Personal view on the elections

Today were the elections to Central Committee (CC) and the new Constition Working Group [an online list is still missing]. They went really fast, because there were only two challenges. Challenge means that there is a proposal to replace a person on the list of the nominations committee by another person. Both challenges failed.

I was supporting one of them very much, it was within the Czech Republic. I wished to have Milan Balahura, young delegate from the Church of Czech Brethren, instead of Katerina Dekanovska, young delegate from the Hussite Church. There is only one seat in the CC for the Czech Republic. The Hussites have this seat at least already 12 years - in my opinion it would have been necessary not to have a monopoly of one church, but a rotation that everyone of the churches with similar size gets the chance to take part in the executive body of CEC. Besides, I think that Milan would have been the better candidate:

1. He says, what he thinks. Unfortunately, this is not that common in the CC - even for the members elected on the youth quota.
2. His mother is Orthodox, and he knows Orthodoxy well.
3. Milan is male. Too often the young people are only women, because they have to improve the gender balance. For young men it's quite harder to get to the CC than for young women.

But the challenge wasn't succesful, the support of the Assembly for Milan was too weak. Why? I don't know. Some decisions of the Assembly seem to me very cryptic...

All in all, the balances within the new CC are not satisfying. The gender balance is okay (17 women, 23 men), but there are only 12 lay again 28 ordained and only 6 young people. 2 lay and 2 young persons will be replaced by delegates of the Russian Orthodox Church, so there will be 10 lay and 4 youngsters (that is 10% instead of 20% demanded by the Constitution).

I hope that, despite of this composition, the CC will do a good work and support the reform towards a functioning and democratic organised CEC.

Live: Video Streaming

You can see the discussions live on the internet [unfortunately only with Internet Explorer]. Please go to assembly.ceceurope.org, there you can take follow, what is said.

The important question of reforming CEC

Now is the first really important part of the Assembly. My delegation from the EKD (Protestant Church in Germany) has made a motion for a reform of the CEC Constitution within the next three years, elaborated by a small and independent commission of 13 people.
Some Skandinavian churchs have made an amendment with a reform process, which lasts six years and is mainly organised by the Central Committee.

There are a lot of arguments in favour of both positions. All agree, that a reform is needed. The main point, as I see it, is the question of participation of the member churches in the future structure of CEC and the future of the three commissions (CSC, CiD, CCME). Some people fear that in a fast process in a small working group the big churches get too much influence. Also, they only may listen to the member churches and other interests, but they don't have to.
Important is also the question of money. CEC is not well funded, especially because of the economic crisis which has made it difficult for a lot of member churches to pay their member fee.

A very big number of delegates is willing to speak. So let's see, what happens, and what the Assembly will decide.

The Printing Problem

I'm really a little bit shocked. Colin Williams is telling us about the changes in the Constitution of CEC and in the Bye-laws to the Constitution.

Even if it's not a real important change - nobody says something about the fact that we haven't got the basic legal documents of the CEC in a printed version. This would be needed to compare the changes of the documents with the other paragraphs there.

I feel not really taken serious as delegate. And I'm wondering that no one of the other 305 delegates is asking, why this is! I didn't want to ask, because I have already said something in the plenary. And I don't want to annoy the Assembly again. :-(

PS: The printing problem cannot be an alibi for not providing the delegates all important and needed documents.

What's the first discussion? Youth!

This is the first post out of the plenary hall. The first discussion was about... the youth. The proposal to the nomination committee made by the central committee was balanced in questions of gender, denomination and region, but not of youth and the relation between lay and ordained people. The nomination committee is important, because works out the lists with the candidates for the different committees of the Assembly, and also of the central committee of CEC.

There was only 1 young person proposed (Teodor from Romania) - with 11 members within the nomination committees. In the Ecumenical movement and also in the standing orders of the Assembly is written that there should be at least 20% of all candidates younger than 30.

So Stephi asked the Assembly, why the proposed list was no youth balanced. Then a discussion started with Milan from the Czech Republic, supporting Stephi. But in the end we were not successful - there were only a few delegates supporting us. Even some young delegates didn't agree. I was a little bit disappointed about that.

Nevertheless, it was great that we as youth showed that we are there (at the whole only 40 out of 306 delegates, which is only 11%). Now the next task should be to make our contribution to the discussions about questions, not directly linked to youth matters - and at the same time to insist on the significance of real youth participation in all Ecumenical matters.