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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 19.06.2000 |
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| Tenth LWF Assembly will take place in Winnipeg, Canada in 2003 |
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TURKU, Finland/GENEVA, 19 June 2000 (LWI) – The Tenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) will take place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 2003. The host church is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).
The governing body of the LWF took this decision on 19 June 2000 following a near-unanimous secret ballot vote, of which the choice was between the ELCIC and the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany. For the venue, the ballot was 34 for, five against and three abstensions. For the timing, there were 29 votes for, four against and nine abstentions respectively for the choice between 2003 and 2004.
This is the second time that a meeting of the highest decision-making body of the LWF will be taking place in North America. Previous assemblies have been held as follows: at the founding of the Federation in Lund, Sweden (1947); Hanover Germany (1952); Minneapolis, USA (1957); Helsinki, Finland (1963); Evian, France (1970); Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (1977); Budapest, Hungary (1984); Curitiba, Brazil (1990); and Hong Kong, China (1997).
Accepting the responsibility placed upon the Canadian church by the governing body of the LWF, the presiding bishop of the ELCIC, Telmor Sartison, expressed gratitude for the choice taken. He invoked the blessing in Eph. 3: 20-21:"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen."
Various questions regarding the hosting of an LWF assembly were raised and responded to during plenary discussions preceding the council decision. These revolved around the spiritual reason behind a member church’s invitation to host such a meeting; the financial and human resources implications; the regional balance portrayed by the venue in view of the universality of the Federation; the size of the inviting church; and the possibility of coordinating future assemblies with the World Council of Churches (WCC), other world Christian communions such as and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) as well as regionally with the Conference of European Churches or other regional ecumenical organizations.
According to the Constitution of the LWF (Article VII. 2.): "The Assembly shall normally be held every six years with the time, place and program to be determined by the Council."
Amendments to this Constitution may be made by votes cast at any ordinary Assembly. (Article XIV. Amendments and Bylaws 1.)
The ELCIC has about 200,000 members, representing less than one perecnt of Canada’s 32 million people. Fifty percent of Canadians are Roman Catholics, followed by the United Church of Canada—comprising Presbyterians and Methodists, then Anglicans in that order. The other LWF member churches in North America include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (USA) with some 5.2 million people; while the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Abroad, Canada, and the Lithuanian Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Diaspora (USA), have a total membership of 17,000.
During a plenary presentation by an ELCIC team prior to the vote on this major event on the calendar of the LWF, which included Mr. Robert Granke, the secretary of the ELCIC, Sartison likened the hosting of an LWF Assembly to "coming home. …The most humbling implication of such a choice by the Council being that the LWF member churches would be coming to our home. That means a lot to me, to us."
In an interview with LWI shortly after the Council’s decision, Sartison said: "One of the blessings of having a home is that guests are welcomed, entertained and blessed. In turn the host is blessed by the visitors and both the invitee and invited learn a lot from making contact."
Sartison told LWI that the size of the church is not in any way an impediment when it comes to carrying out the responsibilities of organizing a meeting as large as that of the highest decision-making body of the LWF. The Ninth Assembly, which took place in Hong Kong, China in July 1997 brought together more than 1,000 participants, among them representatives of each of the 122 member churches at that time, ecumenical guests and observers, local and international journalists.
That all the member churches of the LWF, will be coming to Canada is a great opportunity for the host church as well as for the guest member churches. "Our people are going to be blessed by seeing and knowing people from different cultures.A forum such as the assembly helps all churches to have a better realization that Christ embodies a larger and more universal outlook than our horizons," Sartison, who is a member of the LWF Program Committee for Communication Services noted.
During a press conference, the ELCIC bishop spoke of the very positive ecumenical working relations in Canada. He said that apart from the church’s own congregations other Christians were eager to know if the ELCIC would host the 10th Asembly of the LWF. This is not the first time that the church in Canada has made an invitation to host a meeting of the Federation’s highest decision-making body. A similar proposal had been extended for the Ninth Assembly, for which the choice went to the member churches in Hong Kong.
Sartison said such a large meeting is an opportunity also for the host church to know itself better. The various synods and congerations work together to prepare for such an event, and inevitably they also involve other Christian churches, which according to the Lutheran bishop is a tremendous way of learning.
The ELCIC came into being in 1986 through the merger of two predecessor bodies. It is composed of five synods namely British Columbia, Alberta and the Territories, Saskatchewan, Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario and the Eastern Synod. The presiding officer and chief pastor of each synod is a bishop. The church with five bishops and one presiding bishop has its headquarters in Winnipeg.
In addition to membership in the LWF, the ELCIC is a member of the WCC. The Canadian church is currently in a process of moving toward full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada under the auspices of the Waterloo Declaration. In some communities ELCIC members share facilities and even clergy with Christians of other denominations particularly from the Anglican, Presbyterian and United Churches of Canada. The majority of Lutherans in Canada who are not ELCIC members belong to the (Missouri Synod) Lutheran Church – Canada (LCC). Both Lutheran churches collaborate in their common work through the Canadian Lutheran World Relief (CLWR).
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