Christian Röckle

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Christian Röckle (born February 6, 1883 in Eltingen ; † August 16, 1966 in Leonberg ) was an evangelist and missionary from Eltingen, now a district of Leonberg in Baden-Württemberg. In 1924 he founded the Christian Notbund for mutual aid , which later became the Leonberger Bausparkasse . Röckle created the Philadelphia movement , a non-denominational Christian community. In 1945 he founded the Philadelphia Association .

life and work

Childhood and youth

Christian Röckle was the fifth of his parents' seven children. The Christian faith shaped him as a child. In his autobiography The Footprints of God in My Life , he reports that when he was five years old, God first intervened in his life through a dream. At the age of six he attended the Methodist Sunday School for the first time : "The hours in this Sunday school are among my most beautiful childhood memories." After his confirmation, he joined the newly founded youth club ; He also kept in contact with the YMCA at later places of residence .

Contrary to his father's advice, he did not pursue the career of a teacher, but learned the saddlery trade. After two and a half years of apprenticeship (1897–1899), jobs followed in Ulm and Karlsruhe . In the spring of 1901 he went "on the roll " with a gardener . In Wetzlar he joined a community of the Evangelical Society in Elberfeld .

missionary

A lecture by a missionary about a trip to Africa made Röckle want to become a missionary too. According to his own statements, he received the divine calling to preach the gospel in Wetzlar in 1901. Two years later, after further jobs in Welzheim and Stuttgart , he joined the Mission House of the Basel Mission on August 18, 1903 . There, at the age of 22, he received the baptism of the Spirit in March 1905 and thus also received the gift of prophecy, the equipment for the service of the Word of God. In his autobiography Röckle emphasizes: "The experience I had two years before the appearance of the Pentecostal movement and thus has nothing to do with this." As a 23-year-old he delivered the Sermon on the annual festival of a religious community in without special preparation Kandern at Basel.

On a mission trip through Baden, Württemberg and the Palatinate with 14 brothers from the mission house, Röckle used his evangelistic gift in the summer of 1907 to inspire people for God. He regularly attended evangelism meetings to learn from them. He was particularly impressed by Elias Schrenk , whom he described as the pioneer of evangelism in Germany; he experienced it at four events, the first time in 1896 as a 13-year-old in the city church of Leonberg. In his autobiography, Röckle also mentions the evangelists Samuel Keller , Georg von Viebahn , Jakob Vetter , Fritz Binde , Eugen Zimmermann, Ernst Modersohn and Sango Autenrieth.

One year before the end of the training in the mission house, Christian Röckle was proposed as a missionary for the Gold Coast . At the time, Africa was considered the “land of death”. He was ordained missionary on September 20, 1908. After three months of English lessons in Edinburgh , Röckle began the sea voyage to Africa in Dover on January 11, 1909 . On January 27, 1909, he landed in Accra , today's capital of Ghana .

His first mission was in Christiansborg near Accra. Some people there still remembered Elias Schrenk, who had been there 30 years earlier. For Röckle, the service on the Gold Coast was only “a preparation for the bigger task at home.” For the last two years he was transferred to the station in Odumase . Because of a liver disease, he had to return to Germany early in 1911. After a cure in Tübingen he worked for seven months in the Berlin city mission . As a mission preacher in Hersfeld , he traveled to Hesse and Thuringia . The First World War prevented Röckle from being sent to Africa again in 1914. Because of another liver disease, Röckle was postponed from military service shortly afterwards.

evangelist

During the First World War, Christian Röckle was employed as a parish administrator in Maienfels (1914–1915), Schömberg (summer 1918) and Schwabach (until the end of October 1918) as well as city ​​and parochial vicar in Welzheim. There were numerous conversions in Maienfels . Röckle's missionary and evangelism activity in Germany began. In Schwabach, Röckle came into closer contact with the Pentecostal movement in 1918. His tenure as parish administrator in Rötenberg in the Black Forest coincided with the November Revolution in 1918/19 .

From 1919 to 1940 Christian Röckle worked as an evangelist in the service of the Old Pietist Community Association . From 1940 to 1945 the Evangelical Church in Württemberg appointed him as a deputy for pastors who had been called up for military service.

