Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony

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The Lower Saxony Liturgical Conference (LKN) is a registered association and part of the (Protestant) “ Younger Liturgical Movement ”. “The purpose of the conference is the renewal and deepening of the community life from the worship center of the community.” The LKN was founded on October 28, 1925 in Bremen.

history

Founding and development years

The founding of the conference probably goes back to the initiative of the Oldenburg pastor Erich Hoyer , who founded a very active "liturgical committee" at the Lambertikirche in the early 1920s together with his organist and brother-in-law Otto Wissig. Two things are typical of what began here: a) a partnership between theology and church music; b) a liturgical parish committee as the primordial cell of nationwide work. The Hamburg pastor Karl Horn was elected chairman. Hoyer was the first managing director and organizer.

The area "Lower Saxony" was much broader than the current state of Lower Saxony . The conference found members and financial support not only from the churches of today's Lower Saxony, but also from Bremen, the area of ​​today's North Elbian Church , from Mecklenburg and eastern Westphalia (Minden-Ravensberg). Individual members were also found from other churches, e.g. B. the liturgist Otto Dietz (Nuremberg). At times the conference had a total of around 500 members. At that time there were also numerous regional bishops, e. B. the Hanoverian bishop August Marahrens . The theological guiding principle of this liturgical movement, which grew out of the evangelical congregations in Lower Saxony, was from the beginning the “celebrating congregation as the subject acting in worship, whereby this action is not an arbitrary, but rather one evoked by God's Spirit”.

The founding statutes name the following tasks:

  1. Process valuable liturgical goods scientifically and make them usable for congregational use,
  2. repeatedly bring the essence of worship life and church piety close to the congregations,
  3. Support pastors, cantors and organists in their liturgical work with advice and action,
  4. Maintain contact with church authorities and synods in order to create the legal basis for securing and promoting liturgical life,
  5. to pursue the liturgical movement of the present and seek to promote it according to the principles set out above.

In pursuit of these goals, a series of publications was launched that first appeared at Bertelsmann in Gütersloh, temporarily at Bärenreiter in Kassel and finally in Göttingen at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht . Important were - and still are today - the “annual” conferences, which according to the statutes took place annually, but soon only every two years: 1926 in Lübeck, 1927 in Schwerin, 1929 in Hildesheim, 1931 in Flensburg, 1933 in Gütersloh and - after apparently a four-year break - 1937 in Isenhagen near Hankensbüttel.

Luebeck Lutheran dogmatists held Paul Althaus d. J. a programmatic lecture for the work in the next few years on "The essence of evangelical worship". The starting point is the Gospel as “the word and deed of God in Christ”. In the sense of Luther's well-known Torgau Castle Sermon, Althaus understands the divine service in a dialogical manner, but God is present not only in the word of the proclamation, but also in the answer of the community, not only in the spoken and sung word, but also in the act of the Lord's Supper and community of the assembled. Whereby “God remains the one who, like the word, also gives the answer to the community”. Althaus protests against “liturgistic” discrimination against sermons, against reformist mystics for whom religious feeling is everything, but also against high church tendencies in part of the liturgical renewal movement.

Accordingly, one conference participant reported "that one clearly and firmly demarcated oneself from high church aspirations and left no doubt that one did not have high church goals". On the other hand, they saw themselves as folk-church and characterized their own work - using a term used by the Catholic liturgist Pius Parsch - as "folk liturgical". That meant: In addition to the education and training of church workers, the community was dedicated to liturgical education and training. Paul Graff already proclaimed this goal in his opening lecture at the Lübeck conference : “The community is able to take our big cause into its own hands” and there: “Everything depends on us, the community”. That is why Erich Hoyer gave numerous lectures in the communities in the first few years. The guiding principle of the conference in terms of worship services was therefore anything but “parochial” from the start. According to the statutes, the board of directors was obliged “that special state committees are formed in the individual church areas”. Unfortunately, these did not last. Although the LKN was the first, it was not the only one of its kind. Numerous other conferences were founded in Germany, including those with narrow landscapes such as the one “on the upper Nahe”.

