Honor for Bishop Patrick Streiff

Within the frame of the «International Convocation» of Martin Methodist College in Pulaski (Tennessee) Bishop Patrick Streiff was honored as «esteemed episcopal leader and theological educator» and awarded with the President’s Medaillon.

Martin Methodist College in Pulaski (Tennessee) is an education institute, which aims to prepare people from quite different cultures and language families for their future way. Twelve years ago, Dr. Roger Ireson, the former General Secretary of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, had started to establish an international program. Since then the professor for Philosophy and Religion had regularly brought church leaders from Latin America and Europe to Pulaski in order to provide his students with the opportunity to look beyond the horizon. In November 2013 Bishop Patrick Streiff from the Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe was the main speaker of the «International Convocation» of Martin Methodist College.

In addition to many informal conversations and encounters with selected classes, Bishop Patrick Streiff presented two lectures on the ministry of the church in a secular setting and on opportunities and challenges for the mission of the church in Europe in the 21st century. He underlined that for a secular and post-modern European society the message of the churches could not be doctrinal catechisms or moral imperatives, even on the best value basis. People would rather need personal faces and a personal encounter with God through Jesus Christ. In addition, they would need the experience of God’s love (as described by John Wesley in his tract «The Character of a Methodist»), which sets people free to love God and the neighbors in return.

As a special honor – one of Martin Methodist College’s highest honors – Bishop Streiff was awarded by President Dr. Ted Brown with the President’s Medaillon: for his both faithful and esteemed commitment as episcopal leader and theological educator and for his «legacy of achievement and service to the worldwide Methodist movement that will stand the test of time».

Source: Office of Bishop Patrick Streiff, Zurich
Date: December 11, 2013