Rome (NEV), May 16, 2020 – The Synod should have taken place from 23 to 28 August in Torre Pellice (TO), but it will not occur due to the limitations and prescriptions imposed by the ongoing health emergency.
After a careful evaluation of alternative options that have not proved feasible, the Waldensian Board decided to postpone the annual Synod of the Methodist and Waldensian churches to August 2021.
The severe limitations on the people’s freedom of movement and the logistics of the complex Synodal machine would make it very difficult to organize the most important assembly of the Methodist and Waldensian churches, explains the Waldensian Board underlining, however, that the convocation of an extraordinary Synod, should emergency situations arise, remains open. Even the District Conferences (the regional assemblies of each of the four districts into which the Methodist and Waldensian churches are divided), scheduled for June, will not take place.
“This is a very painful decision – reads the letter sent to the churches in which this decision is communicated -. Our Synod represents many things: it is an open space for debate, a place of orientation and decision-making on crucial issues for the life of the church; it is an instrument through which the assessment of the work and the renewal of the mandates of the Synodal Commissions – charged with important tasks in essential areas of the life of the church – is carried out; it is the moment for the verification of the action of the Management Committees over works of national importance. The Synod is also a festive space for extended meeting between brothers and sisters committed to living and witnessing to the Gospel in different areas of the Country, but also with fellow believers who represent sister Churches in Italy and abroad with whom we live a profound communion and a significant commitment to collaboration in the mission. Finally, the Synod is an important moment of the church presence in the public space, when the communities show their varied realities and lively dialectics on many themes. It is a time in which people gather in places full of a history of faith and struggle for freedom still important today, a significant story also for the civil identity of this special corner of Italian land that we call the Waldensian Valleys”.
The mandates of the bodies members elected annually by the Synod will be extended until a new election. The smooth running of the reporting and control processes remains assured.
Finally, the Waldensian Board will devise and organize, together with the other competent bodies, appropriate spaces for analysis and comparison at the various levels of the Church’s life on the most relevant issues, in order to feed a transparent circulation of information, a wide sharing and a rich debate whose fruits will enrich the preparation of the Synod 2021.
, May 16, 2020 – The Synod should have taken place from 23 to 28 August in Torre Pellice (TO), but it will not occur due to the limitations and){kind=link}