Working group for spiritual support in Mennonite congregations

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The working group for spiritual support in Mennonite communities (AGUM) is an association of Mennonite communities, mostly of Russian-German origin in Germany .

The working group was formally founded in 1978, but goes back to an initiative that has been active since 1972 to support Russian-German Mennonite emigrants . AGUM has had a legal structure as a registered association since 2000 . Today more than twenty parishes with around 5,600 members work together in the working group. According to the concept of congregationalism, the congregations themselves have extensive autonomy. The AGUM as a common umbrella organization acts primarily through further training for employees or joint conferences. There is a joint Bible school , magazine and the Christian Missions publishing house founded by AGUM. Today the AGUM is one of several Mennonite community associations in Germany. Like the AMG , the AGUM belongs to the church Mennonites within the Anabaptist / Mennonite spectrum, but has a theologically rather conservative and evangelistic profile. International contacts existed in the first few years mainly with the Canadian Mennonites. Otherwise, the AGUM has no contact with other Mennonite alliances. The AGUM is currently not a member of the Mennonite World Conference .

literature

  • Diether G. Lichdi: The Mennonites in the past and present. From the Anabaptist movement to the worldwide free church. 2nd Edition. Weisenheim 2004, ISBN 3-88744-402-7 , page 230.
  • Heinrich Löwen: Congregational Education in Russian-German Free Churches in the Tension Between Past and Present. Munich 2010, page 20.
  • Heinrich Löwen: Russian-German Evangelicals - Volume 1: Basics of the historical and theological background of Russian-German free churches. Munich 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Those established congregations that did not join the reform movement of the Mennonite Brethren in the Ukraine after 1860 were initially described as church Mennonites . The expression referred to the fact that the established congregations mostly met in church buildings, while the newly formed Mennonite Brethren congregations mostly met in private houses or later in meeting houses, see: Cornelius Krahn and Walter W. Sawatsky: Kirchliche Mennoniten . In: Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online