Interview with Andreas Hess

Every journey to the Czech Republic is like coming home.

You are well known to us for being the former secretary for inter-church cooperation in East Europe at HEKS (Swiss Interchurch Aid). What brings you to the Czech Republic this time?

Our fundraising department at the central Church office has received a grant from the Swiss Cohesion Fund to finance an ECCB training program. Part of this program included discussions, led by me, with employees of the ecumenical department regarding questions of project management (keywords: project application, project cycle and similar terms). Additionally I was able to give a lecture in different places entitled 'Denomination-Less Christianity – A model for the future?'

Where have you given this lecture?

At the Protestant Theological Faculty, to both professors and students, as well as at parish seminars in parishes in Prague and in the countryside. The last was of special importance to me since I was a minister in a diaspora parish in the rural countryside for many years.

You have received a medal from the theological faculty at Charles University for your longtime loyalty to it. What does that mean to you?

I was very touched by the personal words of the dean when he presented me with the medal. His words reminded me of my teacher Jan Milic Lochman, who was originally from Prague, whom I revered very much and who worked in Basel from 1968 onwards. Because of him I was already, since my time at the university, connected with the ETF in Prague. Even before I came here, because of HEKS for the first time in June 1987, and then in the following 25 years I regularly met with teachers and students of this prestigious institution and so learned to know and to appreciate them.

You have a lot of friends in the ECCB. What else have you experienced in Prague / the Czech Republic? Did you like Prague / the Czech Republic?

After dozens of trips to the Czech Republic, every journey here is like coming home. In my case that means a stroll through the city (preferably early in the morning or late at night) or an excursion in the countryside is always a joy for me. But I can't be without conversations with people close to me and without meeting new people, especially the latter, for which I used my free time.

What ways do you see for the future collaboration between HEKS and ECCB?

Since I am retired as of March this year, it will depend on my successor, Rev. Matthias Herren, to further nourish the long time partnership between HEKS and your Church – on the same level and with mutual trust. This spring I became a “Commissioner for Church agencies” at the CPCE (Community of Protestant Churches in Europe) and hope to contribute my professional experience and varied contacts to Churches and parishes in east central and east south Europe. In this way I hope to more effectively help build lasting and sustainable structures of cooperation for more solidarity between the protestant Churches in Europe. I am very curious myself to see how that will work out.

What do you wish for our readers?

The parishes of the ECCB have always lived in the diaspora. I wish that your readers, as parishioners, could allow themselves to receive confidence and strength to perceive their particular situation not as deficient and that they not 'talk themselves weak'. That they instead concentrate on their specific resources and strength and not on their social status as a diaspora Church (minority, institutional weakness, and lack of financial security). But instead see the opportunities; mission-theologically and ecclesiologically (the parish as a community travelling together, worship as a central social event, and parish community as an alternative social model) both discovering and creatively.

Daniela Ženatá