GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS/ENInews) A U.S. church leader has challenged the new World Communion of Reformed Churches to move its headquarters out of Geneva, Switzerland and follow the global shift of Christianity to the Southern Hemisphere.

Addressing the group’s founding meeting on June 24, the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, described Geneva as one of the most expensive cities in the world.

He questioned how the Reformed group could talk of promoting global justice, when it had its headquarters in a place of “significant economic privilege.”

Granberg-Michaelson said that a shift away from Geneva was also a matter of solidarity with its member churches, when the church “has moved dramatically to the global South.”

The new Reformed body was formed as a merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council. Reformed Christians trace their heritage in part to Jean Calvin, who is known for his role in the 16th-century Protestant Reformation in Geneva.

The new president of the WCRC, the Rev. Jerry Pillay, told journalists after his election that “the issue needs to be looked at.”

Like the WARC before it, the new group’s headquarters are in Geneva at the city’s Ecumenical Center, along with other bodies such as the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation.

“The ecumenical organizations presently located in Geneva will have to consider when and where they move,” said Granberg-Michaelson. “I hope the WCRC will be the first to take such bold action.”

He said he had been a member of a working group that proposed Johannesburg in South Africa, Accra in Ghana, or Hong Kong as alternatives to Geneva for the location of the WCRC secretariat.

“If South Africa can host the World Cup, I’m sure that they can host the offices of the WCRC,” Granberg-Michaelson said.