09620
July 20, 2009

Conference of European Churches votes for reform by 2013

by Stephen Brown
Ecumenical News International

LYON, France — Delegates at the once-every-six-years assembly of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) meeting in Lyon have voted overwhelmingly to embark on a reform of the church grouping with proposals for change to be adopted in 2013.
 
After several hours of debate, the assembly approved on July 17 a motion to establish a special working group to carry out a reorganization of CEC as a whole, including looking at its common purpose, vision, the setting of strategic goals and its structures.

CEC, which now has 120 member churches — principally Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox — was founded in 1959 as a bridge between East and West during the Cold War.

However, in recent years the church grouping had been unable to adjust to the new situation in Europe, Bishop Martin Schindehütte of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) told delegates at the start of the July 15-21 assembly. He was proposing the original motion to set up a working group to reform CEC structures.

“Our concern is to make the witness of the churches heard in the cultural, social and political developments in the European Union and in Europe as a whole,” said Schindehütte.

About 300 delegates from the grouping’s 120 member churches — principally Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant — and 500 other participants are attending the assembly.

The general secretary of CEC, Archdeacon Colin Williams, told journalists on July 18 that the Lyon gathering followed a process of consultation with member churches. He said the message from members was that CEC needs to be an organization that is more coherent, “more focused and that in all that it does, it has a clear strategy.”
 
The resolution was adopted 238-27 with six abstentions. The final decision was a compromise between the EKD proposal and an alternative motion from a group of churches in the Nordic and Baltic countries.

“We are all aware that CEC needs changes,” Orthodox Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima, a member of the church grouping’s presidium, told journalists. “In spite of its 50 years it needs radical and fundamental changes.” He said the grouping needed to help churches find a “common voice” in a changing Europe.

The new working group is to produce draft proposals by Dec. 31, 2011 for consultation by member churches. Final proposals for reform will be brought to the next CEC assembly to take place in 2013, two years earlier than scheduled.

The moderator of CEC’s finance committee, Huub Lems, warned that bringing forward the meeting would place increased financial strain on the organization, which has offices in Geneva, Brussels and Strasbourg, and that additional funding would be needed.

“In four years we cannot live up to the expectation to get enough funds from the regular budget,” said Lems, from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.