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Ecumenical meeting in Passau: Mission for all denominations!
Fifth ecumenical meeting in Passau: 40 leaders discuss mission and community, congress planned for 2026 in Augsburg.
Ecumenical meeting in Passau: Mission for all denominations!
On July 16, 2025, the fifth ecumenical-missionary meeting was held in Passau, to which Bishop Stefan Oster SDB had invited. Around 40 leaders from various ecumenical networks and churches in German-speaking countries came together to discuss the missionary challenges of today. The list of participants also included well-known personalities such as the Protestant regional bishop Thomas Pietro Peral and the Regensburg bishop Rudolf Voderholzer. The event provided a platform to discuss friendship with God and one another across denominational boundaries.
A central point of the discussion was the missionary impact of the church in today's society. Bishop Oster emphasized the importance of encounters at the heart level and listening to one another and to the Holy Spirit. Reinhardt Schink from the Evangelical Alliance brought commonality into focus and summarized the importance of togetherness in an increasingly polarized world. The program included intensive discussions and an ecumenical prayer evening, which invited participants to reflect and pray together.
Changes in the Church of England
Markus Weimer, the Protestant dean in the Konstanz church district, spoke about the developments of the Church of England and the presentation of a “mission shaped church”. He emphasized that missiology shapes ecclesiology and not the other way around. Weimer emphasized that many impulses come from the international Anglican communion and that the discussions in Passau serve this development in order to have a broader impact.
As part of the meeting, reference was also made to a large congress that will take place in Augsburg from June 19th to 21st, 2026. This congress aims to show ecumenically how mission is possible today and is planned by Bishop Oster, Reinhardt Schink, Frank Heinrich from the Evangelical Alliance in Germany and other participants. Johannes Hartl, the speaker and founder of the prayer house in Augsburg, emphasized the need for the proclamation of the Gospel, which is seen as the basic mission of the church.
Outlook and future developments
The fifth ecumenical-missionary meeting in Passau was not only a meeting place, but also an outlook on future cooperation between different faith communities. Further information about the planned congress in Augsburg will be published in the coming months, and it remains to be seen what impulses will come from this meeting and whether the church will be able to actively address the challenges of our time.
How Diocese of Passau and EAD report, such encounters have the potential to develop a good hand for official ecumenical communication and to make a significant contribution to interfaith dialogue.