Liturgical seminary and church book

Two special projects emerged in the next few years: the establishment of a liturgical seminar and the compilation of a “church book” for the congregation in church and house. After long negotiations with “representatives of the regional churches of Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, the two Mecklenburg, Braunschweig, Oldenburg and Eutin under the direction of the regional bishop Abbot D. Marahrens in Lüneburg with members of the board of the conference”, a “liturgical Seminars ”in Isenhagen, near Hankensbüttel , in the former district office there, which was rented by the state. There were 35 beds available. Erich Hoyer was employed by the Hanoverian regional church in the small community of Isenhagen and thus had a lot of time for his seminar. Numerous conferences took place there in the years that followed, some for entire congregation groups, some for young theologians. The Hanover regional church office also promoted seminars with the “graceful, secluded location” of Isenhagen.

Financing and utilization of the house, however, caused growing problems. The Hanoverian regional church had to become more and more involved, of course not only with regard to the financial risks, but also in the management of the company. Initially a twenty-person “convention”, for which the managing director was responsible, was replaced by a board of trustees chaired by the regional church councilor Christhard Mahrenholz , who had long since taken the lead in the field of church services (alongside Oskar Söhngen , Berlin) and church music. The treasury was meanwhile at the regional church office in Hanover. The result was that more and more external conferences called into question the actual purpose of the seminar and some liturgical courses were blocked.

The Isenhagen annual conference in 1937 was once again a high point in the life of the conference before the great war. Christhard Mahrenholz gave a lecture on "Luther and Church Music" and was elected chairman of the conference (which he had practically been for a long time). In the years that followed, the relationship between the chairman and managing director apparently grew tense. Since the seminar was founded, the “Isenhagen church slips” had been published weekly. They were summarized in 1940 in the "Isenhagen Church Book", which was available under a new title in three volumes or in one volume. For every Sunday or festival day and the week following the Sunday, the following is compiled: a general description, a weekly saying, the texts of the Gospel and Epistle with interpretations, a song of the week with short commentary, a prayer of the week (collection prayer), a spiritual contemplation as well as morning and evening readings for the days of the week. In addition, there were liturgical introductions to the church year as well as treatises on key questions from the doctrine of the faith. Well-known authors collaborated, e.g. B. - apart from Mahrenholz - the bishops August Marahrens, Hans Meiser and Theophil Wurm , Oskar Söhngen , the professors Paul Althaus , Wilhelm Stählin , Leonhardt Fendt and Friedrich Delekat.

In 1941, the LKN, together with liturgical conferences in the Rhineland and Westphalia, founded a working group for a joint Uniate Lutheran agenda. This, too, is characteristic of the anything but denominational or regionalist spirit of the Lower Saxony conference. The Lutheran Liturgical Conference of Germany grew out of the working group after the war and thus ultimately the agendas of the member church associations of VELKD and EKU in the EKD . That they insisted on getting their own agenda is not the fault of the liturgical conferences. The common evangelical worship book (EGb) from 1999, on which representatives of the LKN worked intensively from the preparatory work on, has meanwhile ended this liturgical schism.

Liquidation and resuscitation

Even before the beginning of the Second World War, the seminar was terminated by the state because the house was used for the female " Reich Labor Service ". Mahrenholz got another letterhead: "The liquidator of the liturgical seminary in Isenhagen". Erich Hoyer promptly addressed his letters to "the liquidator" (although you can probably hear a bitter, sarcastic undertone). The continuation of the church book fell victim to the war. In practice, the entire LKN was "liquidated". Erich Hoyer - sick, exhausted, apparently increasingly bitter - died in 1943.

