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.
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.
She is married and has two adult children.
