“Passionately witnessing to God’s love locally and globally”
(LWI) - On 2 June, Oberkirchenrätin Astrid Kleist was installed as the new General Secretary the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (GNC/LWF) in a festive service at St. Mary’s Church in Luther City Wittenberg. She succeeds Oberkirchenrat Norbert Denecke, who has held this office since 2004.
LWF General Secretary, Rev. Dr. Anne Burghardt, thanked Kleist for taking on the “important and multifaceted” role. Kleist’s long experience with the LWF and GNC, as an LWF Council member and Vice-President for Central Western Europe, is “a valuable asset” that she can use. Her “warm and considerate commitment to the LWF and its member churches” has long been appreciated in the Communion Office in Geneva and she understands well “the many different social contexts and theological traditions” of the LWF member churches and is “open to listening to problems and working to solve them.”
The chair of the GNC/LWF, Bishop Kristina Kühnbaum-Schmidt, also welcomed Kleist to her new office. Astrid Kleist, she said, stands for a “living testimony to the hope founded in Christ for God’s world of justice and peace for all his creatures,” she said. Kleist is a “creative, reliable, communicative and personally approachable” person and well-equipped to “expand the collaborative relationship with the German member churches and the global communion and further develop the profile of the GNC/LWF.”
Reflecting on her new role, Kleist shared a vision of “passionately witnessing to God’s love locally and globally. My previous engagement with the LWF and my diverse experiences in the communion of churches has given me a deeper understanding of what that means," she said. “In times characterized by crises and wars around the world and in which we are undergoing profound processes of change globally and in Germany, we need commitment in our relationships and the courage to break new ground while preserving what sustains us.”
“As General Secretary of the GNC/LWF, I see my task in actively shaping these processes and, together with those in positions of leadership, to work to ensure that we live up to our mission credibly and with radiance as the ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘light of the world’, as Christ has commanded all who follow him,” she added.
An open-minded, experienced, locally rooted leader
Since June 2013, Kleist has been leading pastor at St Jacobi, one of Hamburg’s large, traditional Lutheran city churches, which belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. Also, as provost (Pröpstin) of the Hamburg East church district, she was responsible for 14 parishes and supervised 28 pastors.
Born in Hamburg, Kleist’s service in St. Jacobi brought her into contact with people from different walks of life who are part of urban society. Tourists, the homeless, members of trade guilds, and businesspeople are accompanied by the church’s rich worship and church music life as well as diaconal and pastoral care services.
Developing future-oriented church concepts and structures and networking with social and political actors in the Hanseatic city were central to Kleist’s leadership activities.
In May 2017, at the Twelfth Assembly of the LWF in Windhoek, Namibia, Kleist was elected Vice-President of the Central Western Europe Region. She was a member of the LWF Council and Executive Committee from 2017 to 2023. This Council period was characterized by the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic and the leadership change in the LWF’s Communion Office.
