Worship congregation

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Under church community means the gathered to celebrate a worship community. Only in rare cases is it synonymous with a church , institutional or staff congregation in terms of its size and composition .

Theological background

The “congregation”, the gathering of the congregation, is one of the constitutive features of the celebration of the worship service and of the church as a whole. “The church ( ancient Greek ἐκκλησία ekklesia “ the called out ”) is in its innermost essence a gathered community and can therefore only exist if it meets regularly for worship”; the worship assembly is "the center and the point of orientation of everyday Christian existence".

Roman Catholic liturgy

For the Catholic liturgy , the assembled community is the expression of the bond between those present, with the whole of the Church and with God; through the celebration of the parish mass “the whole Church becomes present in a certain place and at a certain time”. The gathering worshipers move from the diverse individual contexts of everyday life into the presence of the Kingdom of God ; this anticipates the eschatological gathering of the church in the kingdom of God at the parousia of Christ ( Mt 24.30-31  EU ).

The gathered believers have been expressly mentioned since the Middle Ages in the Canon Missae , the prayer of Holy Mass , as circumstantes ("those standing by"; "all who are gathered here"):

" Memento, Domine, [...] omnium circumstantium, quorum tibi fides cognita est et nota devotio, pro quibus tibi offerimus: vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis, pro se suisque omnibus, pro se suisque omnibus, pro redemptione animarum suarum, per spe salutis et incolumitatis suae, tibique reddunt vota sua aeterno Deo vivo et vero. "
" Remember [...] all who are gathered here. Lord, you know their faith and devotion; for them we offer this sacrifice of praise, and they themselves consecrate it to you for themselves and for all who are united to them, for redemption and for their hope of inalienable salvation. Before you, the eternal, living and true God, they bring their prayers and gifts. "

In the third prayer it says: "Hear, gracious father, the prayers of the congregation gathered here and bring to you all your sons and daughters who are still far from you."

The Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani 2002 distinguishes between consecrated ministers and the faithful (sacri ministri atque fideles) among the participants in a service and names the believers who have gathered for a service Populus ("people").

In the German translations of the Institutio Generalis , different German terms were chosen for this in various editions. The basic order of the Roman Missal from 2007 translated into No. 47 Populo congregato with “is the people gathered”, a collection of documents published by the Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference in 2009 translated “the community is gathered”. The basic form of the Missa cum populo was called “Mass with the People” in 2007 and “Celebration of the Community Mass” in 2009. This designation has established itself in the German-speaking area. The pontifical for the Catholic dioceses of the German-speaking area uses the translation " People of God " in some liturgies for the assembled community .

Evangelical theology

The Lutheran confessional writings see the congregatio , the church service assembly, as constitutive for the church:

"It is taught that at all times a holy Christian church must be and remain, which is the assembly of all believers to whom the gospel is preached cleanly and the holy sacraments are administered in accordance with the gospel."

- ( Confessio Augustana , Article VII)

The church is not a superordinate quantity to the believers, but rather the believers themselves, as they are gathered to hear the gospel and receive the sacraments. For the CA, the prototypical appearance of the church is the concrete worship congregation; this local congregation has at the same time a universal church connection. Only Christ is “above” the believer, who connects himself with them in word and sacrament. In this sense, the church is “the creature of God's word ” (creatura verbi) .

The assembled worship congregation is the "ecclesiological primary form of church". It is the whole church, but not “the whole church”, because it is spatially and syncronously connected with all local congregations in different places, and in a diachronic view it is “in connection with Christianity of all times” in continuity with the apostolic origins , did not only begin in the 16th century. This is where the “catholicity” of the Reformation churches lies.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Meßner: Introduction to liturgical science. Schöningh UTB, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-82522173-3 , p. 172f.
  2. ^ Hans Bernhard Meyer SJ: Eucharist. History, theology, pastoral care. (= Church service. Handbook of liturgical science, part 4) Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1989, ISBN 3-7917-1200-4 , pp. 458f.
  3. ↑ General Introduction to the Roman Missal (AEM) [1] , No. 75; see. Johannes H. Emminghaus: The fair. Essence - Shape - Execution , St. Benno-Verlag, Leipzig 1980, p. 26
  4. ↑ Reinhard Meßner: Introduction to liturgical science. Schöningh UTB, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-82522173-3 , p. 173.
  5. ↑ Das Hochgebet.pdf , p. 3.15
  6. ^ Liturgie.de, Institution Generalis Missalis Romani 2002
  7. ^ Basic order of the Roman Missal , June 12, 2007 , approved by the German Bishops' Conference, the Austrian Bishops' Conference, the Swiss Bishops' Conference, the Archbishop of Vaduz and the Archbishop of Luxembourg.
  8. ^ The Mass Celebration - Document Collection, edited by the Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference (Arbeitshilfen 77)
  9. ↑ for example: Liturgical Institutes (ed.): The celebration of the parish mass. Hand issue. Extract from the authentic edition of the missal for the dioceses of the German-speaking area. Herder-Verlag, 2nd edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-23497-2 .
  10. ↑ Gunther Wenz: Church . Göttingen 2005, p. 206.
  11. ↑ Wilfried Joest: Dogmatik , Volume 2: The way of God with man . 3rd, revised edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993. ISBN 3-525-03264-1 , p. 527.
  12. ↑ Gunter Wenz: "Thank God a child of 7 years knows what the church is". On the catholicity of evangelical ecclesiology. In: Wolfgang W. Müller (Ed.): Catholicity. An ecumenical opportunity. (= Writings Ecumenical Institute Lucerne 4. ) Theologischer Verlag, Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-290-20031-2 , pp. 99–116, here pp. 101ff.