"I am an African Reformed Christian"

Alliance elects new general secretary

Taipei, Taiwan, July 5 1999

The executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, meeting here at the invitation of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, today elected Rev. Dr Setri Nyomi to be the new general secretary of the Alliance.

Dr Nyomi, a 45-year old Ghanaian currently working with the All Africa Conference of Churches as a senior executive with responsibility for theology, education and family life, and coordinator of the selfhood of the church unit, will take up his post in the Alliance in March next year.

Dr Nyomi is a minister of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana. He holds a master's degree from Yale University divinity school. His doctorate in pastoral theology was awarded by Princeton theological seminary, also in the USA. In addition to his other work with the AACC, he also served as coordinator of the 7th general assembly (Addis Ababa, 1997). He is married to Akpene Esther Nyomi; they have three children.

In his acceptance speech to the executive committee today, Dr Nyomi said that he felt like Moses standing before the burning bush (a traditional Reformed symbol). "I feel that I am standing on holy ground," he said - the holy ground of the Reformed tradition, with its critical theological reflection, its stand for life and its commitment to partnership with God in transforming God's world. He recalled three highlights in the recent history of the Alliance: its high-profile 1982 condemnation of South African church support for apartheid as heresy, its 1989 commitment to the partnership of women and men in church and society, and its 1997 call to member churches to engage at all the levels of their life in recognition, education and confession with regard to world economic injustice and ecological destruction.

"This is holy ground," he said. His call to be the chief executive office of the Alliance was an opportunity to serve the living God and to be the captain of a team striving to break the chains of injustice in whatever forms they exist. ("Break the chains of injustice" [Isaiah 58.6] was the theme of the 23rd general council of the Alliance, its most recent, held in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1997.)

Dr Nyomi highlighted five elements in his vision for the Alliance. It should be committed to team spirit and teamwork; it should be committed to the spirit of the 23rd general council; it needed to be more clearly relevant to the whole Reformed family; it needed to find creative ways of financing its work; and it must be committed to the unity of the Reformed family and the unity of the Christian church.

"I am an African Reformed Christian," he told the executive committee. "I happen to come from a part of the world where the evils resulting from [socio-economic] injustices affect humanity the most." He told the committee that together they had to be open to "new ways of building a team, being prophetic, and building resources."

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches is a 1970 union - appropriately enough, in Nairobi, Kenya - between two older world confessional bodies: the Alliance of Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian System (1875) and the International Congregational Council (1891). Today, it links over 75 million Christians in more than 200 member churches - Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Reformed and United - in more than 100 countries. Dr Nyomi is the first non-European to be appointed general secretary.