Topic Overview:

• Editorial
• General Assembly 2024
  
• Europe
• From the Member Churches
• News from the Head Office
  
• Spotlight: Theological Work
  

On 16 January 2024 the steward programme of the CPCE General Assembly in Sibiu was announced. Students and graduates (18 - 28 years) interested in church issues are invited to apply. The programme itself is scheduled between 22 August and 3 September 2024. Here, young people will not only be assigned to practical work, but they will also have the chance to get to know the ecumenical movement, the region and the Assembly topics in a workshop component.

On the way to the General Assembly, the CPCE recommends organising preparatory meetings to exchange information on content, texts and positions. A regional meeting for North-Central and South-Eastern Europe will take place in Budapest from 2-4 May 2024 at the invitation of ZETO.

In January 2024, CPCE General Secretary Mario Fischer travelled to the Odessa region on a solidarity trip and visited the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ukraine (DELKU). He visited various church projects and used the visit to emphasise that the people and churches in Ukraine are not forgotten by the community in Europe. A report on the trip and the church can be found here:

24 February 2024 marks the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. More than half a million people have presumably already lost their lives in this war. Violence, suffering and destruction have become part of everyday life for many people. We as people and churches must not get used to this! At a pastors' conference in Odessa, the following prayer for peace was formulated, which is recommended to all CPCE member churches for their worship services and prayers for peace during the observance of 24 February 2024.

New people often take on responsibility for ecumenism, foreign relations or European affairs in the Protestant churches. The CPCE office therefore organised a webinar at the beginning of January to provide an introduction to this work and an overview of the history, principles and activities of the CPCE. Around 20 people took part in the two half-day sessions. Some churches were represented by ecumenical officers, others by members of synodal committees or other advisory bodies.

Many European societies are shaped by migration. Among the religions brought with these migrants are various forms of protestantism. How do established Protestant churches in Europe connect to growing migration churches? This is not only a question of structure and attitudes, but also of theology. CPCE has an Advisory Board for Migration and Church Communion, which met recently in Basel. Its discussions looked towards the upcoming General Assembly of the CPCE. The Advisory Board visited the Sonntagszimmer, a good model of an inclusive congregation, and listened to Dr. Claudia Hoffmann, the lead researcher on such questions at Basel University. When the Advisory Board took a group picture at the end of the meeting, some participants had already departed (a Leuenberg tradition ;-)). Basel and its cathedral hosted the last General Assembly of the CPCE in 2018.