A guest contribution by Pastor Johannes Frey (Sachsenheim, Germany). https://keinanderesevangelium.de/was/aktuell.php?id=143

For some time now, the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) has been pursuing a top-down church reform, citing declining membership and dwindling financial resources, which can be characterized by the words: centralization – hierarchization – professionalization.

Since the New Testament, the Christian church has been built up from the local community, in which people are visibly and tangibly connected with Christ and with one another as members of the body of Christ through God’s word and sacrament, knowing and loving one another, standing up for one another, bearing witness to Christ together, and bearing his love for the people among whom they live.

This is not just any form chosen from countless possibilities: this community is the only possible form of the Church, namely, the form that arises from the very essence of the Church. The Christian Church exists only as a concrete, real, spiritual-bodily local community – or as an idea, a fiction, and therefore not truly real.

But in the view of today’s leading church reformers, this original, biblical form of church has become obsolete. The ‘church’ of the new reformers is a centrally controlled, top-down structured and governed ‘corporation church’ that opens or closes congregations like branches of Aldi or Netto according to the criteria of efficiency and profitability. Local congregations are to be absorbed into ever larger, ever more unwieldy, and ever more anonymous mega-congregations of tens of thousands of members, which can only be led and managed by ‘professionals’. Decisions about finances, buildings, and personnel are to be wrested from the elected, volunteer representatives of the congregation and placed in the hands of anonymous, detached bodies that have no connection whatsoever to the people affected. Worship services, senior citizens’ groups, and youth group meetings would no longer take place in our village, but in a location that is hardly accessible to many. My mother’s funeral would no longer be conducted by the familiar pastor who has ministered to her for years, but by a randomly available, unknown representative of the ‘competence team’ responsible for the region.

But that would not be the church of the future, but rather the end of a church founded by the apostles, renewed by the reformers, and which, over two thousand years, spread throughout the world as a communion of independent local congregations united in faith. This development is presented by its proponents as inevitable. But this is not the case! For the Lord of the Church has guaranteed the continued existence of his congregation until the end of time. What is absolutely inevitable, however, is resistance to the deformation of the church and the destruction of its congregational foundation. Only those who, first, trust in this promise and, second, actively build upon it, will experience the fulfillment of the divine guarantee of the church’s continued existence. Three movements have joined forces to encourage and, wherever possible, support this trust in God’s promise and this building of local congregations upon this promise: the Confessional Movement “No Other Gospel” (Bekenntnisbewegung), the Alliance for Church Support (Gemeindehilfsbund), and Crossbearer. Together we invite all who are ready to fight for the survival of their local church: individual members, pastors, church councils, staff, house groups. And even if there are only a few in a particular place at first, even if the fight may seem hopeless at first: when all efforts to preserve the local churches come together, we can support, inspire, and protect one another. And then much will become possible that now seems impossible. For ‘all things are possible for the one who believes’ (Mark 9:23).

We ask congregations as well as congregational initiatives that have successfully implemented strategies to stay together as a community to present their concepts so that we can make them accessible to as many fellow campaigners as possible  – these may serve as an example and an encouragement to others. Anyone who would like to participate in the common struggle for their local congregation or who is seeking support for their own congregation should contact the representatives of the three communities they know or Pastor Johannes Frey at vorsitz@bekenntnisbewegung.de or subscribe to this newsletter to receive updates.