Rev Dr Fidon Mwombeki.
Photo by Ilse Straube/VEM.
Ulm, Germany (Anli Serfontein), 29 October 2009:
The Rev. Fidon Mwombeki, the first black person to be elected to the main governing body of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), says many people do not believe him when they ask where he comes from and he replies - Wuppertal.
"I am no guest in Germany. I am no refugee. I am no migrant. I was sent by my Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania five years ago to Germany," Mwombeki told members of the 25-29 October synod of the EKD in Ulm where he was elected to the 15-person council.
Head of a German mission
Mwombeki came to Germany to be general secretary of the United Evangelical Mission, an international community of 35 churches in Africa, Asia and Germany, and the Bodelschwingh Institutions Bethel. The UEM is based in Wuppertal in western Germany.
He told delegates that he comes from an African country with a large Muslim population and that even his one grandmother in Tanzania is a Muslim. He also has other Muslim relatives. In his work now he often deals with countries where Christians are a minority.
Inter-religious dialogue
"I know therefore that inter-religious dialogue is unavoidable," Mwombeki said, in a speech to synod members before the 27 October election.
"I am passionate about mission," he said. "For me it is difficult to comprehend the negative appraisal of mission by modern Europeans. Mission brought us in Africa and elsewhere the good news of liberation through evangelisation, through welfare and social work and through development work."
The UEM emerged from the German Rhenish Mission Society, founded in 1828, and the Bethel Mission, founded in 1886. The new international UEM has existed since 1996.
"Mission should still remain the duty of each church," Mwombeki stated.
The Rev. Nikolaus Schneider, the newly-elected vice-chairperson of the EKD council, said that Mwombeki has a wealth of inter-religious and ecumenical experience from his time in Tanzania and in the United States.
Ecumenical and international experience
"I welcome his election as he has another point of view," said Schneider, the president of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, one of the 22 regional churches that make up the EKD. "He also brings along ecumenical experience and wide international experience from which we will benefit."
Mwombeki was ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania and graduated with a doctorate from Luther Seminary, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is a former general secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.
