Parish connection
Parish connection in the Evangelical Church describes a special form of pastoral care in which a pastor is responsible for several parishes .
In earlier centuries it was already common practice that a smaller parish, which could not have carried out a pastoral position on its own, was provided for by the pastor of a larger parish. In these cases, one usually spoke of subsidiary communities . Many of these constructs are now transformed into so-called parish connections. The individual communities are legally completely autonomous and independent of one another, so there are no hierarchies among the communities. The pastor is considered to be the pastor of each parish involved. The parish election is to be carried out jointly by the presbyteries .
There are some special provisions for parishes associated with parish offices. In the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , for example, the church order stipulates that each parish has to send as many “ lay people ” to the district synod as it has pastoral posts, with the result that in parishes associated with parish offices, each individual parish sends at least one member, which means the smaller parishes are often given a high weight in the synod. If a married couple shares a pastor's office, the special regulation applies that only one of the two is a full member of the presbytery, the other only takes part in the meetings in an advisory capacity, whereby this applies to all associated congregations; it is therefore not possible for one of the spouses to be a “full member” in one presbytery and the other in a different presbytery. There are legal loopholes in the (extremely rare) cases in which the parish office connection is established through more than one parish office. Here, for example, it is not clearly regulated how many synodal delegates each participating parish has to send.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Church regulations of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland of January 10, 2003, last amended by Church Law of January 10, 2008.