Church district Emsland-Bentheim

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Church district Emsland-Bentheim
Regional Church: Ev.-luth. Regional Church of Hanover
Sprengel : East Frisia-Ems
Area : 3,862 km²
Parishioners: 62,529 (December 31, 2019 )
Parishes : 27
Parish offices: 30th
Superintendent : Dr. Bernd Brauer

Superintendent's address :		 Herzog-Arenberg-Strasse 14a
49716 Meppen
Church district office: Hüttenstrasse 12
49716 Meppen
Website : www.ems-vechte-kirche.de
Partner Church District: Kondoa ( Tanzania )

The church district Emsland-Bentheim is one of 48 church districts of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover and together with the church districts Aurich, Emden-Leer, Harlingerland (Esens), Norden and Rhauderfehn (Westrhauderfehn) forms the district of Ostfriesland-Ems .

Geographical location

The Emsland-Bentheim parish is located in the far west of Lower Saxony on the border with the Netherlands . It includes the counties of Grafschaft Bentheim and Emsland .

The following neighboring church districts border the Emsland-Bentheim church district:

The church district is easy to reach in terms of traffic. It runs through the federal highway 31 (Bottrop-Emden) and in the south touches the federal highway 30 (Bad Oeynhausen-Bad Bentheim). Two railway lines ( Rheine – Norddeich Mole and Bielefeld – Bad Bentheim ) run through the region.

size

With a size of 3,862 km², the Emsland-Bentheim parish is the largest church district in the regional church of Hanover (in comparison: the state of Saarland covers a total of 2,569 km²).

The number of parish members is 62,529 (as of December 31, 2019), plus 1,040 Lutherans in Reformed areas, a total of 63,569 (in comparison: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Schaumburg-Lippe has a total of 51,234 parish members, as of December 31, 2017). This means that the Evangelical Lutheran Christians of the Emsland-Bentheim region make up 15.3% of the total population, who live in the diaspora with predominantly Roman Catholic Christians (Emsland) and Evangelical Reformed Christians (Grafschaft Bentheim) .

history

The Lutheran Christians in the Emsland-Bentheim region have always lived in the diaspora situation . The first Evangelical Lutheran congregation can be found in Lingen , where the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I approved the Lutheran Christians to build their own church on December 5, 1727. For ten years, however, they had to be content with the auditorium of the Academic Gymnasium as a place of worship until the newly built Kreuzkirche on Universitätsplatz could be inaugurated on Easter Day 1737.

Lutheran Christians also gathered in Meppen , where the Gustav Adolf Church was built in 1858. Both the Lutherans from Emsland and the Lutheran Christians who settled in the county of Bentheim were looked after by the church from Lingen. In 1902 the St. Trinitatis chapel was built in Haren-Rütenbrock and opened on February 2, 1903 with a service. In 1912 the first Lutheran church building in the county of Bentheim became necessary: ​​the Martin Luther Church in Bad Bentheim was built , which was followed 18 years later by the newly built Kreuzkirche in Nordhorn .

In 1939 Lingen looked after 3,300 parishioners, in 1946 there were 16,000. Large streams of refugees from eastern Germany (especially from Silesia) were looking for a new home. Almost all of them came from Uniate regional churches with a Lutheran tradition, so that they did not or only rarely made their home in the local church congregations, which were shaped by reforms . The regional church of Hanover sent former East German clergymen to the Emsland-Bentheim region, who shared the same fate with the refugees and built new Lutheran congregations.

The parishes of the parish grew again in the 1990s, when numerous emigrants from the former Soviet Union, also from the Lutheran tradition, looked for a new home, especially in the Emsland. In the southern Emsland town of Spelle the influx was so strong that a separate parish with a newly built church was formed in this place.

Today there are 27 parishes in the Emsland-Bentheim parish with 46 church service meeting rooms, plus the ecumenical motorway chapel "Jesus - Bread of Life" on the federal motorway 31 and the chapel in Frenswegen Monastery .

With effect from July 1, 2007, the parish was reclassified from the district of Osnabrück to the district of Ostfriesland-Ems (seat: Emden ) by resolution of the regional synod (with a narrow majority of four votes) .

Superintendent

The ephoral office is located in the district town of the Emsland, Meppen. From there, the parish council (chairman: the superintendent ) leads the parish.

On September 25, 2010, the church district assembly elected Pastor Bernd Brauer from Bad Fallingbostel as the new superintendent. He took office on February 1, 2011. He is the successor to Günther Schwarz, who retired at the beginning of 2010.

Church district synod

The highest parliamentary body of the church district is the church district synod. The members are elected by the church councils. The chairman is Michael Rilke (since January 26, 2019).

Church District Office

The central administrative office of the church district is the church district office, which is located in Meppen, Hüttenstraße 12. The head of the office is Daniel Aldag.

Parishes

The Emsland-Bentheim parish consists of 27 parishes in which 30 pastors are active. There are also 9 other clergy who work in special areas (schools, prisons, hospitals, etc.).

The parishes of the following towns and villages belong to the Emsland-Bentheim parish:

Institutions in the church district

  • Diaconal work (help and advice centers in Lingen, Meppen, Nordhorn and Papenburg)
  • Protestant high school in Nordhorn
  • Ecumenical educational institution Frenswegen Monastery in Nordhorn
  • Ring library in Lingen
  • Social therapeutic transitional residence in Meppen-Apeldorn

Partnership Church District

Since the 1950s, there have been sponsorships in the Emsland-Bentheim parish of parishes in the Marienberg parish of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Saxony in the former GDR , some of which are continued after reunification in 1990, but now called partnerships.

Ecumenical neighborhood

Ecumenical educational center Frenswegen Monastery

The Emsland-Bentheim church district and its parishes maintain strong neighborly relations with the Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformed parishes and organizations. The area of ​​the Lutheran church district Emsland-Bentheim lies with a view of the Evangelical Reformed Church in its Synodal Associations IV (Papenburg area), Grafschaft Bentheim and Emsland / Osnabrück. With a view to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Osnabrück , the deaneries Grafschaft Bentheim, Emsland-Nord, -Mitte and -Süd belong to this area.

The most visible signs of good cooperation are the joint sponsorship of the Frenswegen Monastery Ecumenical Education Center in Nordhorn and the joint use of the Michaeliskirche in Klausheide. In Nordhorn, the Diakonie-Caritas-Haus COMPASS is run by the Lutheran Diakonie together with the Evangelical Reformed Diaconal Work and Caritas. The house opened on June 12, 2017.

Remarkable

  • The numerous diaspora churches , which were designed by the architect Otto Bartning after the war and built in the shortest possible time, point to the time when many refugees and expellees from the former German eastern regions were settled. There are Bartning churches of this kind in Bawinkel (1950), Dalum (1950), Emsbüren (1952), Sögel (1950) and Werlte (1951).
The Antobahn band "Jesus - Bread of Life"
  • The autobahn chapel , which is open day and night and offers space for around 50 visitors, is ecumenically sponsored in the area of ​​the church district . It is located at the Heseper Moor rest area on the A 31 (southbound). It was designed by the architect Josef Wulf (Geeste) as a "feel-good room" in the architectural style of an Emsland bakery and built from original peat fire bricks. The artistic interior design was in the hands of qualified designer and sculptor Dominikus Witte (Belm). In November 2000 the chapel was inaugurated with the name " Jesus - Bread of Life ".

Personalities

Web links