.