Discussion with guests of the General Bishop on the 5th Evangelical Church Days

Part of the wealthy program during the 5th Evangelical Church Days was discussion forums and lectures. Traditionally, was held the discussion with the guests of the General Bishop Miloš Klátik on theme the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The discussion forum in the Small Evangelical A. C. church was opened by the life music of musical group „Zvonkohra (Bells music) – Košariská – Priepastné“ headed by music director Vladimír Húska. It is the only one musical body of this type in Slovakia.

An invitation into discussion accepted these representatives of the churches: Marián Čop – Superintendent of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in the Czech Republic; Diethard Kamm – Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany; Andres Põder – Archbishop Emeritus of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church; Samuel Vrbovský – Bishop of the Slovak Evangelical A. C. Church in Serbia, and General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation Dr. Martin Junge.

The year 2017 is the year of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and all Lutheran Churches do preparations for the anniversary. Individual guests introduced their church preparations for the anniversary. General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation Dr. M. Junge on the beginning introduced also LWF. The Lutheran World Federation is a global communion of 145 churches in the Lutheran tradition, representing over 73 million Christians in 98 countries. And he added that the music of bells which sounded in the beginning is analogy to the LWF, where every member churches represent one bell. If only sounded one bell, maybe it would be nice, but alone he never created such a harmonic music, only in group of many other bells. And this is the goal of the LWF – testify together and ask, what is our work in this communion.

Part of the discussion were questions from plenum. Mainly sounded questions about declining number of members in the Evangelical Churches in the world – consequences, reasons/motives and challenges. Dr. Martin Junge said that Jesus Christ never counted people, never counted crowds followed him. On the other side it is necessary to emphasized those countries, where the number of the members is growing. Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany D. Kamm expressed joy, that he could be a part of such a nice and big and blessed church event and joy from the full Evangelical Church on the main Worship service.

Beside the music group „Zvonkohra“, also choir from church congregation in Merník headed by music director Marta Hajniková sang at the discussion forum with the guests of the General Bishop ECAC in Slovakia Miloš Klátik.