One of the fruits of the Sword of the Spirit’s “widening our tent pegs” priority has been the formation of IPECC.  IPECC stands for the International Partnership of Ecumenical Charismatic Communities, and came about initially through the desire of some members the Sword of the Spirit (SOS) leadership, and the European Network of Communities (ENC) leadership to publicly stand together.   In July 2023 representatives of SOS and ENC along with two other smaller communities, The Servants of Jesus in Australia, and the North American Network, came together in London.  After three days of meetings all four groups signed the inaugural memorandum of understanding that allows us to work together, particularly under the uniting prophetic image of the “Bulwark”.

Last year at the service team meeting in Sydney we were delighted to add a new member, the Bruderhof, a fully in common Protestant covenant community, with around 3000 members, in 30 locations around the world, and roots in the anabaptist tradition.  This year at our service team in April in Rome, we welcomed into the partnership the Italian Forum of Charismatic Communities, a network of ten communities based in Italy. 

You might ask what IPECC is for.  The answer is that it primarily exists to witness and live out the unity of Christians.  It is an expression by agreement (a partnership) that we are united around core values and aims, and will support one another in these.  Our founding document says

“We believe that as we enter into this “strategic partnership”, we are responding to a call from God to partner together to serve God and the church while remaining each faithful to the particular call each of us has received from God.”  

Later the document speaks of our common heritage in the work of the Spirit, and our seeing IPECC as part of the way in which we can live out the call in John 17 to be united.

In a perfect world maybe, we would all be united without intentional work to ensure we remained united.  But Satan is determined to try and divide us, not only to destroy the unity that God wants for us, but also to undermine the work of God to expand the kingdom.  With that in mind if we want to remain united, we need to be intentional about achieving that, and IPECC is an expression of that intentionality.  That means we need to know each other enough to trust one another despite our differences.

Ways in which we have increasingly been expressing our unity is by visiting one another’s communities and by speaking at one another’s conferences.  In May for example Heinrich Arnold the senior pastor of the Bruderhof will speak at the SOS North American Region leaders’ conference, and in November Anton Colella (a member of the SOS International Executive Council) will speak at the annual conference of ENC in Croatia. 

Moreover, we hope to build unity across a new generation of leaders, and as an expression of that IPECC will be organising a young (under 40) leaders conference hosted by the Bruderhof Community in New York State, in June 2027.  We hope to have a total of 60-70 younger leaders coming from the six IPECC members.

Andy Pettman – service team secretary

Matteo Calisi, president of the Italian Forum, with Jean Barbara, the newly elected moderator of IPECC, at the new member to the partnership joining ceremony in Rome.

Top Picture: The IPECC service team with the leaders from the Italian Forum in Rome.