Evangelical Lutheran prayer communities

The Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities e. V. are part of the community movement within the Protestant churches in Germany . They want to strengthen people in the Christian faith or win them over to it through community care and evangelism .

root

The Evangelical Lutheran prayer communities have their roots in the Protestant prayer communities that were shaped and organized by Christoph Kukat in East Prussia , especially in Masuria , at the end of the 19th century. They also took up suggestions from the neo-pietist community movement that was forming at the time. After Westphalia emigrated Prussia also formed there prayer clubs.

history

In December 1910, Christoph Kukat called for the abolition of choir work in the Protestant prayer associations in a pastoral word . He saw them as a hindrance to future club work and wanted to put a stop to a secularization of the clubs that he had diagnosed. Especially in the communities in the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area, working with trombone and vocal choirs had become an important part of their community and youth work. They and communities in East Prussia did not want to do without these branches of work and so had to get away from the East Prussian evangelism. Prayer = separate association. In September 1911 they founded their own association called the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Association within the regional church . One worked with awakened pastors. Preachers of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Association were appointed by the Westphalian regional church as parish helpers to care for their Masurian parishioners.

After the incorporation of part of East Prussia in Poland , the joint work was continued and expanded there.

During the National Socialist rule they did not join the German Christians , but cultivated brotherly and sisterly cooperation with the Confessing Church . Due to the Second World War and its aftermath, the association's communities perished in the former areas of the German Empire and in Poland.

Today's work

The current focus of the Evangelical Lutheran prayer communities is in North Rhine-Westphalia and is supported by around 35 congregations. In 1961, the prayer club acquired a site on Edersee in Vöhl and built a retirement home there, which was followed by the construction of a leisure home in 1982. In 1969 the “Missionsverlag of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities” was founded, which, in addition to its own publications, also publishes edification literature by the “pietistic fathers”, according to Johann Arndt's True Christianity .

The special features include the kneeling prayer and the alignment of the proclamation to the Lutheran confessions , among which the Small Catechism of Martin Luther occupies a prominent position.

literature

• Helmut Ruzas († 2014): I want to remember the grace of the Lord. Chronicle of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Associations - communities within the regional church. Missionsverlag of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities, Bielefeld 1989.

Web links

• Main page of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities
• Homepage of the Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Communities in Gelsenkirchen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Spelling on the title page of the first statutes from 1885. Printed in Ruzas: I want to commemorate the grace of the Lord, p. 116.
2. ↑ Ruzas: I want to remember the grace of the Lord, pp. 97–170.
3. ↑ Ruzas: I want to remember the grace of the Lord, pp. 185–187.
4. ↑ Ruzas: I want to remember the grace of the Lord, pp. 207–227.