February 11, 2025 // Diocese

Pray Fort Wayne Is a ‘Picture of Heaven’

Clare Hildebrandt

Reporter

“It’s easy for us to get caught up in our own worlds,” said Mitchell Kruse, an attendee of the recent Pray Fort Wayne event. “But God is so much bigger than we tend to give Him credit for in our fallenness.”

Kruse was one of dozens of attendees at the ecumenical Pray Fort Wayne gathering on Wednesday, February 5, at the Parkview Mirro Center in Fort Wayne. Every month, Christians of all sects – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – gather to worship at 7 a.m. at the Parkview North campus with praise music, talks, and group prayer.

Hands joined together as heads were bowed at tables around the room. All asked for heavenly blessings in cultivating Christian togetherness in Fort Wayne.

“It was the image of God’s heart that both Jesus and Paul talked about,” Kruse said shortly after group prayer. “The unity that we prayed for was evident – it’s a picture of heaven.”

Bishop Rhoades, a longtime advocate of Love Fort Wayne, which sponsors the monthly event to foster Christian unity in the city, spoke to the audience as the morning’s guest speaker.

“Ecumenism is in my blood,” Bishop Rhoades shared. “My father was Lutheran, my mother Catholic, and my grandfather Greek Orthodox, so I’m kind of an ecumenical bishop by blood.”

He urged the crowd to meditate on John 17, where Jesus calls for unity among his followers.

“We heard in John 17, where Jesus Himself prayed for His disciples – ‘that all may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.’ In other words, how much more convincing is our witness to the Gospel when we are united,” Bishop Rhoades said.

“As Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox, we are united in our profession of faith of the Nicene Creed,” Bishop Rhoades added.

While praising the solidarity found at these events, Bishop Rhoades implored the crowd to foster even greater unity.

“Our unity is still imperfect,” he said, “so we need to work tirelessly for the restoration of full communion so that we can gather together at the altar of the Lord in the Eucharist. It’s important to understand and realize the primacy of prayer, because the soul of the ecumenical movement is prayer or spiritual communion.”

Geoff King, chief executive officer of Love Fort Wayne, added to Bishop Rhoades’ sentiment, saying: “There are cultural differences, ethnic differences, and even ecumenical differences. [These differences] aren’t always bad, because we all have unique ways of worshipping the Lord. We’re all brought up in certain traditions, but there are some hurts from that. … One of the ways that we’ve tried to help this is simply recognizing the differences,” King said. “We recognize the places where we might worship differently or gather in different types of space. We recognize hurts and times where the church wasn’t always good to one another.”

King said that to truly move beyond our differences, we must recognize that Christ is the one to whom we must flock, because He knows our pains.

“We can recognize that the Lord knows our hurts and pains and take a posture of repentance, forgiveness – even of apology to one another. We recognize where we’ve fallen short toward one another as brethren,” King said.

King noted that Pray Fort Wayne has “built so many relationships. … And there’s still much to be done by stilling our hearts and starting each month in prayer.”

The Love Fort Wayne prayer events are held on the first Wednesday of every month from 7-8 a.m. at the Parkview Mirro Center, 10622 Parkview Plaza Drive in Fort Wayne. For more information, visit lovefortwayne.com.

Clare Hildebrandt is a staff reporter for Today’s Catholic.