Philip Potter (church leader)
Philip Alford Potter ( born August 19, 1921 in Roseau, Dominica) is a Methodist pastor and was third Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches ( 1972-1984 ).
Life
Potter was born in 1921 the son of a school teacher in Roseau and worked from 1937 to 1943 as secretary to a lawyer. From 1940 he was an honorary capacity as a minister of the Methodist Church in Dominica, served as a pastor on Nevis from 1943. From 1944 to 1948 he studied theology in Kingston, Jamaica and London. After graduating he worked until 1950 as a secretary at the British Student Christian Federation World. From 1950 on, he was superintendent of the West Indian Methodist Church in Haiti, before he became secretary of the Youth Department of the World Council of Churches joined in 1954 to Geneva, where he was in 1958 promoted to conducting secretary. In 1956 he married Doreen cousins. From 1960 to 1968 he was president of the World Student Christian Federation, from 1961 to 1967 at the same time also secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society in England for Africa and the West Indies. 1967 to 1972 he worked as Director of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. On August 20, he was elected General Secretary of the World Council. This office he held until 1984. Since 1985 Potter, who had been widowed since 1980, married in second marriage with Bärbel Wartenberg- Potter. After Potter's retirement, the couple moved to Jamaica, where she taught in Kingston theology at the university. Since 2001, has been chosen as his wife for the Bishop of Lübeck, both live in Lübeck.