WCRC's Setri Nyomi Will Step Down

The executive committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches is meeting in Dodowa, Ghana, through May 15 as a way of acknowledging the roots of  Rev. Setri Nyomi, its global church leader who is from Ghana and who will step down next year.

Formed at a meeting at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. in the summer of 2010, the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) is the result of a merger between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council.The Christian Reformed Church was a founding member of WCRC.

Nyomi, a theologian and pastor, is now concluding a combined 14-year term as general secretary to WARC and WCRC. He is due to leave the post in September 2014 following the election of his successor.

In April 2000, Nyomi was elected general secretary of WARC – the first non-European to be in this position. When WCRC was formed in 2010, Nyomi was named to head the new group.

To mark his final year of service, the organization’s 30-member executive committee is meeting in his home country.

Looking back on his time with WARC and later with WCRC, Nyomi acknowledges that being the first African general secretary to head the global Reformed church movement has offered both challenges and opportunities.

The Ghanaian justice advocate notes that, on the one hand, because he comes from a country that must deal with inequities in global structures, his appointment has allowed him the opportunity to "lead from the margins" on the world stage.

“With me, they (people in the churches) have felt that the general secretary is someone they can identify with and who identifies with their issues,” he says.

On the other hand, Nyomi has faced challenges as an African leader of a global body. Some of them were financial.

“I came in at a time when finances available to ecumenical organizations and church head-offices were very much challenged and, being an African, I was not linked with the traditional sources of funding,” he says.

The decline of funding for global ecumenism has been a constant theme throughout the past decade and has created significant challenges for WCRC.

Nyomi’s tenure saw the creation and adoption of a statement that says that Christian theology and biblical texts make it imperative for Christians to work for economic and social justice in their communities and in global decision-making forums.

He was one of the inspiring forces behind the document and believes it is key to living responsibly as a Christian in the 21st century.

The statement was approved during the organization’s global assembly held in Accra, Ghana in 2004. Dubbed the “Accra Confession,” it has been both celebrated and criticized by member churches.

Looking forward to the meeting of the executive committee in Ghana, Nyomi sees it as an opportunity for WCRC’s Ghanaian member churches to offer hospitality to the global body and to share stories of their history and faith in action today.

“Ghanaians love to do that,” says Nyomi.

WCRC Committee members will be asked to consider how to stay connected with global ecumenical church organizations that are based in Geneva, Switzerland when the Communion’s international offices are relocated from Geneva to Hannover, Germany in January 2014.

Debate will include reflection on which of WCRC’s ecumenical engagements should be prioritized and how to finance and staff ongoing support for those initiatives.

WCRC links 229 member churches in 108 countries with an estimated combined membership of 80 million people.