Three church congregations from the Union Springs area came together for eight consecutive nights to talk to each other about their faith and to pray. Members of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Trinity United Church of Christ and the Good Shepherd Catholic Community opened their hearts, their homes and their churches for spiritual gatherings. This is the 29th year they have been having these gatherings, an event they call The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Tom Parsnick, Carol Sanders and Gary and Julie Hunt served as representatives from their home churches as part of a planning committee. Parsnick said, “At each gathering we sing songs, read from the scriptures and pray.”

This week of prayer has its origins in Garrison, at what is now the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute. The week of Jan. 18 through 25 was set aside to celebrate and pray about the “disunity within the church.”

Today people of many denominations all over the world now schedule ecumenical services and prayer gatherings for this same purpose. The Sunday of this week is called Ecumenical Sunday.

In Union Springs, a special service was held on the evening of Ecumenical Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC).

The guest speaker at the ecumenical service was the Rev. Lawrence Maxwell, a retired pastor of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Trying to summarize his church's beliefs in a few sentences, Maxwell said, “We believe the Bible is our guide, Jesus is our savior, our creator and the Son of God and he will come back to get us someday.”

As part of his sermon, Maxwell said, “What a wonderful thing is eight days of prayer together. God wants our hearts to be converted. If all of our hearts were converted, we would all speak in agreement. The closer we come to Jesus, the closer we come to each other.”

This UCC has its own ecumenical history. According to Carol Sanders, a long-time member of the community, “Before this church started, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians and the Methodists had separate congregations, but they were too small to continue supporting their churches. So they voted and merged to become the United Church of Christ, rather than just a community church.”

Sanders said the present United Church of Christ used to be the Methodist church, the Presbyterian church is now the home of the Frontenac Museum and the former Episcopal church is now St. Michael's Catholic Church.

Sanders also happens to be the mother of the new pastor of the United Church of Christ, Shelley Pantoliano. Pantoliano, who has only been the pastor for

the past two weeks, said, “The UCC has a lay minister program that includes home study, going to retreats and meeting regularly with a mentor. I'm a licensed lay minister, but I can only operate within my home church.”

In addition to the Ecumenical Sunday service, the nightly gatherings are held in private homes. The theme of the eight days, called an octave, is “Pray without ceasing,” but each night has its own theme as well, for this year they all revolve around praying for specific purposes. A leader is assigned for each night, who directs the pre-selected readings. For people unable to attend any of the gatherings, the readings were inserted into the bulletins of the participating churches, so they may read them at home alone or with the families.

Commenting on the work of the church people in Union Springs, Pastor Pantoliano said, “We're blessed to live in a community that fosters an ecumenical relationship among it churches.”