Three congregations, one Catholic, one Episcopalian, and one Lutheran, are the All Saints churches in greater Toledo. The ministers, the Rev. Kent Kaufman of All Saints Catholic Church, 628 Lime City Rd., Rossford; the Rev. Beverly Tasy of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 563 Pinewood Ave.; and the Rev. Richard Rentner of All Saints Lutheran Church, 5445 Heatherdowns Blvd., spoke about their churches and their plans for the All Saints/All Souls weekend.
“[These days] All Saints Day has been combined with All Souls Day,” Rev. Tasy said, “whereas when I was a kid, they were two separate things and you had two separate services. Today it’s one big service, and that’s it. You remember the saints, the martyrs; and now you remember those who have passed through the year, this past year,” especially congregants and family members who died.
With the combination of All Saints and All Souls days, there is “no more dressing in the big vestments and parading around, and the big banners,” Rev. Tasy said. “[Now] we just do everything on Sunday and afterward go in for coffee hour and cut the All Saints Day cake, and people will share some good memories of some of the founding fathers and mothers.”
In the earlier days of the Christian church, Father Kaufman said, remembrance or feast days started with martyrs who died for the church, on their death anniversary. Then confessors, who were imprisoned for their faith, were added, and other religious people. The year 844 was “the first time in the West when we celebrated All Saints Day,” he said.
In Rossford, Father Kaufman said, the parishioners are already looking to All Saints Day 2015 — the church’s 25th anniversary — for a big celebration.
This year the church will focus on Sunday’s All Souls Day with “a special [evening prayer service] to remember those who have died.”
All Saints Rossford is also preparing for it annual “Original Chicken Paprikas Dinner,” making use of the parish’s Polish and Slovak roots, Nov. 9 from noon to 3 p.m., with plates priced at $7 and $9.
Pastor Rentner’s Lutheran congregation will follow two traditions Sunday. One is kind of an All Saints and Souls time. “I invite the congregation to give me the names of those saints that they would like us to remember in prayer,” he said, such as family members, “the (non-liturgical) saints now dead that are still alive in our memory.”
There is also an indication of support for All Saints Lutheran, where church members sign their names on a display board, “which is a way of simply saying, ‘I am renewing, recommitting, myself to the ministry of All Saints for the next 12 months,’” Pastor Rentner said. “They’re members; nobody’s going to kick them off if they won’t sign or something, but just the idea that you have to make a conscious decision for 12 months” signals commitment as part of the church family, he said.
The churches came up with their All Saints name for different reasons.
All Saints’ Episcopal held its first service Nov. 12, 1903, as “a Mission with the five Negro members of St. John [the Evangelist],” which was on Eleventh Street near Washington, according to All Saints’ Protestant Episcopal Church, A Brochure of Historical Data, compiled by All Saints’ member Lloyd H. Kimbrough in 1958, the year after the church achieved status as its own parish.
“I’m thinking the nearest feast day might have been Nov. 1,” Rev. Tasy said, and that’s how it came to be All Saints’.
All Saints Lutheran is in a mid-1970s building. “The whole character, the flavor of this congregation from its very inception, it was meant to be a break from the old traditional Lutheran thing,” Pastor Rentner said. He doesn’t know why All Saints was chosen as the name. “We as Lutherans tend to operate with the idea that a saint is a forgiven sinner. … All saints, the idea that we are forgiven sinners, that's what binds us together in Christ."
Pastor Rentner added, "I sometimes will joke with friends that we're All Saints, but we're really many saints and a whole lot of sinners, too."
The newest in the All Saints pantheon is the Catholic church in Rossford, which developed in 1990 from combining two parishes, St. Cyril and Methodious and St. Mary Magdalene. The Rev. Joseph Steinbauer, now at St. Mary in Sandusky, was the initial All Saints pastor. He said in an email, "Anyone could nominate a saint's name [and] I think over 100 were submitted. Then we voted and the new parish name was All Saints."
