Finland's Evangelical Free Church — the Suomen Vapaakirkko (SVK) — welcomed Tommi Koivunen as its new national leader in autumn 2024, as long-serving church leader Hannu Vuorinen retired in spring 2025 after guiding the denomination through a formative period.
Koivunen (born 1975) holds master's level theological training and comes to the role with nearly two decades of experience leading the SVK's national youth work — Vapis — since 2007. His background gives him direct familiarity with the next generation's engagement with the free-church tradition, as well as relationships across the denomination's approximately 100 autonomous congregations.
The SVK is one of Finland's most active free churches, combining a strongly evangelical theological identity with openness to charismatic expression. Its global mission work spans more than fifteen countries, a tradition stretching back to the first SVK missionary sent to China in 1890 in partnership with Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission. Today, among its most active partnerships is the Himalayan Free Church of India, a long-standing fruit of SVK missionary engagement.
The leadership transition came at a significant ecumenical moment: in 2025, a joint council of the SVK and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland issued a statement on apostolicity — a sign of deepening, if carefully bounded, ecumenical engagement between Finland's two largest Protestant traditions.
Source: Suomen Vapaakirkko
