At the 13th CEC Assembly it was decided that on Friday we should consume our lunch-in-a-bag in “confessional groups”. It was declared only three such groups would be allowed – Anglicans and Old Catholics; Orthodox and Protestant. I duly joined several hundred others in the “Protestant” meeting presided over by Bishop Tomas Wipf (Switzerland), President of CPCE (the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe), so immediately we Baptists didn’t feel at home as CPCE declined to have us associated with them some time ago. Then the meeting was run more like an audience with the Pope, with Bishop Wipf doing most of the talking and setting his own agenda. Over…
-
-
IBTS Alumnus comes third in Europe-wide ecumenical essay event
The room of four hundred delegates and observers at the 13th Assembly of the Conference of European Churches went hushed and silent as Dr Alison Elliott (Church of Scotland) Moderator of the13th Assembly prepared to announce the results of the essay competition for young European Christians on the Assembly theme of “Hope”. In third place was IBTS Alumnus Joshua Searle, now doing doctoral work at Trinity College, Dublin. The winner a young woman pastor from the French Reformed Church. So the news of the three top places was received with applause by the Metropolitans, Emminences, Right Revds, Professors, Doctors of Divinity, Magisters and all of the Orthodox churches of Europe,…
-
Baptist Caucus meets at CEC
The 13th Assembly of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) is meeting in the historic city of Lyon in France. Four hundred and fifty Christians from all sorts of persuasions, excluding the Catholics, are gathered under the theme of “hope”. Various pressure-groups want to meet in the framework of CEC. The Orthodox have asked for a meeting, the German Lutherans are pressing for a complete restructuring of CEC, and what are the small community of Baptists supposed to do ? Well, at least we managed a lunchtime meeting – Germans, Georgians, Italians, Danes, Brits and the EBF. For many years, going back to the 11th Assembly in Graz in 1997,…