After the festive service to mark the change in the office of Church President, representatives from the EKHN’s partner churches around the world, representatives from the partnership committees, mission societies and governing bodies were invited to the 4th International Partnership Consultation in Arnoldshain.
The theme of the consultation from 27 to 30 January was “Seeking Unity – Future Perspectives on Ecumenical Partnerships in global contexts”. The change in leadership gave the opportunity to meet for this consultation at the beginning of the year to celebrate the anniversary of the Council of Nicea. It reminded us of the early attempts and disputes in Christianity in the effort to find unity. In this context, we worked on the topics Unity as a Promise and Hope, Church and Ethical Convictions, Church and Democracy and Church and Creation in these days and looked at the basic lines of our future partnership relations.
The Focus of the first day of the consultation was on Unity as a promise, a mandate and a hope. In our final statement we summarized the day:
“The call of Jesus Christ to unity is both a mandate and a promise. Unity in faith is not formed through personal achievements, but through the belief that we participate together in the Trinitarian God: in God the Creator, who is our foundation; in God’s son, Jesus Christ, who was martyred by deadly powers but was raised to the fullness of life as hope for all humankind; and in God’s Spirit who brings us together. This is the core of our hope.
We affirm that fundamental tasks of ecumenical work are to reflect, relate, live diversity, seek unity and communion within Christianity (Ephesians 4:1-6). Differences are encouraged to be discussed. Different forms and shapes of church have legitimate validity. The question of what can be recognized as legitimate diversity is not only a theological one, but also one of church politics, social and civic norms. Reflecting on the Council of Nicaea has encouraged us to understand the suspenseful unity of the Trinity as a promise and hope and to understand oneself as part of the diversity of the global churches.
As partner churches we affirm:
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- our understanding of unity as communion, and not uniformity,
- our belief that unity is both a promise and a mandate,
- our understanding of ourselves and our partner churches as one in Christ,
- that we are part of God’s given unity, therefore we seek for visible unity,
- that we encounter tensions yet remain full of hope and in the light of God’s promise,
- that in prayer we share the tensions under which our partnerships and partner churches suffer,
- that because and in spite of these points we remain together on the path towards unity.”
The full statement as download as pdf-file see below.
