Indonesia (GKPI) on the island of Sumatra, in a remote mountain village. In this poor village of about 2,000 inhabitants, four church buildings were lined up: a Roman Catholic one, the GKPI one, one from the HKBP (another UEM member church), and a Pentecostal one. Everywhere, UEM member churches do their mission work in a ‘market situation’, in a context in which a number of differing (and sometimes very similar!) churches compete with each other for members. In any given German city, there is a number of so-called “free churches” in addition to the Protestant and the Roman Catholic congregations.
Mission, other than intended by the first Protestant missionaries, does not seem to lead to church unity, but rather to differentiation and rivalry. Is this something that simply has to be accepted and dealt with pragmatically, or can mission be thought and practiced in such a way that the unio catholica of at least the Protestant Church is strengthened?
In the following paper, I want to study this question using one concrete example: the mission of migrant churches in Germany.
German churches: historical background
After the reformation in Germany, church membership was organized along a very simple principle: Cuius regio, eius religio – simply stated, the subjects of every state, duchy or principality (and there were many in Germany at that time!) had to follow the religious adherence of their ruler. Each little regional entity was either Catholic or Lutheran or Reformed. Those not willing to accept the faith of their ruler were sometimes allowed to emigrate to another region whose ruler’s faith they shared. It took until the 19th century for individual religious freedom to be granted, and only then competing churches started to exist next to each other. Up to the early 19th century, every German was either Roman Catholic or Protestant (Lutheran, Reformed, or United, depending on where one lived). In 1834, the first Baptist Church was founded in Germany,5 and in the 1850s, the British Methodist Churches sent their first missionary to this country.6 Immediately, this mission work was seen as competition by the Evangelical and Catholic Churches which understood Germany as ‘their’
territory – an attitude which can be found up to today.7
5 See Günter Balders: Ein Herr - ein Glaube - eine Taufe. 150 Jahre Baptistengemeinden in Deutschland (One Lord – One Faith – One Baptism. 150 Years of Baptist Congregations in Germany), Wuppertal und Kassel, 1984.
6 Karl Steckel, Ernst Sommer (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Evangelisch-methodistischen Kirche. Weg, Wesen und Auftrag des Methodismus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschsprachigen Länder Europas (History of the Evangelical Methodist Church.
The Methodist Way, Being and Mission, Particularly in German-Speaking Europe), 3.
Auflage, 2007, Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht.
7 See, for example, the speech by Methodist Bishop Walter Klaiber in: Ökumenische Zentrale (ed.), Gemeinsam zum Glauben einladen: Aufbruch zu einer missionarischen Ökumene. Ein Impulsheft für Gemeinden und ökumenische Gesprächs- und
Protestant and Pentecostal / Charismatic Christian migrants have come to Germany in substantial numbers since the 1960s. In the beginning, many of them tried to join German Protestant congregations. But the German churches, due to their strongly ethnic character, were often not very welcoming. There were no provisions to provide translations or any other attempts at internationalizing worship services, and immigrants were expected to blend in or leave. Most migrants quickly realized that they needed churches of their own if they wanted to continue to worship on a regular basis. The foundation of such
“diaspora churches” was encouraged and supported by the German Protestant churches, and a number of Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Korean, and Japanese congregations were set up with financial and organizational support from the EKD8 and its member churches. This was not understood as competition, as the migrant, i.e. non-German members of these churches were not a priori understood as members of the German Evangelical churches.
Immigrant missionaries: the current situation
Since the mid-1980s, a new wave of immigration has brought Christians from West and Central Africa, from South and South East Asia and from Latin America. Similarly to the earlier migrants, these Christians often tried to join German congregations, without much success, and then started to build their own churches. Contrary to the older churches, though, the leaders of the new churches usually do not describe them as diaspora churches serving an immigrant community, but rather as ‘new mission churches’ aimed at reviving the church in Germany and evangelizing its society. The targets of their missionary outreach are Germans, and, therefore, the question of competition arises anew.
But is Germany still a Christian country? In 2006, 25.1% of Germans belonged to the Evangelical Churches, 25.7% to the Catholic Church, 1.5% to
“free churches”, and 1.4% to Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, leaving a non-Christian percentage of 46.3%. Furthermore, projections of membership
Arbeitskreise (Inviting to Faith Together. Towards a Missionary Oikoumene), Frankfurt/M., 1999. Klaiber complains that missionary outreach by the ‘free churches’ is all too often seen as proselytizing, taking away the members of existing churches.
8 Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland – Evangelical Church in Germany, the umbrella of the regional Protestant churches in Germany. For an overview of diaspora churches set up in cooperation with the EKD, see Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ed.), Kirchen und Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft (Churches and Congregations of Other Language and Origin), Frankfurt am Main:
Gemeinschaftswerk der evangelischen Publizistik, 1997.
for both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches point to a continued downward trend. Very few congregations manage to “grow against the trend.”9
But the leaders of many Pentecostal / Charismatic ‘new mission churches’
do not even equate the percentage of church members of the two main churches with the percentage of ‘real’ Christians, claiming that most of them are simply nominal. Consequently, they see German Christianity as dying and in urgent need of revival. Citing the multitude of church buildings that are almost empty during Sunday services, they insist that divine guidance brought them here to, like Nehemiah, rebuild a ruined Jerusalem. They do not ask permission from German churches to start evangelizing, and often work with little contact with existing churches, even though they often use their buildings. Many of such
‘new mission churches’, though, would be quite willing to cooperate with existing German churches if such churches were to share their missionary urge and methods.
