Baptists in Bremen

Johann Gerhard Oncken

Title page of the first community directory of the Bremen Baptists (created around 1845)

Johann Friedrich Oncken

Since 1845 in the existing city of Bremen a Baptist church work. Today it is divided into six autonomous communities in Bremen and Bremerhaven with a total of around 1100 baptized members. In addition, there are other free Baptist congregations and Baptists with Russian-German characteristics, whose membership numbers, however, cannot be precisely recorded.

history

On November 8th and November 9th, 1845 Johann Gerhard Oncken baptized 10 people in the Weser. Among them was the carpenter Daniel Zincke and his wife Catharina, in whose house at Evershof in the Neustadt district of Bremen the congregation took place on November 10th. It was initially called the congregation of baptized Christians in Bremen (see picture). For the first church elders was Johann Andreas Gülzau appointed. In the 1820s, Johann Gerhard Oncken had already created positive conditions for the rapid growth of the community in the period that followed. Through his work as a representative of the Continental Society , a non-denominational British mission society, he had earned a good reputation in the awakened circles of Bremen. His friends in Bremen included the Evangelical Lutheran pastors Friedrich Ludwig Mallet and Georg Treviranus . Together with Pastor Gottfried Menken , they were considered the "triumvirate of great zealots for the Christian faith". During this time, Oncken also maintained intensive contact with the Moravian Brethren in Bremen , whose chapel at the Ansgarikirchhof was taken over by the Baptists in 1895.

Even in the early stages, the young Bremen congregation developed major missionary activities in Bremen and the Bremen area. In addition to the Baptist preacher Johann Friedrich Oncken , Wilhelm Haupt worked as a vicar in the mission area of the Hanseatic Baptists from 1854 . Branch communities emerged in Fischerhude , Verden , Elsfleth and Brake (Unterweser) . The congregation also experienced help in building up the congregation from pastors and missionaries from abroad. The Jeveraner Johann Ludwig Hinrichs and the Danish-German Julius Köbner should be mentioned here in particular .

In the following years community work was carried out in Bremen-Walle , Bremen-Lesum , Bremen-Blumenthal and Osterholz-Scharmbeck . After the Second World War , other communities were founded in Bremen - among others in Achim , Rotenburg (Wümme) and Nienburg / Weser . The youngest daughters of the Bremen Baptists are the Philippus Congregation in Lilienthal, founded in 1993, and the Bremen cell congregation, which was established in 2005 .

The church of the oldest Bremen Baptist congregation, the so-called Kreuzgemeinde , is today on Hohenlohestrasse near Bremen's main train station .

The Baptists, who have called themselves Evangelical Free Churches throughout Germany since 1942, received corporate rights for the state of Bremen on February 28, 1962.

Structures and fields of work

The Bremen Baptists are divided into six autonomous congregations, one of which is in Bremerhaven. They form a working group and as such are represented in the Evangelical Alliance and in the Working Group of Christian Churches . Within the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches , they belong to the regional association Vereinigung Nordwestdeutschland , whose official name has been Baptists in the Northwest since April 9, 2005 .

The Bremen Baptists run their own Diakoniewerk, the Evangelical Free Church Diakoniewerk Bremen , which maintains the St. Catharinen senior citizens' residence on Hohenlohestrasse. A family vacation home in North / East Friesland is also connected to the Diakoniewerk. A well-known activity of Bremen's Baptists is the annual Bread for the World collection during the Freimarkt . It has been carried out since 1967.

Another focus of the Bremen Evangelical Free Churches is the pastoral care of foreigners. Worship offers are made for the following language groups: Arabic , Chinese , Spanish , Vietnamese and Tamil . In the early 1990s, the sixth Bremen Baptist Church was founded, the English-speaking International Baptist Church . People from over 20 nations belong to it.

gallery

First Baptist Church in Bremen: Bethel Chapel at Ansgarikirchhof (destroyed in World War II)
Bethel chapel at Ansgarikirchhof (interior around 1901) with preacher Johannes Wiehler
Resurrection Church Bremen-Lesum
Christ Church Bremen-Blumenthal
Kreuzgemeinde Bremen-Schwachhausen - mother church of the Bremen Baptists
Kreuzgemeinde Bremen-Schwachhausen
Hope Church Bremen-Walle
St. Catharinenstift Schwachhausen - Seniors' residence of the Bremen Baptists