VELKD community college
The VELKD Community College , an institution of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (VELKD), was founded in 1986. Originally located on the grounds of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church in Celle , the community college moved to Neudietendorf near Erfurt in 2008 and has since been located in the "Zinzendorfhaus" along with other institutions of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany .
The rootedness in the environment of the pronounced lack of religion in Central Germany sharpens the view for specific questions - e.g. B. for what church people and non-denominational people can learn from and with one another.
The “core of the brand” includes the interplay between full-time employees and volunteers. It's about ideas and attitudes that stimulate your own design and further development. Impulses from the global ecumenical movement are taken up, cooperation with other organizations is sought.
Development work
As a research and development department, the community college takes up the current challenges of church life and looks for spiritual orientation in increasing complexity. Here we explore and try out what can help: New pictures of the church and community; lively forms of community work with scarce material resources; unfamiliar ways to and with people who independently search for God outside the constituted churches and act religiously; New attitudes that enable us to live with gaps, to shape fallow land, to accompany change processes spiritually and to pay attention to how God sets the church in motion. In line with the Lutheran message of justification, the community college asks what God's love and reliability mean for growth and also for wilting in communities - especially where much is and will remain imperfect.
Projects
A long-term advanced training course on spiritual process support has emerged from the development work in recent years, in which the question is asked: How can the spiritual dimension permeate everyday process and design work in groups, committees and communities? How can we work professionally in the church and at the same time count on the work of the Spirit of God in a theologically responsible manner? How do we meet the challenges of increasing complexity?
Networking
The work takes place in a diverse network: in cooperation with pastors, with church councils / parish church councils / presbyteries, with regional church institutions and church leaders, with people from innovative branches of research, companies and the media, with non-denominational and religious people.
Publications
- Every year the magazine Church in Movement gives an insight into the development work of the community college. Like the annual program, it can be ordered free of charge from the community college.
- Isabel Hartmann, Reiner Knieling: Rethinking the community. Spiritual orientation in increasing complexity. Gütersloh 2014
- Elke Schölper (Ed.): Learning to accompany the dying. The Celler model for the preparation of volunteers in terminal care. Gütersloh 4th updated edition 2014
- Office of the VELKD (Ed.): Tell me if you like! Bible card game, Hanover 2012
- Missionary Services Working Group, Community College of the VELKD (Ed.): Community Development Training Practice Book Göttingen 2008