wfn.org | UMNS# 234-European United Methodists elect new bishop

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

NOTE: This version corrects Bishop Bolleter's retirement date in the
second graph. Editors, please discard earlier version.

European United Methodists elect new bishop

Apr. 18, 2005

NOTE: A photograph is available at http://umns.umc.org.

By United Methodist News Service*

A new bishop has been elected to lead the United Methodist Church's
Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe.

The Rev. Patrick Streiff, 49, was consecrated during an April 17 service
at Bern Cathedral in Switzerland. He will succeed Bishop Heinrich
Bolleter, who will formally retire in May 2006.

Streiff was elected to a four-year term on the second ballot, receiving
66 of a possible 73 votes, during the central conference meeting. The
Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe includes 14 countries
in Europe and North Africa.

A native of Switzerland, Streiff received his theological education at
the United Methodist Seminary in Reutlingen, Germany, and has a
doctorate from the University of Bern. He and his wife, Heidi, are the
parents of four children.

Ordained to the ministry in 1984, he has been the pastor of
congregations in Lausanne, Neuchatel, and Biel, Switzerland.  He has
been in charge of the Methodist Center for Theological Education in
French, located in Lausanne, and is also a lecturer on modern church
history at the Theological Faculty of the University of Lausanne.

Streiff has close ties to the United Methodist Board of Higher Education
and Ministry, of which he is a director, and to the denomination's Board
of Global Ministries. He has worked on a curriculum for French-speaking
pastors in West Africa sponsored by the two agencies, and is part of a
team exploring the possibility of a French-language United Methodist
hymnal. He has assisted the mission board on a Book of Discipline
(church law) for Cambodia.

Countries covered by the United Methodist Church in Central and Southern
Europe are Albania, Algeria, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech
Republic, France, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovak
Republic, Switzerland and Tunisia.


*Information for this story was provided by the United Methodist Board
of Global Ministries.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org