This mission work collides with the German ‘Landeskirchen’ which are the mainline Protestant former state churches. They define themselves as
‘Volkskirche’ (people’s church, folk church); a term that is often implicitly understood as meaning an ethnic German church, but could also be defined as
‘church for all people.’10 Volkskirche definitely has the implication that most or all of the inhabitants of a certain area belong to a certain church. Consequently, both the Catholic and the Evangelical Churches in Germany are organized in geographical parishes. Any Catholic or Protestant basically belongs to the parish which covers the place in which he or she lives. In consequence, the Evangelical Churches, at least in an unspoken way, still understand themselves as ‘covering’ all of Germany. They engage in evangelism, both to their own nominal members and to those who are unchurched, but feel that at least their nominal members ‘belong’ to them and should not be ‘poached’ by other churches. Protestant parish pastors complain if a ‘free church’ evangelizes their nominal members and causes them to leave the Evangelical Church. As each nominal member is still paying church tax, the Protestant Churches benefit even from those who do not attend church, but lose out financially if a nominal member joins another church.
9 See Wilfried Härle et. al. (eds.), Wachsen gegen den Trend. Analysen von Gemeinden, mit denen es aufwärts geht (Growing against the Trend. Analysis of Congregations which Develop Upwards), Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008.
10 Originally, the term ‘Volkskirche’ was coined in opposition to the understanding of State Church, denoting a church that belonged to the people rather than to a ruler. The people, though, were understood as an ethnic entity – Volk clearly meant the German people.
German Protestant mainline churches and migrants / migrant churches The German Protestant mainline churches have long been very active in advocacy and counselling for migrants (both Christians and non-Christians).
Particularly through their diaconal institutions, immigrants were assisted in many ways, reaching from dormitories for young, female nurses from Korea to counselling offices where migrants can discuss questions of qualification, integration, education of their children etc. Similarly, the Protestant churches have been very outspoken in their advocacy for migrants. It is striking, though, that in all public statements migrants are seen solely as clients of the churches’
diaconal work. Almost no thought is given to the religion of migrants, and none to a possible missionary urge of migrant churches.
Protestant migrant Christians are in principle (though often not in practice!) welcomed to become part of a local congregation, but except for the Evangelical Church of Hesse-Nassau, there is no provision in the German UEM member churches for special congregations which would serve migrants from a certain language and / or ethnic group. Neither is there any programmatic encouragement of local congregations to invite and integrate migrant Christians. There is no discussion about the possibility of bi-lingual worship, or of a change in liturgy and style which would accommodate Christians from other nationalities.
As far as Pentecostal / Charismatic migrant churches are concerned, Protestant mainline congregations have been fairly willing to share their premises (though usually for a fee!). Most small migrant congregations meet in Protestant churches and church halls; a growing number of larger churches, though, now rents or even buys their own premises, usually disused factory halls. It is somewhat ironic that at a time when the mainline churches are closing buildings and turning churches into shops and flats, migrant churches are turning shops and factories into churches!
A summary of the situation
What then, do we have in Germany? We have a Protestant church which is in decline but still sees itself as the ‘mainline’ church which defines what
“Evangelical in Germany”11 means. We have a church that considers migrants as diaconal clients, but has so far no concept of immigrants as members, or of the necessity to change because Germany is becoming an immigration country with a growing number of Protestants with a migratory background. In short, questions of denominational, ethic and cultural identity have implicitly or explicitly been used to exclude migrant Christians from the Landeskirchen,
11 See, for example, Kirche der Freiheit. Ein Impulspapier des Rates der EKD (Church of Freedom. An Impulse Paper of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany), Hannover, 2006.
both individually and corporately. Finally, we have Protestant churches which insist that their members belong to them and must not be evangelized by a church from the outside, even if they have no contact to their own congregation beyond paying their church tax.
On the other hand, we have two quite different groups of migrant churches.
Firstly, there are the long-established Protestant diaspora churches. Their members have been in Germany for most of their lifetime, and a second and even third generation is growing up already. The members are well integrated into German society, but their churches are not integrated into German churches. Many of these congregations find that the second and third generation is not willing to join the diaspora church, often simply because they do not speak their parents’ language well enough. At the same time, no German church has any kind of outreach to second-generation Protestant migrants, or joins a diaspora church in reaching out to them. Consequently, many second and third generation migrants whose parents and grandparents were active Protestants have become unchurched.
Secondly, there is a growing number of ‘new mission churches.’ While their membership is predominantly migrant – this often misleads German Protestants into perceiving them as diaspora churches! – they see themselves as international (and often non-denominational) bridgeheads with a calling to revive and re-evangelize the whole continent of Europe. Their outreach is aimed at anyone and everyone they meet. They hope to be able to also have an impact on the existing churches and begin a revival in them.
From this analysis, three main questions arise:
1. What actually constitutes the unity of a church? Denominational identity alone or also cultural identity? Or can church unity be envisioned beyond such definitions?
2. What is the mission of the German Landeskirchen towards migrant Christians? Is it just one of diaconia, or should it also aim at integrating them into a German church? And how could this be done?
3. How should the Landeskirchen respond to Pentecostal / Charismatic ‘new mission churches’ which often use their premises, but at the same time see themselves as revivalists towards a church which they perceive as in dire need of revival? Could the Landeskirchen which follow a theology of missio Dei develop a concept in which they could understand themselves both as actors and as recipients of mission?
This paper cannot answer these questions, but gives at least some ideas about the direction where answers can be found.