“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” —2 Corinthians 4:8-9

We, the Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, have met in Hannover, Germany, for our first meeting in person since our election at the 27th WCRC General Council in Chiang Mai, Thailand, under the theme: “Persevere in Your Witness: Perplexed but not in Despair”. We have followed up on the blessings, learnings and challenges from Chiang Mai, and listened to the lived experiences of our member churches across all regions.

We Are Afflicted in Every Way – But Not Crushed

We gather as a Communion in a scandalous world worsening at an alarming pace. This is not a time of comfort or stability, but of profound disorder: scandalous inequality, ecological collapse, increasing militarization, the breakdown of international law, the erosion of multilateral institutions, and the deepening crisis of human rights.

Today, in 2026, the signs of the times have not softened. The world continues to grapple with multiple ongoing conflicts and wars, with no clear end in sight. The unrest in the Middle East, the ceasefires that are ceasing to stop the killing in Gaza and in Lebanon, the ongoing war on Ukraine. Sudan is still bleeding, Cameroon is torn apart by civil war. The climate catastrophe accelerates—floods, fires, hurricanes, and displaced peoples are now a grim rhythm of creation’s groaning, at the same time Christian minorities are persecuted around the world. The long-standing embargo on Cuba is worsening. Christian nationalism, Christian Zionism and white supremacy continue to tear the fabric of democracy and the witness of our Gospel, right-wing extremism rises across Europe. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity still commodifies bodies. Investments in nuclear weapons puts all at risk. Wars have detrimental economic impact on the poor. The Empires of the world make people and nations disposable. 

We visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp which served as a sobering account of where silence, complicity, and the weaponisation of the Gospel can lead. This makes the witness of our German member churches all the more striking. Today, they minister in a society marked by profound institutional decline — shrinking congregations, aging memberships, and advancing secularization. And yet, precisely in that fragility, they continue to ask the harder question: how does the church remain prophetic? How does it speak truth to power while honoring its historic calling in education and social transformation?

That question is not theirs alone. The rise of Christian nationalism — the fusion of faith with ethnic identity, political power, and exclusionary ideology — poses one of the most urgent threats to both democracy and authentic Christian witness today.

In this moment, we honor the late Jione Havea’s prophetic legacy—a Pacific scholar who taught us that stories of the silenced and marginalized are powerful tools of resistance against systems of domination. His vision of decolonial, oceanic theology reminds us that in times of disorder, it is through faithful storytelling and collaborative witness that we discover God’s miracles and keep hope alive.

A Communion Called to Active Perseverance
Perseverance is not passivity. It is not mere endurance, but focused prayer and action rooted in God’s liberating love.

Our 2026-2032 strategic framework—”An Invitation to Persevere in Witness”—embodies this calling. Rooted in the four verbs that shape WCRC identity—discerning, confessing, witnessing, and ever-reforming—it calls the whole Communion to resist empire, repair colonial harm, dismantle patriarchy and racism, and practice costly solidarity with wounded peoples and a groaning earth.

At this meeting, we have:

Received and approved this strategic framework as our covenantal invitation for the coming seven years, committing ourselves to collaborative mission and witness across the Communion—without hierarchy, but with deep accountability.

Structured the framework around five interdependent covenantal actions:

• Envisioning Life-Affirming Theologies
• Embodying Justice for People and Planet
• Enacting Life-Giving Mission
• Engaging in Dialogue with Every Partner God Provides
• Embracing a Covenantal Communion without Borders

A Call to Prayer and Action
We call all members and partners of the World Communion of Reformed Churches to join us in persevering with hope:

Pray

• For the people of Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, Congo, Cameroon, Ukraine, Cuba, Taiwan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Haiti, and the Philippines—all places where war, occupation, sanctions, and state failure destroy life and render people disposable.
• For those working for truth and justice in crisis contexts—anti-racism activists, Indigenous communities, human rights defenders, and church leaders accompanying displaced communities.
• For the courage to read the signs of the times from the underside of history, through the eyes of those rendered precarious by structures of power, Empire, and colonial legacies.

Act

• Petition governments for ceasefire, demilitarization, an end to arms sales, lifting of economic sanctions, climate action, and humane immigration policies.
• Support direct accompaniment with churches in Cuba, Taiwan, the Philippines, Palestine, and other crisis contexts.
• Engage in dialogues on our witness to Christ’s liberating love, challenging theological distortions that sanctify inequality and silence the disposable.

Prepare

• Form regional theology, justice, and mission hubs that center historically excluded voices.
• Accompany the WCRC in implementing the five Covenantal Actions through contextual adaptation by regions and member churches.
• Strengthen structures by establishing new Regional Councils in South Asia, South East Asia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and Oceania and the Pacific—ensuring presence in places of crisis becomes the substance of our calling, not an afterthought.

A Final Word of Hope
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

We leave Hannover having stood on the grounds of Bergen-Belsen, where the cost of a church that looked away is written in the soil. We will not repeat that history. The Barmen Declaration, the Belhar Confession, and the Accra Confession are not museum pieces — they are living covenants that bind us to speak, to act, and to resist, in every generation, in every context.

We know that the cries of the suffering are not merely human cries. They are, as John Calvin taught and as we confess together, cries from the very heart of God. Every act of injustice wounds God. Every child buried under rubble, every family displaced by war, every community crushed by empire — God sees, God suffers, and God calls us to respond. The call to justice is the call to stop wounding God.

This is what it means to be a prophetic church. Not a church that decorates power, but one that disrupts it. Not a church that baptizes the empire, but one that names it. Not a church that offers cheap comfort to the powerful, but costly solidarity to the vulnerable. We are called, as the Belhar Confession reminds us, to stand where God stands — with the poor, the wronged, and the excluded.

To this calling, we commit ourselves afresh: as a Communion that discerns from the margins, confesses with prophetic courage, witnesses to God’s liberating love, and remains ever reformed by the Gospel’s claims upon us. We move by the beauty and the small pockets of hope we see in different places in our churches and in our communion.

May God grant us wisdom, courage, holy imagination and divine hope as we persevere together.