In his own words, Röckle was initially not an opponent of National Socialism. After a lecture on the first anniversary of the seizure of power on January 30, 1934 in a church in the Hall district, however, Röckle was reported to the Gestapo and was banned from speaking. Later, as a parish administrator in Reinsbronn , he distributed religious writings despite a ban.

After 1945 there was a break between Christian Röckle and the leadership of the pietistic communities ( Gnadauer Verband ). The Association of Reich Gods Workers excluded Röckle. A discussion to clarify the relationship between the Philadelphia congregation and the Württemberg regional church did not lead to an agreement in 1952. Ten years later, Röckle wrote: “The fact that I am now widely rejected by both the Methodists and the Church cannot shake my position on either. They may hate me, but I still love them. "

Philadelphia movement

In May 1942, Röckle said he received divine instructions to prepare the Christian community for the second coming of Jesus. From then on he saw this as his life's work. His work, The Completion of the End-Time Philadelphia Church and Its Rapture (1943), quickly gained widespread use. Without any advertising, the first edition of 5000 copies was sold after just four weeks.

The Philadelphia movement continued to expand after World War II. An annual Philadelphia conference has been held in Leonberg since 1946 . The Philadelphia Letters magazine has served as the movement's public organ since 1948. To distribute the writings of Christian Röckle and other literature, a separate publishing house with a bookstore was founded in 1949.

The Philadelphia Association , founded in 1945, operates a retirement home, a children's home and an organic farm, among other things.

The theologian and publicist Kurt Hutten described Röckle as a “sober nature”, but also as a “charismatic leader figure”: “He was aware of his divine mission, but did not associate any prophetic airs with it. (...) He also held back with reports on his healings (...). "Hutten continues:" With Röckle's death, the Philadelphia movement lost its charismatic leadership figure. "

Building society

Long before the Philadelphia movement, Christian Röckle founded the Christian Emergency Association for Mutual Aid (CN) in 1924 under the influence of inflation . The non-profit association should help with emergencies in times of money shortage. Röckle wanted to set an example that money should also come under the rule of Jesus.

Five years later, in 1929, he incorporated a building society into the CN in order to remedy the housing shortage. It initially operated under the name Creditgenossenschaft des Christian Notbundes zur Mutual Hilfe eGmbH (CCN) and was later renamed Leonberger Bausparkasse . Röckle had "no business, but only an evangelistic interest" in the building society. For the business side, he hired experienced, devout business people: "For me, the building society was not a secular business, but a work of God that was primarily intended to serve the kingdom of God." In the magazine for building society savers, Röckle published religious articles about them to win for Christianity. Because Christian Röckle did not want to limit his evangelism activities through the building society, he only took part in the board and supervisory board meetings when he was at home.

After the building society grew rapidly, the Christian aspect increasingly faded into the background. In December 1930, Röckle accused the two directors in a memorandum of Die CCN am Scheideweg with inappropriate salary demands and unnecessarily high expenses for rent, office furniture and equipment. After arguments about the business practice, which he perceived as unchristian, Röckle resigned from his seat on the supervisory board in 1937.

Fonts (selection)

  • The completion and rapture of the end-time Philadelphia Church. Leonberg 1943.
  • The unity of the church, its necessity and its obstacles. Leonberg 1949.
  • Pearls of divine promises. Leonberg 1960.
  • The footprints of God in my life. Leonberg 1962.
  • How God Heals. Leonberg, without a year.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 30 ff.
  3. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 52.
  4. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 71.
  5. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 79 f.
  6. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 84.
  7. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 103 ff.
  8. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. 12th edition, Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, p. 239.
  9. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 213.
  10. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. 12th edition, Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, p. 241.
  11. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 81.
  12. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. Quell-Verlag, 12th edition, Stuttgart 1982, p. 239.
  13. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 223.
  14. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. Quell-Verlag, 12th edition, Stuttgart 1982, p. 240.
  15. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. Quell-Verlag, 12th edition, Stuttgart 1982, p. 245.
  16. ↑ Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. 12th edition, Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, p. 240.
  17. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 184 ff.
  18. ↑ Christian Röckle: The footprints of God in my life. Philadelphia-Verlag, Leonberg 1962, p. 196.
personal data
SURNAME Röckle, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German missionary
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Eltingen
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1966
Place of death Leonberg