Vienna/Stuttgart. The Council of the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) appointed Dr Susanne Schenk, a Württemberg pastor, as the future General Secretary of the CPCE. The 53-year-old church councillor currently serves as a theological advisor to Bishop Ernst-Wilhelm Gohl and as an ecumenical officer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg. She will take up her new post on 1 March 2026. Dr Susanne Schenk succeeds Dr Mario Fischer, who will take up his post as Director and Officer for Catholic Issues at the Institute for Confessional Studies in Bensheim, Germany on 1 May 2026.
Reflecting on her new role, Susanne Schenk says: “I am delighted to have been elected General Secretary, and I am grateful for the trust placed in me by the members of the Council and the Presidium. I value the CPCE as a church communion that is rooted in the shared experience of reconciliation in word and sacrament. It draws from this both its mission and the courage to open up perspectives for reconciliation, both within the communion when dealing with differences and issues of dissent, and in contributing to social coexistence in Europe. As General Secretary, I look forward to working with the team at the Vienna office, the Presidium and the Council to further develop the CPCE as a network of understanding and reconciliation across Europe, and to strengthen its profile within the member churches and congregations.”
Rita Famos, the Executive President of the CPCE, commented on Schenk’s appointment: “The role of General Secretary of the CPCE has become more complex over the past seven years due to the full-time nature of the position. I am therefore very pleased and grateful that we have been able to recruit Susanne Schenk, a seasoned church historian and ecumenist with many years of experience and a long-standing association with the CPCE, whom we trust to perform this task. We look forward to working with her and will support her in her future role to the best of our ability.”
After graduating from the Evangelical Seminary in Blaubeuren, Schenk studied theology at Bethel (Bielefeld), Oxford, Princeton, Heidelberg and Tübingen. She completed her vicariate and began her career as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg. From 2006 to 2011, she was a research assistant in church history at Augustana University in Neuendettelsau, and from 2011 to 2014 she held the same position at the University of Tübingen. In 2012, she was awarded a doctorate in theology for her thesis, “Perspectives of Salvation in Anselm’s Correspondence with Women”. She then worked as a congregational pastor and held a special pastoral position for the Reformation anniversary in the Ulm deanery for three years. Since 2019, she has been an ecumenical officer at the church house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg, where her responsibilities include interdenominational dialogue and maintaining contacts with churches across Europe.
Susanne Schenk is familiar with the content, processes and key figures of the CPCE. She collaborated on the doctrinal conversation ‘Church Communion’, was a member of the South-East Europe Regional Group and participated in the General Assemblies in Basel in 2018 and Sibiu in 2024. She has also been a proxy member of the CPCE Council since 2024.
She is married and has two adult children.