After the war, the Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch (EKG) and Agende I were created , while the LKN seemed dead. It was not until 1957 that Mahrenholz suggested its revival. A new board was elected, with superintendent Friedrich Frerichs (Lilienthal) as chairman and pastor Walter Lührs (Hohnstedt, later superintendent in Göttingen) as managing director. Mahrenholz apparently hoped that the “folk liturgical” working method of the LKN would take root in the officially resolved agendas in the communities. The conference worked on this with the publication of numerous leaflets for the congregation: no longer as detailed as in the Isenhagen church slips, but with brief introductions to the orders of worship (including the casualia ) and individual materials, e.g. B. for Good Friday. When the conference in the 1960s, following its original approach, became a liturgical “reform party” and a pioneer of the EGb, we know today that this was entirely in Mahrenholz's spirit. She encouraged the formation of a working group, together with the people's mission and the state youth pastor's office in Hanover, under the name “Working group worship / Sachsenhain” and published “New texts for worship” developed by this group; initially as an in-house print, later as a series of publications in the Lutheran publishing house in Hanover.

Topics of the annual meetings

In recent years, the conference has repeatedly taken up and stimulated new topics, as the topics of the annual meetings show:

  • 1971 Göttingen : Divine service in motion (news in traditional divine service)
  • 1973 Braunschweig : "Congregational service in conversation" (on the way to the structure paper)
  • 1975 Verden : "Divine service and community development" (Divine service as a forum for community life)
  • 1977 Rastede : "... not from the word alone" (picture and action in the service)
  • 1979 Hamburg : "Celebration Service" (multimedia liturgy)
  • 1980 Isenhagen : "Even 55 years are a reason to celebrate" (anniversary conference)
  • 1982 Goslar : "Divine service practice in the mirror of the media" (radio and television services)
  • 1985 Bückeburg : "The Future of the Congregational Song " (to prepare the Protestant hymn book )
  • 1986 Celle : "Shaped Movement in Faith" (liturgical dance)
  • 1988 Helmstedt : "Sermon and Music"
  • 1990 Osnabrück : "Life in Divine Service - Divine Service in Life" (the project "Divine Service Life" in America and the VELKD and the synodal project Divine Service in German-speaking Switzerland)
  • 1992 Hanover : "The spirit doesn't dampen!" (Open forms in the Renewed Agende)
  • 1994 Verden: "Last Supper: Transformation, Renewal, Community" (on the way to the Evangelical Worship Book (EGb) )
  • 1996 Einbeck : "Creating space for the celebration" (liturgical teaching and church pedagogy)
  • 1998 Helmstedt: "Foreign World Service" (in connection with an EKD survey)
  • 2000 Leer: "Play me the song of life" (after the introduction of the EGb and the reformed church book)
  • 2002 Göttingen: "Celebrating life - divine service and life story (s)" (casualia)
  • 2004 Hildesheim / Michaeliskloster: "Divine service in 2010 - why do we need an LKN in the future?" (After the opening of the local center for divine service and church music)
  • 2005 Verden: "Congregation celebrates worship ?!"
  • 2007 Braunschweig: "Renew church year"
  • 2009 Celle: "Liturgical Portals"
  • 2011 Hanover: "Church services with a small congregation"
  • 2012 Göttingen: "Evangelical church service book on site"
  • 2013 Goslar: "Church services as a gift and a challenge"
  • 2014 Hemmingen: "Celebrating church service in a senior-friendly community"
  • 2015 Hildesheim: "Liturgical Education Past and Present"
  • 2016 Oldenburg: "The Protestant Divine Service 2017"
  • 2017 Verden: "Celebrating worship in a singing congregation"
  • 2018 Helmstedt: "The responsibility of the congregations for the divine service"
  • 2019 Gehrden: "Divine Service in Conversation - Trialogical Convents of Parish Office, Cantorate, Lectorate"

At the 1988 conference on June 8th, the “Helmstedt Theses” on the responsibility of the congregations for their worship services were approved. A total of 35,000 copies were sent to the church leaders in Lower Saxony and met with a great response here as well as in training and further education work. So the conference stuck to its original theme: worship as a community affair.

