Jerry Pillay
Jerry Pillay is the current General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. He is a Reformed pastor, member of the Uniting [Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa], former professor of theology at the University of Pretoria where he heads the Department of History and Ecclesiology and was Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He was elected president of the Reformed Churches">Reformed Churches">Reformed Churches in 2010 and, in June 2022, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, to take office on 1 January 2023.
Biography
Pillay was born in 1965 into a family of Indian origin who had been in South Africa for five generations.With a pastoral vocation from childhood, he holds a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of Durban-Westville, a Master of Arts in Missiology and Church History from the University of Durban-Westville and a Ph.D in Church History and New Testament from the Cape Town">Cape Town">Cape Town focused on social development.
Initially a proposing pastor at McDonald Memorial Presbyterian Church in Amanzimtoti from 1987 to 1989, he then served as pastor at Lotus Park Presbyterian Church in Durban, then at Bridgetown Presbyterian Church in Cape, then at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Benoni from 1998 to 2008.
After serving as moderator and then general secretary of the United Presbyterian Church of South Africa, a member of the central committee of the South African Council of Churches, he was elected president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches on 24 June 2010. He is also a member of the Council for World Mission, an international body based in London.
On 17 June 2022, he was elected general secretary of the World Council of Churches.