Topic Overview:

• Editorial
  
• News From the Council
  
• General Assembly 2024
  
• News From the Member Churches
• Europe 
  
• Events
• Book Introduction

The CPCE Council met online on May 27 for an extraordinary Session to close remaining agenda items prior to the General Assembly in Sibiu. It was a short affair in contrast to the longer in-person Council meetings, but this only encouraged the Council to work swiftly and intensively through the items on the agenda for the day. 

With the decisions made here and at previous meetings, the General Assembly and the transition into the next working period are certainly poised to be successful. The Council made final decisions on the makeup of various committees, and the CPCE financial report for 2023 has been approved as well. 

We thank the Council for their hard work over the past 6 years!

The CPCE General Assembly would be nothing without its participants. At a recent meeting of the regional groups in Prague, some participants had the chance to introduce themselves and share a bit about their experiences with and hopes for CPCE. Visit our Youtube channel to see some of these faces and voices!

On 28 May and 30 May, the stewards met digitally via Zoom for the first time to prepare for the General Assembly and get to know one another. 29 young people from 27 different CPCE member churches took part. We are very impressed by the diversity and commitment of the future stewards. The stewards will arrive on 22 August and begin their preliminary programme in Sibiu.

We wish the stewards good preparations and a good realisation of all their tasks for the General Assembly!

More documents for the General Assembly are now available! Delegates should have received an email with login details to access some of the study texts and documents to be presented at the General Assembly in Sibiu. If you are a delegate and have not received such an email, or are having problems logging in to the website, please reach out directly to the Head Office. Check the “Documents” tab regularly as we will continue to upload more documents as they become available.

On Sunday of Pentecost, the admission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Georgia (ELCG) as a direct member church of the CPCE was celebrated in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Reconciliation in Tbilisi. It is the 112th signatory church of the CPCE. Bishop Rolf Bareis and CPCE President Miriam Rose signed the membership agreement.

The CPCE delegation was able to experience the ELCG as a small but vibrant church, which sends out important messages with its diaconal work, its multicultural liturgy, its ecumenical and interreligious commitment, and will surely enrich the church communion of the CPCE.

Bjørn Berge, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, invited representatives of religious communities to a conference on the issue „How can interreligious engagement help to re-invigorate the European democracies?”. At the conference in Berlin, CPCE General Secretary Mario Fischer presented the CPCE process “Democracy as a challenge to churches and societies” and main ideas of the CPCE study “Theology of diaspora”.

On 28 May, a meeting was held in Bern for all people from Switzerland and Liechtenstein who are involved in various CPCE study processes, regional groups and advisory boards or who have taken part in consultations in the recent two years. An impressive group of 15 people came together to discuss the work of the CPCE in its various formats. Martin Hirzel, Head of the External Relations Office of the Protestant Church in Switzerland, organised the event and led through the day. General Secretary Mario Fischer and Oliver Engelhardt from the CPCE office in Vienna spoke about the upcoming CPCE General Assembly and the current strategic considerations within the CPCE.

It was the second meeting of this kind, bringing together Swiss people from a wide range of CPCE working areas. Together, this results in a diverse overall picture of CPCE work.

Nothing can separate us! Christians from across Central and Eastern Europe met on the border of Poland and Germany in the town of Frankfurt (Oder) for this year's Christliche Begegnungstage. Christians of different cultures and backgrounds celebrated communion together, explored new forms of worship, and experienced what it means to be "one in Christ". CPCE organized a stand in partnership with ZETO (Center for Protestant Theology East), at the Market of Possibilities and hosted a workshop exploring the question "How do we deal with our diversity?".