Work projects

Numerous working projects were tackled by member committees. Examples include: Opinion on the Renewed Agende, on the revision of the lectionary and the sermon pericopes, new prefamina (introductions to the scriptures) and other working aids in the new series for the divine service.

Since the Advent season of 1987, the LKN has been issuing a working aid for church services - after the publication of the EGb as a working aid for the Protestant church service book. Design aid for the Sundays and feast days of the church year . This is where the principles developed by the LKN in cooperation with other bodies for the church's Sunday and public holiday worship service are put into practice. Worship and sermon as a concerted action, as unity and diversity at the same time, as the interaction of offices and gifts in listening, aligning and considering the biblical message “with heart, mouth and hands”. “Worship as an act of the community” has meanwhile also been understood as the participation of the community, for example through the office of lecturer or the participation of community groups. The perspective in preparing for sermons and services has changed: For centuries, the beginning was the sermon. At most, the preachers were at an advanced stage of elaboration ready to share a sermon song with those responsible for congregational singing. After the sermon “stood”, a “liturgical framework” was envisaged - with a more or less strong connection to an order of worship. In the new perspective, however, the sermon grows out of an overall concept of worship. One could speak of “integral preparation for the divine service”, namely in the four steps of these working aids: After considering the location in the church and calendar year, “offers of the liturgy” and “statements of divine service” are examined, then “proposals for the organization of the divine service” are compiled .

The “Liederkompass for the Sundays and Feasts of the Church Year”, which the Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony presented for the first time in December 2014, is the most recent work project. It would like to offer an orientation for those who prepare church services - both with regard to the different parts of the worship service, topics, accentuations and target groups, as well as to the possibilities beyond the Evangelical hymnal. Church services with children and confirmands are just as important as the “Church services from month to month”. For every Sunday and feast day, suggestions are made for the development of the initial liturgy, for every text of the pericopes I-VI and baptism, communion and blessing - primarily from the EC with the regional section Lower Saxony / Bremen, the "LebensWeisen" and the " Song book for church with children ”. In addition to other regional parts, three new hymn books have been taken into account - from Bavaria, Berlin-Brandenburg and from the Protestant student community. The second, completely revised edition takes into account the results of the 2018 pericope revision and three other song collections.

Liturgical work in Lower Saxony - regionally and nationally

No more central annual meetings took place after 2007. They have been replaced by regional “Liturgical Practice Days” (new German spoken: “Worship Workshops”), which have been held since the 1990s, but have now become more and more important. Since the beginning of the conference, efforts have been made to form regional working groups with a corresponding practical relevance. For a long time with little success. (Notable exceptions have recently been the regional group in the Braunschweig regional church and in Osnabrück.) However, the conditions for this have apparently improved in the meantime. One no longer likes to be so long and so far away from church and home. And you get to the point faster.

The beginnings of the conference are reviving in another way: as a reconsideration of an older, wider concept of the area “Lower Saxony”, which ethnically and culturally includes the entire north-west German area including Mecklenburg. That's how it started: Founding in Bremen, first chairman in Hamburg, first conferences in Lübeck and Schwerin! And hadn't the conference made another foray into the North Elbe Church, to Hamburg, as early as 1979? At that time there was a meeting at the Catholic Academy in Hamburg and celebrated with the conference member, senior pastor Hans Jürgen Quest, a “festival service” in the Michel with around 1700 participants. In the meantime, the LKN has had a number of members from North Elbe and Bremen for a long time. In practical terms, however, since it was re-established in 1957, it has only worked almost exclusively within the boundaries of today's state of Lower Saxony. And it had its center in Hanover.

