A committee seeking a new general secretary for the World Council of Churches has drawn up a short list of six people for the post but in accordance with its procedures, has not disclosed their names.
The current general secretary, the Rev Samuel Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, announced in 2008 he would not seek another term. The WCC has said his successor will be named at the end of August during a meeting of the church council's main governing body, its central committee.
A spokesperson for the WCC told Ecumenical News International, "The character of the search process has not changed. The search committee appointed by the central committee deals with all its aspects and WCC staff are not involved in the process."
According to sources linked to the Ecumenical Centre where the WCC has its Geneva headquarters, six people are on a short list to lead the church grouping that now has 349 member churches - principally Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant - representing 560 million Christians worldwide. The names that have been mentioned are:
- the Rev Robert Anderson, a minister of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and chief executive of the Scottish Churches World Exchange;
- the Rev Daryl Balia, a South African Methodist who is international director of Edinburgh 2010, an event to mark the centenary of the World Mission Conference that took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, seen as marking the start of the 20th century movement for church unity;
- the Rev Fernando Enns, a Mennonite theologian who is director of the Institute for Peace Church Theology at Hamburg University, and who was born in Curitiba in Brazil;
- the Rev Kenneth Kearon, an Irish Anglican who has been secretary general of the Anglican Communion since 2005;
- the Rev Seong Won Park, a Korean theologian and former secretary for cooperation and witness of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches;
- the Rev Olav Fykse Tveit, the general secretary of the (Lutheran) Church of Norway's council on foreign and ecumenical relations.
One of the members of the search committee, the Rev Gregor Henderson of the Uniting Church in Australia, had stepped down from the committee and was believed to have been a candidate for the post, but is not on the short list.
