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Friday, June 17, 2005
IMMIGRANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY: REVERSE MISSION IS WORKING
African and Asian Christians Take the Gospel to Secularized Europe
By Wolfgang Polzer
Special to ASSIST News Service
BERLIN (ANS) -- Reverse mission ? Christians from traditional African and Asian mission fields evangelizing a secularized Europe ? is already under way. There are, for instance, at least 1,100 foreign language Protestant churches with 80,000 members in Germany, according to Rev Claudia Waehrisch-Oblau of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland.
She coordinates the program ?Cooperation between German and Immigrant Churches? of the United Evangelical Mission (UEM). Local Protestant immigrant churches average between 50 and 70 members, while some have several hundred. The Orthodox and Catholic immigrant church population is likely to exceed 1.5 million, according to Waehrisch-Oblau.
Writing in the Zeitschrift fuer Mission (Mission J ournal) she outlines some of the causes for the growth of the immigrant Christian community. In the eighties and nineties large numbers of refugees came to Germany from Sri Lanka, West and Central Africa ? among them Christian, who established mostly Charismatic and Pentecostal churches.
UEM ? a mission partnership of churches from Germany, Africa and Asia ? lists 407 Protestant migrant congregations in Germany. 86 percent of the 200 African churches practice a Charismatic or Pentecostal style of worship. 38 percent of the 114 Asian churches fall into this category.
The established German churches are slow to recognize the potential of the immigrant churches, according to Waehrisch-Oblau. Their missionary attitude challenges the German churches. Only four percent of the Protestant church members and 12 percent of the Catholics worship regularly in Germany.
Waehrisch-Oblau is convinced that all German churches and para-church agencies should have immigrants in their leadership. Speaking at the Round Table for Evangelism in Berlin, June 13-14, she emphasized her conviction that German churches would benefit from the vibrant faith of the immigrants.
Rev Ulrich Parzany, chairman of the Round Table ? a follow-up organization of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization ? announced a structural reform. In future at least four of the 25 leading members will be foreigners.
| Wolfgang Polzer (55), is senior news editor of the Evangelical News Agency idea, Wetzlar (Germany), which he joined in 1981. His previous work included four years in the editorial department of the Salvation Army in Germany. In all, he has spent 27 years in Christian media. Wolfgang can be contacted by e-mail at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. |
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