1 - 2000

Mission in Germany

Editorial

Mission has again become an important concern in Germany’s churches. Following the time of great commitment to missions in our country and other parts of the world in the 19th and early 20th century, many local churches grew silent about this responsibility. World missions particularly became an affair for mission agencies and for small missionary groups in congregations. Mission in our home in Germany was rarely discussed. The term "Home Mission" had largely disappeared from the language of the church.

To many people’s surprise, this is now beginning to change. The Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany and those of several regional protestant churches have made mission the subject of meetings, and have shown particular interest in missions here at home. Many Christians in Germany have noticed, not without envy, that mission is taken for granted as an expression of faith by the churches in countries of the South, and that many local congregations there are growing rapidly.

In Germany, on the contrary, membership in the large churches is declining, and in the East of Germany only a minority of people are church members. This has repercussions for the churches’ power to influence the society, and it has consequences for the churches themselves. Particularly the declining income of the churches has an effect. But the new interest in missions is not limited to the churches’ need to bring in more members, important as that is.

Mission has also and perhaps especially become a concern, because many committed church members have seen the need for the message of the Gospel to be heard. The society is changing radically in many areas, and there is great uncertainty about where these changes are, and should be, taking us. Mission is thus a responsibility in the midst of a pluralistic and largely secular world, in which many people are looking for meaning and direction, a world in which all societies must rediscover that which holds them together and gives them an ethical foundation.

For such a mission to be successful in Germany, the churches have many things to accomplish. They must bring the truths of their faith into a stronger relation than heretofore with the complex reality of the 21st century, so that they can give answers to the questions which preoccupy people today. And they have to do this in a language which the people understand. Their task can be made easier if they listen to and learn from the ecumenical community world-wide. Ecumenical dialogue is thus indispensable if mission in Germany is to become more than just a slogan.