District Church

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District churches are regional authorities of the New Apostolic Church (NAK). A district church is subordinate to a district apostle , who legally acts as its church president and is responsible for its organizational and pastoral management. As a rule, the District Churches are subdivided into work areas of apostles and bishops, which in turn are subdivided into church districts.

In Germany, as a public corporation, they have their own constitution.

A district church normally manages all of its administrative and pastoral affairs independently. Theological decisions, on the other hand, are only made after international consensus, for which the District Churches can submit proposals (e.g. at the annual meeting of all District Apostles).

Historical development

Already in the Catholic-Apostolic congregations from which the NAK later developed, each of the then twelve apostles was assigned a local area of ​​activity. This was referred to as the “tribe” based on the “ twelve tribes of Israel ”.

This term was also adopted in the early New Apostolic Movement. Individual local areas of activity were named with the name of a biblical tribe. This term soon changed to “apostolate” as the number of areas to be supervised increased steadily.

Around the turn of the 20th century, this term was replaced by the expression "Apostle district". The apostle districts were named after the apostle's place of residence or the seat of the ecclesiastical administration (cf. also the naming of a Roman Catholic diocese ). In the 1980s it became generally accepted that the apostle districts no longer had the name of a city, but that of a country or federal state.

The term district church has been used since around the mid-1990s , also based on the Protestant regional churches .

The New Apostolic District Churches have often changed statically in the course of their development. In Europe in particular, the number of District Churches has fallen. A number of District Churches have merged and no longer exist. So there were the formerly independent district churches of Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg, Bremen, Mecklenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony-Thuringia, which are now grouped together to form large district churches.

On the other hand, the development of the New Apostolic Church is taken into account by creating new District Churches. This resulted in two independent District Churches in North America (Canada and USA) and in Brazil (separated from the District Church in Argentina). The aim is to create a District Church for Eastern Europe, which will primarily include the New Apostolic congregations in the former CIS .