The Eucharist in the Evangelical Covenant Church

A reader and friend recently asked me a question relating to my decision to go to seminary at North Park Theological Seminary. North Park is connected to the Evangelical Covenant Church. Which is a branch off the Pietist movement within the Lutheran Church. I will be posting a lot more about the Covenant Church in the months to come. I would love to here other Covenenaters thoughts on this question!

Got a question for you, as a Lutheran now studying at a denominational school which is not sacramental with respect to the Eucharist as we Lutherans are.
For the first 35 years of my life I was in churches ( including the Covenant) which held to the memorial view of the Eucharist. When we started attending a Lutheran church in 1980 I began wrestling with the issue, finally after several years accepting the Lutheran position that it is much more, in fact that Christ’s body and blood are actually present and that partaking of communion is a means of grace. I finally came to accept a sacramental view. How are you dealing with the fact that the Covenant doesn’t, at least in practice, hold to that view.? (Complicating the issue for me is that now that there is a Covenant church recently started [near where I live], I find myself drawn back to the Covenant church, but after all of the wrestling with the issue of the nature of the Eucharist, I don’t want to lose what I’ve found to be very meaningful in my life.)

One of the most difficult things I have had to deal with when moving to the Covenant is reconciling the vague and sometimes “low church” theology on the Eucharist I have found in many covenant Churches with my own view ofSacramental Union. Although I have found room for my theology within the Covenant in the book “Covenant Affirmations” by Donald Frisk. This book is the closest thing to a Catechism the Evangelical Covenant Churchhas. It mentions that the Covenant has traditionally not believed in aspects of the Roman Catholic interpretation it does indicate that they do have a belief in “true presence.” How it “works” is left as a mystery.