Evangelical Community Association Siegerland-Wittgenstein

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The Evangelical Community Association Siegerland-Wittgenstein is today an umbrella organization with 65 communities, 53 Sunday schools and approx. 3500 regular visitors to the Evangelical Gnadauer Community Association . With four full-time preachers and around 500 volunteer workers, it is one of the larger associations of the German community movement and was instrumental in the development of the church in Siegerland. The seat of the community association is Siegen. He shares the beliefs of traditional evangelicalism . The Bible is understood as the inspired word of God. Biblical criticism is strictly rejected. The structures of the association are partly internal to the church, but free-church structures have increasingly developed since the 1990s. Official acts (baptisms, communion, weddings, funerals) are performed independently without church approval. More than half of the communities today work completely independently outside the regional church, which is perceived as too liberal due to the modern theology represented there.

history

Until the Reformation, the county of Nassau-Dillenburg (= Siegen) was under the intellectual jurisdiction of the archbishops of Mainz and Trier. Wilhelm Graf von Nassau-Dillenburg finally introduced the Reformation step by step in his countries, so that the Siegerland initially became Evangelical-Lutheran. The key date is the expulsion of the Franciscans in 1534. Count Johann VI. A few decades later, Nassau-Dillenburg introduced the Reformed Calvinist faith with the Heidelberg Catechism. By the 19th century at the latest, the pietistic movement in Siegerland began to develop its own structures, based on the awakening influences of Pietism in the Wuppertal region. This led to the fact that the Evangelical Community Association Siegerland-Wittgenstein was founded in 1852 and 1853 as an association for travel preaching in Weidenau near Siegen. Tillmann Siebel was elected as the first president of the association in 1853, who had a decisive influence on the movement.

Club house "Hammerhütte"

In 1880 the association for travel sermons built the clubhouse "Hammerhütte", which became the spatial center for the communities and associations. Since there was not enough space for the large conferences, the “Hammerhütte” was expanded in 1890 and then offered space for 1,500 to 1,600 people.

As early as 1881, the conferences of the West German branch of the Evangelical Alliance took place in the "Hammerhütte". Since the "hammer hut" was destroyed in the Second World War, it had to be rebuilt after the war. The building was inaugurated in 1953 and offered space for 3000 people. Today it houses the Siegen City Mission.

Individual evidence

  1. Internet presence of the Ev. Siegerland – Wittgenstein eV joint association

literature

Web links