Elias Schrenk

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Elias Schrenk

Elias Schrenk (born September 19, 1831 in Hausen ob Verena near Tuttlingen , † October 21, 1913 in Gadderbaum - Bethel , today Bielefeld ) was a Swabian merchant, Protestant missionary and revival preacher of Pietism and the sanctification movement .

Live and act

Schrenk was one of three children of a tailor, trader and farmer. In 1847, as a young man, Elias Schrenk trained as a businessman in Tuttlingen and came abroad. He came into contact with believers at an early age. He was especially impressed by his pietistic and social employer and entrepreneur Carl Mez in Freiburg, to whom he came in 1853. In this phase he came to a living faith himself. In 1854 he attended the mission seminar of the Basel Mission , where he was shaped by the teachers Wolfgang Friedrich Geß , Theodor Haug and the mission inspector Joseph Friedrich Josenhans . In 1858 he was cured of a nervous disease by the laying on of hands by Dorothea Trudel, according to his own statements in his autobiography .

Elias Schrenk worked from 1859 to 1872 as a missionary for the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast in West Africa - at times in a responsible position. From 1865 to 1866 he spent recreation in Heiden in Appenzell , where he also worked as a spa pastor. Since 1866 he was married to the Swiss pastor's daughter Berta Tappolet. For health reasons he had to return from Africa, and he was electoral preacher in Davos from 1873 to 1874 , then briefly in England, where he met the evangelists Dwight Lyman Moody and Ira Sankey .

From 1875 Schrenk became a travel preacher for the Basel Mission in Hesse and Thuringia , residing in Frankfurt am Main , and he was also responsible for the mission fund there and editing the Starkenburger Missionsblatt. Carl Heinrich Rappard and Otto Stockmayer , who also belonged to the sanctification movement , became his lifelong friends. He also visited the founders of the Salvation Army William and Catherine Booth in London, of whose work he was deeply impressed, but the evangelism methods they used were too striking for him.

From 1879 to 1886 he was a preacher for the Evangelical Society of the Canton of Bern in Switzerland . He was able to gain a large audience of several hundred people, so that the Evangelical Reformed town of Bern Nydegg Church had to be used for the Sunday evening service. As was customary in the sanctification movement of that time, he also held Bible studies and awakening meetings in the vicinity of Bern and also preached in dance halls and gyms to call people to repentance to God. The Evangelical Society also experienced great growth and prosperity through him. During this time he became the spiritual role model for Franz Eugen Schlachter , who was his colleague in Bern.

He was a serious, convincing revival preacher who worked as a freelance evangelist in Germany on a trial basis from 1884 and definitely from 1886 until his death in 1913 . In 1893 Hudson Taylor , Eduard Graf von Pückler and Schrenk spoke at a large Christian student conference in Frankfurt am Main . One of the participants was Karl Heim , who later became professor of theology in Tübingen , who had a personal conversation with him after a sermon by Schrenk, which he found liberating. Heim surrendered unconditionally to God and experienced a radical new beginning, which for him should be a creative new beginning in his life.

In 1888 he took part in the first Whitsun Conference in Gnadau , Thuringia , from which the Evangelical Gnadau Community Association was formed in 1897 . Schrenk was one of the speakers at the time, introducing his multilevel evangelism method to the congregation. He was the main speaker at the 14th Gnadau Whitsun Conference in Wernigerode , when the main focus was on the defense against the Whitsun movement . In 1909 Schrenk was one of the signatories of the so-called Berlin Declaration , in which the German community movement distinguished itself from the newly emerging Pentecostal movement, although Schrenk had also had healing experiences in himself and in his service.

Elias Schrenk was married; his son Gottlob Schrenk later became a professor for New Testament exegesis at the University of Zurich .

Service as an evangelist and pastor

In German-speaking countries Schrenk was considered the father of classic evangelism , which he carried out in a similar way to Dwight Lyman Moody . The sermon, which is shaped by personal experiences of faith and prayer, should lead the audience to knowledge of sins, repentance , conversion , faith in Jesus Christ and also to the assurance of salvation . But he also noted the so-called leading grace and the different beliefs of his audience. He also provided pastoral care and biblical instruction for new converts.

Sometimes he was only able to work and preach against strong resistance from the population. There were times when manure was poured over him or the meeting room where he was preaching was shot at. He was also attacked by men in women's clothes armed with clubs. Despite all opposition, however, he preached the gospel with great conviction. Although at times he tended strongly towards the free church line, after his time in Bern he again came closer to the ecclesiastical-pietistic area.

Remembrance day

October 21 in the Evangelical Name Calendar .

Fonts

  • Pilgrimage life and pilgrimage , Verlag Ernst Röttger, Kassel, 1905 (autobiography)
  • Virgin life in the light of the gospel , Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung, 1920
  • A life fighting for God , R. Brockhaus , Wuppertal 1962
  • Search in the Scriptures - Daily reflections for the whole year , many editions: Verlag der Liebenzeller Mission , Bad Liebenzell 2000, ISBN 978-3-8800-2716-9 and Missionsverlag of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities 2016, ISBN 978-3-9296- 0259-3
  • If you thirst, come - Twelve Speeches ... , Nabu Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-2788-3044-5

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Samuel Schrenk: Elias Schrenk, a life in the struggle for God . Ed .: Samuel Schrenk. Follow-Verlag, Langerwehe 2019, ISBN 978-3-95893-204-3 .
  2. ^ Christian Fuhrer: History , Evangelical Community Work (EGW)
  3. ^ Karl Heim: I commemorate previous times , Hamburg 1957, pp. 31–39
  4. ↑ Jörg Ohlemacher: Community Christianity in Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries , pp. 393-405, in: Martin Brecht, Gustav Adolf Benrath, Martin Sallmann , Ulrich Gäbler : The Pietism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century , History of Pietism, Volume 3 , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 978-3-525-55348-0
  5. ↑ Werner Schmückle: Preaching Evangelistically - Learning with Elias Schrenk , 5th AMD Congress for Theologians
  6. ↑ Werner Schmückle: Preaching Evangelistically - Learning with Elias Schrenk , 5th AMD Congress for Theologians
  7. ^ Werner Raupp : Schrenk, Elias. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  8. ↑ Jörg Ohlemacher: Building the Kingdom of God in Germany: a contribution to the prehistory and theology of the German community movement , Volume 23 of works on the history of Pietism, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, ISBN 978-3-5255-5807-2 , p. 93-103: Elias Schrenk
  9. ↑ Elias Schrenk in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schrenk, Elias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swabian evangelical missionary and revival preacher of Pietism and the sanctification movement
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Hausen ob Verena
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1913
Place of death Gadderbaum - Bethel , today Bielefeld