LWF Welcomes Appointment of Bishop Bedford-Strohm as EKD Council Chair

Thanks Work of Outgoing EKD Council Chair Nikolaus Schneider

(LWI) – The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge has congratulated Lutheran Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm on his appointment as chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Bedford-Strohm is the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, an LWF member church.

The EKD combines 20 protestant churches in Germany among them LWF member churches. The EKD represents more than 23 million Protestant Christians in Germany.

“I congratulate you most warmly, personally and on behalf of LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A Younan and the LWF Meeting of Officers, which today sits in Ljubljana,” Junge said in a letter to Bedford-Strohm.

Junge said he was looking forward to “continued cooperation and collaboration between the LWF and the EKD in preparation for the 2017 Reformation anniversary Through the participation in various local committees of the EKD” and welcomed Bedford-Strohm as the new head of the board of the Augusta Victoria foundation with which the LWF cooperates in its running of the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) in Jerusalem.

Bedford-Strohm, a hobby violinist, studied theology in Erlangen, Heidelberg and Berkeley in California.

Junge also thanked the work of the outgoing chair of the EKD Council Nikolaus Schneider, who was born in Duisburg in 1947. Schneider was president of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland until 2013 and has belonged to the EKD Council since 2003. He has been the chair of the Council since 2010.