The LKN and the Ev.-luth. Regional Church of Hanover

The close connection to Hanover can already be seen in the chairmen and managing directors on the board of the conference since 1957:

Chairperson
  • Friedrich Frerichs (1957–1969), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Walter Lührs (1969–1977), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Hans Jürgen Kalberlah (1977–1988), Braunschweigische Landeskirche
  • Joachim Stalmann (1988–2003), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Ute Schneider-Smietana (2003–2007), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Hans-Günther Waubke (2007–2019), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Christian Windhorst (since 2019), Hannoversche Landeskirche
executive Director
  • Walter Lührs (1957–1969), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Joachim Stalmann (1969–1988), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Werner Reich (1988–2005), Hannoversche Landeskirche
  • Christoph Herbold (since 2005), Hannoversche Landeskirche

Only two chairmen came from another regional church, none of the managing directors.

From 1972 to 2003, the LKN's office was located in the office for church services and church music, which was newly founded in 1972, next to the Hanoverian market church (today Hanns-Lilje-Haus ). Joachim Stalmann worked there from the beginning to 1996 (the year of his retirement) and Werner Reich from 1985 to 2003 (when he returned to a parish office). The secretariat and the other facilities of the house were at their disposal. The in-house magazine “For the Divine Service” was published jointly by the office and liturgical conference of Lower Saxony until 2003. At that time, the LKN was, so to speak, a transmission belt to other churches in Lower Saxony. They received a large number of "For the Divine Service" and were able to invite the speakers from the office for presentations, seminars, etc. via the conference. Reich and Stalmann worked z. B. also with the vicar training in Braunschweig and Schaumburg-Lippe , visited provost convents in Braunschweig and district convents in Oldenburg. In northern Elbe, as well as in Altmark, Brandenburg and Saxony , which are also part of the Lower Saxony region , the two board members at the workplace were asked to participate in training or convention work. Of the twenty-two annual meetings mentioned above, nine took place outside the regional church of Hanover. The Hanoverian office was incorporated into the new center for worship and church music in the Michaeliskloster Hildesheim in 2004 .

literature

  • Thomas Rheindorf: Liturgy and Church Politics. The Liturgical Working Group from 1941 to 1944. Evang. Verl.-Anstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-374-02526-8
  • Thomas Rheindorf: The Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony from its beginnings 1925 to 1942 , Liturgy and Culture, 7th year 1-2016, Hanover 2016, pp. 21–44, ISSN 2190-1600
  • Jochen Cornelius-Bundschuh: Liturgy between tradition and renewal. Problems of Protestant liturgical science in the first half of the 20th century, presented in the work of Paul Graff, Göttingen 1991
  • Jochen Cornelius-Bundschuh: Liturgical formation between tradition and renewal. , Liturgy and Culture, 7th year 1-2016, Hannover 2016, pp. 80–88, ISSN 2190-1600
  • Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony: Song compass for the Sundays and public holidays of the church year , Hanover 2014
  • Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony: Liederkompass for the Sundays and Holidays of the Church Year , Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-374-05593-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Graff: The prerequisites for a liturgical action of the community. Lecture given on May 27, 1926 at the 1st session of the Liturgical Conference of Lower Saxony . In: Monthly for worship and church art (MGkK), vol. 32, Göttingen 1927, quotation p. 53.
  2. ↑ Erich Hoyer: The liturgical need of the present and its overcoming , Göttingen 1934, quotation p. 3.
  3. ↑ Erich Hoyer: The liturgical seminar in Isenhagen . In: Hamburgische Kirchenzeitung, year 1936, issue 2, p. 26.
  4. ↑ Christhard Mahrenholz: Luther and Church Music , Kassel 1937
  5. ↑ Isenhagen church book. Church slip for the hand of the congregation . Edited on behalf of the regional bishop of Hanover, Dept. D. Marahrens by Erich Hoyer, Christhard Mahrenholz, Wilhelm Thomas, Kassel 1936ff
  6. ^ The church book for the community , Kassel 1940
  7. ^ Thomas Rheindorf: Liturgy and Church Policy. The Liturgical Working Group from 1941 to 1944 . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-374-02526-8 .
  8. ↑ Supplementary volume to the Evangelical Worship Book. Agende for the Union of Evangelical Churches in the EKD and for the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany . Evangelical Main Biblical Society and von Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7461-0158-1 , pp. 525f.

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