New Apostolic Church South Germany
| New Apostolic Church South Germany | |
|---|---|
| Church President | District Apostle Michael Ehrich |
| other apostles |
|
| founded | 1896 |
| Members | 109,000 (January 1, 2017) |
| Communities | 670 (January 1, 2017) |
| address |
New Apostolic Church |
| Website | |
The New Apostolic Church of Southern Germany is an administrative district of the New Apostolic Church , which includes most of Bavaria (excluding the Aschaffenburg area, which belongs to the New Apostolic Church of Hesse / Rhineland-Palatinate / Saarland ) and Baden-Württemberg as well as smaller parts of Hesse (in the Bergstrasse district ). The New Apostolic District Church in Southern Germany is the second largest District Church in Germany in terms of members, after the District Church of Western Germany, which was newly founded in 2017 (includes North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland). On April 23, 2006, District Apostle Klaus Saur was retired and Apostle Michael Ehrich was ordained as District Apostle and Church President.
District Church
history
At the beginning of the 19th century devout Christians , supporters of a charismatic revival movement from various denominations appeared in England , Scotland and Germany , in southern Germany mainly around the Donaumoos in Bavaria , the area around Karlshuld .
From them emerged in the 1850s, through the first Holy Sealing on August 16, 1856 in Ulm by Apostle Henry Drummond, the Catholic-Apostolic congregations . Around 1863, almost all Catholic Apostolic members converted to its split, the New Apostolic Church (then still General Christian Apostolic Mission ). Finally, on June 3, 1888, the first apostle for the southern German area, Georg Gustav Adolf Ruff, was called. It was not until May 1896 that the first southern German community was founded in Schopfheim in Baden . The first municipality in Württemberg was founded in October 1896 in Tailfingen . By the end of 1897, around twelve more parishes had come into being.
On March 29, 1921, the New Apostolic Church in the Republic of Baden received corporate rights . On July 28, 1924, two new District Apostles, Karl Hartmann and Karl Gutbrod, were ordained. While Hartmann took over the areas of South Hesse, Baden and the Bavarian Palatinate, Gutbrod was entrusted with the Heilbronn area . On January 1, 1925, Karl Hartmann became regional chairman in Baden, before all Baden municipalities had become legal entities. Exactly one year later, on January 1, 1926, the Heilbronn area becomes an independent church administration district under the name: New Apostolic Congregation eV, based in Heilbronn . This consisted of 212 parishes and twelve church districts in Württemberg and Bavaria (exceptions there: Coburg and Hof ).
During the National Socialist regime and the Second World War , numerous New Apostolic congregations were also closed in southern Germany. Only unconditional submission through racist remarks in church magazines, Hitler greetings after the services and the forced entry of New Apostolic clergy to the NSDAP made the National Socialists rethink the "error", which probably saved the church itself from total closure and ban.
On November 27, 1938, Georg Schall was ordained District Apostle for around 400 congregations and 36,000 New Apostolic Christians in Württemberg and Bavaria. About ten years later, on July 28, 1948, the New Apostolic Congregation eV, based in Heilbronn , d. H. North Württemberg, corporate rights .
From January 1, 1949, the Apostle District Heilbronn was renamed Apostle District Stuttgart; the administrative area largely corresponded to the national borders. On February 25, 1950, the New Apostolic Church also received corporate rights in Bavaria, and on April 5 of this year also southern Württemberg and Hohenzollern . On September 10, 1950, Friedrich Hahn was ordained District Apostle for the Baden area. On January 1, 1953, District Apostle Eugen Startz was given responsibility for all Bavarian congregations. Also in 1954, on February 21st, a District Apostle was ordained: From then on, Gotthilf Volz was to be the deputy of District Apostle Schall and thus took over the congregations in Württemberg and Hohenzollern.
On January 18, 1965, both were retired and the Wuerttemberg congregations were entrusted to the Swiss District Apostle and later Chief Apostle Fahrtisen. There was also a change in Baden on New Year's Eve 1966, when District Apostle Friedrich Hahn was retired and Willi Wintermantel was ordained as the new District Apostle. When the District Apostle of Switzerland and Württemberg, Ernst Fahrtisen, was finally ordained Chief Apostle, Karl Kühnle was ordained as District Apostle in Württemberg on May 4th . Change also on April 19, 1981: Willi Wintermantel retired and District Apostle Klaus Saur was his successor .
Finally, on January 1, 1997, the district churches of Baden and Württemberg merged to form the Baden-Württemberg area; since January 1, 2002, the district churches of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria have been called the District Church of Southern Germany.
Germany
With around 106,000 members, the District Church of Southern Germany is the second largest of the New Apostolic Church in Germany.
