Under the title “Strong schools – strong children. Strategies of Empowerment in Christian schools from theological and psychological perspectives”, the General Assembly of the International Association for Christian Education took place from 28 to 30 November 2025 in Nuremberg/Germany.
Invited by the AG Evangelischer Schulbünde in Deutschland (AGES) and its chairman, Mark Meinhard, 35 representatives of national school associations from eleven European countries came together at the Wilhelm-Löhe-Schule in Nuremberg. After an introduction into the German school system, sixth form students presented the key areas and the profile of this big Protestant school centre comprising five types of school with 2000 pupils and 200 staff members.
On the second day, Prof Bert Roebben, a Belgium-German professor of Religious education at the Catholic Faculty of the University of Bonn, took the participants on a “theopoetic journey” under the leading term “empowerment in/through vulnerability” and went on to four areas of school: Pastoral counselling, Artificial intelligence, Dialogical learning, Teacher education. In the second lecture, the Psychologist of the Wilhelm-Löhe-Schule, Jan Rösler, explained with reference to current empirical research the differentiated concept of school-counseling, which takes into account the structural level as well as the individual level.
In the afternoon the group visited the “Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse”, where exactly 80 years ago the first trials of Nazi criminals by the four victorious powers began and a new chapter in international criminal justice was opened. In the early evening the statutory assembly took place in the school. On Sunday an English speaking service according to the Iona Liturgy and a guided city tour with a walk around the famous “Christkindlesmarkt” rounded off the programme.
