wfn.org | German Bishop Margot Kaessmann Keynote Speaker at LWF Assembly

["Frank Imhoff" <franki@elca.org>]

German Bishop Dr. Margot Kaessmann Keynote Speaker at 2003 LWF
Tenth Assembly
LWF Council Receives Report of Assembly Planning Committee

LWF Council Meeting, Wittenberg, Germany, 10-17 September 2002

Press Release No. 15

WITTENBERG, Germany/GENEVA, 16 September 2002 (LWI) * Bishop Dr.
Margot Kaessmann of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover,
Germany will be the keynote speaker at the 2003 Tenth Assembly of
the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

The Assembly Planning Committee (APC) announced Kaessmann's
participation when presenting its final report to this year's LWF
Council, meeting September 10-17 in Luther's city of Wittenberg.
The APC chairperson, Rev. Susan Nagle told the Council September
16, that a second keynote speaker is yet to be secured.

Kaessmann, 44, heads the 3.3-million member Evangelical Lutheran
Church of Hanover, the largest Protestant church in a country with
13.6 million Lutherans. Elected to her present position in 1999,
she is the second of three women bishops in Germany. The Hanover
church was one of the founding members of the LWF in 1947.

Under the theme, "For the Healing of the World," the assembly will
include worship, Bible study and topical studies in ten "Village
Groups." The Council approved a list of names for leadership in
assembly worship and the Village Groups.

The LWF Council received the assembly Study Book and authorized
its publication, taking into account several comments and
recommendations from Council memers. The Study Book develops the
assembly theme in assignments and Bible studies for each assembly
day. The book will be available on the assembly Web site -
http://www.lwf-assembly.org/ - by the end of 2002.

Rev. Susan Johnson, vice president of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Canada (ELCIC), brought greetings to the Council from
the assembly host church. "We know that you will be a blessing to
us, and we hope that together we may be a blessing to the world,"
she said. Johnson also read greetings from the ELCIC National
Bishop Raymond Schultz who could not travel to Wittenberg for
health reasons. "The injured world so desperately needs a word of
healing in the midst of its brokenness."

The assembly coordinator, Rev. Arthur Leichnitz of the ELCIC
reported that 109 of the LWF's member churches - or 84 percent -
had submitted assembly delegates' nomination lists. There are 130
member churches entitled to delegates; the remaining three are
associate member churches. Half of the registrants are female, he
said, which is in line with the assembly goals. But the number of
youth delegates nominated from each LWF geographical region is
below expectation, said Leichnitz. Twenty percent of the 436
assembly delegates should be young people, but only 54 of the
expected 88 youth have been nominated so far, he said.

The Council is the annual LWF chief legislative body between world
assemblies. Assemblies are held every six years.

Staff of the LWF Office for Communication Services at the Council
meeting can be contacted at German mobile telephone No., +49-(0)
170-8345 177.

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the
Lutheran tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund (Sweden), the LWF now
has 133 member churches in 73 countries representing over 61.7
million of the 65.4 million Lutherans worldwide. The LWF acts on
behalf of its member churches in areas of common interest such as
ecumenical relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human
rights, communication, and the various aspects of missionand
development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva,
Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the information service of
the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Unless specifically noted,
material presented does not represent positions or opinions of the
LWF or of its various units. Where the dateline of an article
contains the notation (LWI), the material may be freely reproduced
with acknowledgment.]

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