“…we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.” (2 Cor 1:24)
Dear Colleagues, dear Sisters and Brothers
On behalf of the Presidium of the KEP, I would like to send you our warmest greetings and best wishes for the year ahead.
With great pleasure, I'm looking back to our conference in June last year in Admont, Austria. Pastors from Norway, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Denmark, Alsace, Austria, Westphalia, Czech Republic, Finland, Rhineland, Thuringia, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Romania, Bavaria and France, Lutheran and Reformed, were holding a meeting over four intensive days. They brought reports from their countries and regional churches, exchanged views, listened to presentations, enjoyed cultural contributions, shared their meals, and celebrated Holy Communion together.
As always, the round table with the reports from the Pastor’s Associations constituted an essential part of the meeting. As different as the conditions in Europe seemingly are, some topics crystallized as mutual ones: the secularization and the decline of the churches connected with it, the relationship of pastors to the church or of the pastor’s associations to the leadership of the church, the question how one can exercise the profession as Pastor under today's conditions remaining healthy and cheerful for a lifetime and all kinds of organizational topics such as recording and structuring of working hours, regulated working hours and the obligation of taking residence in the mane.
The serious, but also joyful togetherness, the sharing of sorrows and delights beyond all (language) borders allowed us to feel something of what it means to be co-workers in the joy, as Paul writes in the letter to the Corinthians.
On Tuesday the meeting of the members of the conference took place. Out of their ranks, the seven members strong KEP-Presidium was elected. Rinze Marten Witteween stepped down as long-standing President of the KEP and was duly bid farewell and presented with a basket of delicacies from various countries. On our homepage www.kep-pastores.eu, you can look at the photos of the conference or reread a transcript of the presentations.
At the beginning of this year, I already had the opportunity to visit the Château du Liebfrauenberg. The Château will be the location of our next conference from June 11-15, 2022 and is located near Strasbourg, in Alsace. Together with the Alsatian Pastor’s Association APAL, the KEP will organize the conference, and I would like to ask you to reserve these dates now.
I am delighted in my new office as President of the KEP, and I am looking forward to many more meetings throughout Europe.
The Swiss Reformed Pastor's Association presents itself in the supplement.
Finally, I kindly ask you to transfer the membership fees for the year 2020.
Verena Salvisberg, President