Christ’s Love (Re)moves Borders

Following Busan (2013) and Arusha (2018) a Global Ecumenical Theological Institute is organized to nurture young people’s formation and participation at every such major WCC milestone.

Bishop Heike Springhart from the Evangelischen Landeskirche in Baden shares what is for her the first official word of welcome to a WCC assembly-related event in Karlsruhe on 28 August 2022, as she addresses GETI students on the opening day of the programme.

In Karlsruhe, GETI 2022 participants, alumni, facilitators, and guests from a variety of academic and theological institutions worked together to explore the theme of ‘Christ’s Love (re)Moves Borders’, echoing the main theme of the WCC 11^th Assembly: “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”

Students start to get to know each other at the opening of the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute 2022, in Karlsruhe, Germany.

GETI participants unpacked and reflected on the assembly theme through the lens of five thematic areas: Healing Memories; Kairos for Creation; Witness from the Margins; Engaging with Plurality; Body Politics: Body, Health and Healing, 4th Industrial Revolution, & AI and Human Identity in the Context of Global Digitisation.

With youth engagement emphasized as a priority in the worldwide fellowship of churches, GETI 2022 brought the voices of younger and emerging ecumenical theologians into the proceedings of the assembly, as students participated both informally in assembly home groups and in the formal Ecumenical Conversations.

GETI students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and confessional traditions interact during the study programme in Germany.

Set as a culmination of the programme, 7 September then saw an event headlined ‘GETI Goes Public!’ – bringing visitors from over ten academic institutions within Germany and from nearby France and Switzerland for an afternoon of learning, networking and reflection.

The event – which brought to the fore some of the many learnings and their implications for ecumenical theological education in the future – included two lectures presented by Dr Rudolf von Sinner and Dr Septemmy Lakawa as well as a panel of four GETI alumni who spoke to the experiences of past GETIs, at Busan (2013) and Arusha (2018).