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GETI message 2025
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1. Preface
1.1. The Fourth Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) 2025 brought together emerging ecumenists and theologians at Saint Bishoy Monastery in Wadi El Natrun, Egypt at the invitation of His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St Mark of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order gathered under the theme of “Where Now for Visible Unity?”.
1.2. This Conference provides a capstone moment to what has been called an “ecumenical year.”1 This message itself holds a distinct and historic place within the ecumenical movement, being the first of its kind to be presented to the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Conference. In many ways, this presents a distinctive starting point for deep listening and intentional intergenerational dialogue.
2. The Issues Facing the World and the Churches
2.1. We live in an intersectional reality of multi-crisis, including but not limited to: ongoing colonial and neo-colonial legacies, violence against indigenous peoples, discrimination, persecution, climate catastrophe, gender-based violence, sexual abuse and femicide, human trafficking, injustices against children, economic injustice, famine, war, genocide, forced displacement, authoritarianism and nationalism, fundamentalism, and the misuse of artificial intelligence. These crises are compounded by delayed justice and the paralysis of words without effective redemptive action. This reality requires the Church to respond with lament, anger, and courage, asking: how do we embody our unity in diversity as we respond to the multi-crisis of our world across our varied contexts?
2.2. We celebrate the work of Faith and Order while also lamenting the expanding gap between dialogue and praxis, manifested in the lack of robust reception of ecumenical texts. Ecumenical theology often seeks unity through doctrinal coherence, and yet, we must also explore how unity becomes visible through our embodied experience. So, we ask, what does it mean to be truly ecumenically and prophetically courageous in our world, offering glimpses of hope in the brokenness of our world? We call the Church to locate itself centrally within the continuous sufferings of humanity and all of creation rather than standing apart from it.
3. Prophetic Duty and Kenotic Embodiment
3.1. We call the Church to live its prophetic duty to speak truth to power in all its forms, standing in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. Following in the incarnational way of Christ, who entered into human reality, the Word made flesh (ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο), dwelling in solidarity with the downtrodden (cf. Jn 1:14). This solidarity requires fearless unity in our shared witness and resistance to unjust systems rather than placating and conforming to them. “There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth” (Amos 5:10). Our shared ecumenical theology cannot be only abstract in nature. Rather, it is our imperative to kenotically embody Christ, emptying ourselves for the other.
3.2. This proposed theological turn to kenosis is understood as the humility and love to willingly relinquish power and privilege in order to form mutual relationships of equality and compassion with the marginalized (cf. Phil 2:5,7a). In our kenotic embodiment, we offer service with open hands to the other, working together towards life and the unequivocal promotion of human dignity alongside the dignity of all creation, knowing “that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor” (Rom 8:22). This kenotic approach invites embodied interaction and mutual vulnerability as paths toward overcoming division.
3.3. As we embody a living and breathing faith, we are called to be faithful interpreters of Church memory, including the councils and creeds, proposing faithful ways rooted in our rich Christian Tradition, and yet remaining both living and accessible for our diverse contexts today. Faithfully interpreting theology in our diverse contexts does not limit or somehow change our one, holy, catholic, and apostolic nature; no, it rather expands our faithfulness, speaking into our present contextual realities.
3.4. Such a way of reading allows our ancient confessions to speak anew in contexts of marginalization and hope. For this, we need to cultivate wounded discipleship, glimpsed at GETI, where we learned to share pain and remember truthfully together. Unity emerges as the Church learns to stay when it is hard, listen when it costs, remember what hurts, and hope against the odds. Unity becomes visible when the Church prophetically shares pain, remembers truthfully, and lives the hope of abundant life together in Christ.
4. Reimagining Faith and Order for the 21st Century
4.1. GETI’s hope is in shared humanity and an ecumenism born of pain and promise. We call Faith and Order to deepen its engagement with the lived theologies of people at the margins. Visible unity cannot be achieved solely through institutional or doctrinal dialogue but must additionally engage the realities of displacement, poverty, and pain in refugee camps, migrant shelters, in the exploited earth, and in communities where unity is practiced daily through survival, reconciliation and solidarity. If ecumenical councils such as Nicaea stood to articulate our shared, common faith, what will Faith and Order do to protect justice, human dignity, and the integrity of all creation?
4.2. The Church participates in the life of Christ when we embrace an embodied Christian theology. This is the Solidarity of the Shaken, where unity arises through shared vulnerability and compassion. As such, we cannot neglect Jesus’ Passion for it embodies God’s solidarity with suffering humanity. If the
Eucharist signifies the broken body of Christ, then our communion as Christ’s body is called to share in that same suffering, sent into the world as wounded healers. GETI showed us that unity is God’s gift, received when we are brave enough to be wounded together and discover we have always been one body. In a world of graves, broken bodies, and defiled creation, we envision a new, contemporary visible unity arising from recognition of our shared pain and our mutual commitment to action. Indeed, we are “longing for an ecumenism in which we bring all of ourselves to the journey and to the table, not separating thought from prayer, prayer from action, or action from thought.”2 When we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8), we come to smell the sweet scent of resurrection.
4.3. Theology that only intrigues the mind while neglecting wounded bodies is complicit in injustice; we need a kenotic Church that empties itself in service, presence, and concrete solidarity. We therefore call for Healing Solidarity Circles, community-based theological gatherings where refugees, women, people with disabilities, youth, and grassroots leaders contribute to theological reflection. Our hope is not abstract optimism, but a call to embody the abundant life Christ promises (Jn 10:10), even amid disorder and uncertainty. Unity takes shape in acts of solidarity, shared lament, and collaborative service.
4.4. In the face of diverse contexts and the loss of credibility of the Church in many spaces across the world, the Church’s witness and engagement is contingent upon its willingness to widen the ecumenical table. It must open itself to new generations, digital spaces, and creative forms of theology reflecting the Church’s diversity and vitality. As churches continually expand the table and grow in hospitality into these new, shared realities, these spaces will respond with engagement. By embracing participatory and imaginative methods, Faith and Order can reclaim its prophetic vocation as a movement where theology is not only articulated but lived and shared.
4.5. Indeed, churches are confronted with a world faced with intersectional multi-crisis. “As the crisis deepens day by day, what both the oppressor and the oppressed can legitimately demand of the Churches is a message of hope.”3 The Church then is called to proclaim eschatological hope amidst global suffering and injustice, and to make the Church credible in its practices, its economy, and its internal life. GETI urges Faith and Order to employ a theological language speaking meaningfully into today’s wounded world, calling the churches to embody the kenotic self-emptying love of Christ. Let us act with humility, walk in unconditional solidarity, and announce with prophetic courage the hope which dwells within us.
