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A global Protestant body should move its headquarters out of Geneva to cuts costs and to follow the global shift of Christianity to the Southern Hemisphere, says a U.S. Reformed church leader.

Addressing the founding meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on June 24, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, described Geneva as one of the most expensive cities in the world.

The World Communion of Reformed Churches, created from the merger of the two largest networks of Protestant churches in the Reformed tradition, was celebrated June 18–26 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The larger World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) developed the plan between 2005 and 2007 to form the new body. The new ecumenical body has 227 member churches representing 80 million Christians in 108 countries.

Visa problems, an ongoing concern for ecumenical gatherings in the Northern Hemisphere, put a damper on the June celebration of the new World Communion of Reformed Churches, a group created by the merger of the two largest networks of churches in the Reformed tradition. Ten percent of the 450 voting delegates who had been expected in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the official ratification of the communion were refused U.S. visas.