Update from the Council of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain

Greetings from the Council of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain!  We wanted to update the LCiGB on our last meeting and provide information on important events to come.

Here are the highlights of our last quarterly meeting in December:

• We agreed to nominate Anna Krauss, a member at St. Anne’s and the General Secretary of the Councilof Lutheran Churches, as a delegate to the Lutheran World Federation.

• We discussed the status of several pastoral candidates who are currently at various stages in  the Vocations Committee review, and we hope to have more news for you soon on their progress.

• We discussed the planning for the LWF meeting for European church leaders taking place in Oxford in March 2023.

• We discussed plans for the continued roll-out of ChurchDesk, a congregational database tool that is already being put to good use by some of our member congregations, in particular St. Luke’s in Leeds.

• We received an update from the search committee that has been gathering information on the candidates for the election of a new Bishop at the Synod AGM on April 22.

• We are pleased to announce three candidates seeking election as Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain (the “LCiGB”):

• The Rev Pastor Mark Hardy, formerly Senior Pastor of St. Luke’s in Leeds and currently part of the pastoral team

• The Rev Pastor Paulina Hławiczka-Trotman, Pastor-in-Charge in LCiGB congregations in Nottingham, Corby and London (Polish)

• The Rev. Dr. Jaakko Rusama, member of St. Anne’s in London and an Associate Professor at Helsinki University

  
  

In all previous elections only one candidate was presented for election at the Synod gathering, so the Council of the LCiGB has developed a protocol to guide the process for this election.  Upcoming events include the following:

Feb 18, 2023:  The Council will interview each of the candidates.

Mar 4 2023:  During the Ministerium, time will be set aside for a panel presenting the three candidates.  The panel will be moderated by the Dean of the LCiGB, who will introduce each candidate, and members of the Ministerium will be invited to ask questions of the candidates.

Sat, Mar 11 2023:  At its next Council meeting, the Council will review and approve a package of information to be distributed to the members attending the Synod in Apr 2023.  The Council anticipates that the package will include each candidate’s CV and personal statement, and a table summarizing the views of each candidate to the same list of questions.

Sat, Apr 1, 2023:  The LCiGB will host a Zoom call to meet the candidates.  The candidates will be given an opportunity to introduce themselves and answer questions.

Sat, Apr 22, 2023:  At the LCiGB’s AGM, each candidate will be given an opportunity to make a short presentation, followed by questions.  Once all questions have been asked, the Synod will be asked to vote on the next Bishop.  If a candidate does not win a simple majority on the first ballot, the Synod will then choose between the two candidates with the two highest vote totals in a run-off election.  In order to win, a candidate must achieve a simple majority of the votes cast.

We thank Bishop Tor for his ongoing service, and we look forward to everyone’s prayers of support and participation in the process for choosing his successor.

In Christ,

Jeff Trinklein, Chair