Contact Us Sitemap Disclaimer font-size:    

• Arrival
• Opening Eucharist
• President's Address
• General Secretary’s Report
• Treasurer’s Report
• Keynote Address & Responses
• Mennonite Action
• Youth & Women
• Climate Change | Public Hearing
• Elections
• Illegitimate Debt | Public Hearing
• HIV & AIDS | Public Hearing
• Evening Get-Together
• Message & Resolutions
• Closing Eucharist & Departure
• Ecumenical Greetings
• Exhibition Space
• Questions Worth Pondering
• Voices from the Region
• Communio Garden
• LWI Assembly News
• Videos
• Video Streaming from the Plenary

Rev. Frank O. July, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg, greets congregants after preaching in the historic Stiftskirche in Stuttgart, Germany, on 25 July 2010. © LWF/L. Ramírez

02.08.2010

Bonds in Common Confession Sustain Lutheran Christians

Württemberg Bishop July delighted at fellowship in faith

STUTTGART, Germany/GENEVA, 2 August 2010 – The bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg, Frank Otfried July, has expressed heart-felt joy about the fellowship in faith perceptible at the Eleventh Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

In his sermon at a televised service on Sunday, 25 July, in Stuttgart’s Stiftskirche (collegiate church), Bishop July underlined that it was simply wonderful to see Lutheran Christians from East and West, North and South coming together. “There are differences in culture and language, also in individual questions of faith. But our bonds in common confession sustain us.”

The LWF Assembly with its approximately1000 participants is taking place at the invitation of the Württemberg church from 20 to 27 July in Stuttgart, the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg.

With respect to climate change and the financial crisis, people tended to say, “We are all in the same boat,” remarked the Bishop of Württemberg. Yet this feeling of community was deceptive.  How quickly the phrase could turn into “the boat is full,” he exclaimed.

Through globalization people felt themselves to share a common destiny, everywhere in the world and not just in the church. “We are linked by being at the mercy of external, apparently uncontrollable powers.”

Many groups were discussing food security and what the churches could do about hunger and economic exploitation. “Hunger and under-nourishment signify a violation of fundamental human rights. But they also distort the face of Christ, whose likeness is found in every person,” said the bishop.

The LWF’s Department of World Service works through its projects so that people can live in the dignity inalienably endowed on them by God. “But also within the church there is hunger for justice, and a hunger for letting women and young people participate in church structures. It is a about participation for all!” stated Bishop July. (321 words)

• All the news