It is a corporation under public law and therefore has its own constitution.
The administration in Stuttgart has around 60 permanent employees.
| Apostles area | Districts | Members | Communities | apostle | bishop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freiburg / Tübingen | 8th | 23,500 | 107 | Martin Schnaufer | Urs Heiniger |
| Heilbronn / Nuremberg | 7th | 23,200 | 95 | Manfred Schönenborn | Martin Rheinberger |
| Karlsruhe | 8th | 15,600 | 97 | Herbert Bansbach | Jörg Vester |
| Stuttgart | 10 | 24,000 | 123 | Jürgen Loy | Bernd Bornhäusser |
| Ulm | 7th | 19,000 | 99 | Hans-Jürgen Bauer | Jürgen Gründemann |
| Munich | 7th | 12,300 | 79 | Andreas Mathias Sargant | Paul Hepp |
Mission areas
The New Apostolic Church of Southern Germany also supports administrative and pastoral work in other countries of the world, each of which is assigned to a specific apostle area and is thus supported by a southern German apostle. A total of 37 Apostles are active in the various mission countries.
These are the following 30 countries in Southeast Europe, Africa and the Persian Gulf:
| country | Members (2005) | Missionary activity since |
|---|---|---|
| Equatorial Guinea | 11,400 | 1987 |
| Ethiopia , Eritrea , Djibouti , Somalia | 1,100 | 1988 |
| Benin | 25,500 | 2001 |
| Ivory Coast | 24,200 | 2001 |
| Gabon | 4,400 | 1999 |
| Ghana | 562,000 | 1984 |
| Guinea | 48,600 | 1987 |
| Cameroon | 14,000 | 1990 |
| Liberia | k. A. | 1995 |
| Nigeria | 355,000 | 1985 |
| Sierra Leone | 105,000 | 1985 |
| Togo | 44,000 | 2001 |
| Gulf States | 400 | 1991 |
| Balkan countries | 800 | 1991 |
Special facilities
Chamber Choir Stuttgart
The choir was founded by Hermann Ober, then head of the music department of the publishing house Fr. Bischoff, Frankfurt, in March 1960. Until the 1980s, it was the sole responsibility of the choir to record songs and choral works from song collections of the New Apostolic Church on sound carriers , hence the original name of the record choir. The first recording took place in 1961 in what was then the SDR recording studio Villa Berg. The musical director was Wilfried Orlikowsky from Tübingen for 28 years.
"Human active"
"Human aktiv" (until the end of 2017 "Missionswerk") is the aid organization of the New Apostolic Church in Southern Germany founded in 1993. The registered association with headquarters in Stuttgart endeavors to provide humanitarian aid to those who are in need. It exclusively and directly pursues charitable purposes at home and abroad and is largely financed by donations and grants. Regardless of skin color, religion, origin, gender and nation, the relief organization wants to help alleviate hardship and misery in the form of hunger, poverty, disease and other forms of human suffering and enable everyone to live in dignity. This is usually done through the funding of projects and facilities on site and in all parts of the world that are not adequately financed by other funding agencies. Assistance mainly extends to the areas of health and welfare, education and training, youth and elderly assistance as well as assistance for the persecuted and disaster victims. Here, special attention is paid to "helping people to help themselves" in order to achieve a lasting improvement in conditions.
Academy of the New Apostolic Church in Southern Germany
The Academy of the New Apostolic Church in Southern Germany offers basic and advanced training opportunities for officials and officials (youth workers, organists, conductors, teachers for church teaching) of the district church. The offer is based on one of 5 departments. The Academy, founded in 2009, offers a platform for learning and exchanging ideas in the areas of fundamentals for ministers, pastoral care practice, religious education, theology and music. Clergy and functionaries, all lay people, can exchange experiences and receive impulses here, acquire knowledge and skills that can also contribute to their personal development.
literature
- 25 years District Apostle Klaus Saur. Anniversary edition. NAK Southern Germany, 2006.
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ New Apostolic Church South Germany - Structure. Retrieved April 25, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h New Apostolic Church South Germany: History: From the chronicle of the New Apostolic Church in South Germany.
- ↑ Figures, data, facts from Germany. New Apostolic Church International, January 1, 2014, accessed on September 7, 2015 .
- ^ New Apostolic Church South Germany: Constitution
- ^ 25 years District Apostle Saur. Pp. 124-125
- ^ 25 years District Apostle Saur. Pp. 132-157.
- ^ Mission work: tasks and goals. Retrieved January 9, 2018 .
- ↑ nak-sued.de: Academy of the New Apostolic Church of Southern Germany. Retrieved January 9, 2018 .
