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Towards a common global ecumenical assembly?
Ecumenical Review, The, July-Oct, 2006 by Stephen Brown
In taking this action, the Council considered the need for ecumenical coordination in view of churches' membership in other regional and global Christian organizations, as well as staff work level and budgetary constraints. The venue, theme and exact dates will be decided in due course. (60)
The relationship between the discussion in Geneva and that in Germany was underlined at the end of that month when Bishop Wolfgang Huber made his first visit to the Ecumenical Centre as chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. In Geneva, Huber reported on the plans of the Protestant churches in Germany to rationalize their structure whereby the Lutheran, United and Reformed church groupings would in future operate under the umbrella of the EKD while their administrative offices would be accommodated at the EKD's headquarters in Hanover. (61) At the same time, Huber underlined that it would send an important ecumenical signal if the decision-making bodies of the LWF and WARC were to hold meetings together in future. He said ongoing discussions between the two world bodies made him hopeful that shared assemblies were becoming a more realistic option than ever before. The LWF's increasingly ecumenical orientation and closer cooperation between LWF and WARC were important steps in this direction, said Huber. (62)
Still, at its meeting in Jerusalem/Bethlehem in 2005, the LWF Council agreed that its 2010 assembly would be hosted in Stuttgart by the Evangelical Church in Wurttemberg, Germany, though it stated at the same time that this decision had been taken "with a clear commitment to the vision for Christian unity". (63) In advance of taking the decision, the Council had heard an ecumenical greeting from WARC which included an invitation to the LWF to consider holding a common assembly "in the near future possibly with the leadership of the WCC and involving as many CWCs as are willing to join". (64) The letter from WARC president Clifton Kirkpatrick and general secretary Setri Nyomi said that WARC was willing to organize its next assembly in the same place as the LWF, although constitutional elements would be dealt with separately; "We in WARC believe that we have a unique opportunity for WARC and LWF to set the example, not as the end desired, but as an expression of our commitment [to church unity]." (65) Meanwhile, the LWF Council called for serious consideration of possible coordination of governing bodies' meetings of the WCC and CWCs as well as the achievement of broader ecumenical assemblies, based on the WCC assemblies, where CWCs would have their specific space. (66)
What these decisions meant in practice remained unclear to observers. They seemed to suggest that while WARC was ready to consider the organization of a collaborative assembly with the LWF, with or without the WCC and other Christian World Communions, for the LWF the priority was the achievement of broader ecumenical gatherings centred on the WCC assembly. At any rate, Clifton Kirkpatrick told WARC's executive committee in October that it seemed impossible to hold their next global assembly with the Lutheran World Federation:
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