There are some ecumenical experiences that make a deep impact on one’s life. Spending four days (from 4 to 7 November) at the St Bishoy monastery due west of Cairo with 70 Orthodox and Evangelical leaders has been one of them. Being present in the desert where the writings of the Ascetic Fathers and Mothers were forged and where today monks still live in community, praying and worshipping and serving pilgrims to the site, was a profoundly holy experience.
The Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative (LOI) was inaugurated 15 years ago at the Lausanne conference in Cape Town in 2010, where an incident during one of the plenary sessions revealed how little most evangelicals knew about Orthodox life and spirituality. Archbishop Angaelos, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London, vowed such misunderstandings were not to happen again, and with the support of senior evangelical leader Mrs Leslie Doll, the initiative was formed, meeting once a year in various parts of the globe.
LOI exists to provide a space and context for constructive reflection on the history of relationships between Orthodox and Evangelical Christians in order to work towards trust, understanding, shared spiritual growth, reconciliation and healing of the wounds that exist.
Our 2025 gathering was attended by Orthodox (both Eastern and Oriental) Bishops, priests and lay people from Kenya, Greece, Sweden, USA, Brazil, India and the UK alongside evangelical Christians of all types. Each day we heard papers and reflections around the topic of Nicene creed, visited some of the holy sites in the vicinity and met in small groups to hear each other’s stories of faith.
Two things stood out for me on which I shall be doing deeper reflection. Firstly, making the sharing of faith stories a central component of ecumenical encounter. I was deeply moved by hearing people share how they had journeyed from evangelicalism to Orthodoxy. Others were still trying to untangle their Orthodox or evangelical heritage and make sense of their journey. One man – an American Free Methodist pastor who’d lived and worked in Greece for 30 years and completed a PhD on the renewal movements in the Coptic Orthodox church – wept as he encountered the life and work of the monks, telling us how he wished in many ways he had become a monk and lived the life of desert spirituality.
A second reflection is around the idea of an ecumenism of repentance. One speaker used this phrase to articulate how we might move towards a deeper spiritual ecumenism. In truth, many of us in ecumenical encounter hold all sorts of caricatures and misunderstandings about the other. Often these are based on our own prejudices and distortions. In an ecumenism of repentance, we can be honest about these things, ask forgiveness of the other, allowing a bond of love and reconciliation to be forged and deeper relationships to be formed. In my role as a professional ecumenist, I’m committed to seeing how this might be realised in my work going forward.
Explore the programme and watch the sessions from the LOI gathering 2025.
The Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative is a Charity and Network in Association with Churches Together in England.