They all made it clear: it was a special place whose history is coming to an end after just 13 years. With a church service, reception and several workshops on the future of intercultural theological degree programmes, "the FIT community was celebrated for the last time", as Professor Katharina Kleine-Vennekate described the farewell party on the grounds on Hermannsburger Missionsstraße.

Sadness, gratitude for the past and, despite everything, an optimistic view of the future went hand in hand. Around 140 people attended the event: Former students and teaching staff, representatives of the regional churches in Lower Saxony, employees of the Ev.-luth Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM), which was responsible for the FIT, the mayor of Südheide, Katharina Ebeling, as well as theologians who came and went here when the building was still used as a "missionary seminary" for training missionaries.

In his speech, the founding rector of the FIT, Prof. Dr Dr Frieder Ludwig, retraced the path that led to the founding of the FIT in October 2012, which was significantly shaped by the then Director of the ELM, Martina Helmer-Pham Xuan, and the then Bishop of Hanover, Margot Käßmann. In 2005, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover recommended the closure of the former missionary seminary in "File 98". The background to this was social and financial, but also content-related. The sending of missionaries was called into question. Instead, in the following years - also against the backdrop of transnational migration movements - study programmes were developed to enable young people from all over the world to take on diaconal, educational or academic tasks. Students from 35 African, Asian, European and South American countries have successfully taken up this challenge over the past 13 years.

One of them is Pastor Prince Ossai Okeke, who also took to the microphone at the reception. Today, he is a consultant for international churches in the Northern Church and Chairman of the African Christian Council Hamburg e.V.. He remembered the university of applied sciences as a "home where we could be ourselves." And with a wink at the customs of African congregations: "We could sing and pray as loud as we wanted". His final appeal was: "Continue the partner work with the global churches. The FIT does not die, it lives on in you." Prof Dr em. Wilhelm Richebächer, who also took a look at the past and future, had put it in similar terms shortly beforehand. "The FIT is a treasure that should have been nurtured further. I can only appeal to keep the doors to the training centres in the Global South open."

What has characterised life and learning at the FIT was articulated again and again on this day in a variety of ways: Through a collection of quotes from former students pinned to the walls in the building, through a contribution from Professor Dr Gabriele Beckmann, but also through the statements made by Peace Mutoka and Gionathan Lo Mascolo during the church service. "The FIT was more than an institution. We lived here as an intercultural family," said the pastor and former student from Tanzania. "The FIT was ahead of its time. God used this place to give us each other. We lived intercultural theology here," said Lo Mascolo. He also emphasised that "the joy that arises when God gives people community carries us through the farewell and beyond."

The holder of the Chair of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, Prof. Dr Ulrike Schröder, travelled from the University of Rostock to honour FIT's achievements in research. By way of example, she mentioned projects of the German Research Foundation (DFG), conferences, participation in conferences, involvement in habilitation and doctoral procedures and, last but not least, the Bachelor's and Master's theses, in which "important and new questions" were asked.

Oberlandeskirchenrat Dirk Stelter from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, who is also Chairman of the ELM's Executive Committee, emphasised that the decision to close the FIT had not been made for reasons of content, but for economic reasons. "There were many financing models that were explored but could not be applied." The regional churches were therefore all the more pleased that the intercultural theology degree programmes could be offered in Göttingen and guaranteed them for the next ten years.

This continuation in Göttingen was symbolised by a handover ceremony. The most recent Rector of the FIT, Prof Dr Andreas Kunz-Lübcke, handed over one of five lamps to Prof Dr Jan Hermelink, who holds the Chair of Practical Theology/Pastoral Theology at the University of Göttingen. These five lamps, a gift from a student from Pakistan, symbolise - depending on the interpretation - the five wise virgins from the Gospel or the five religious scriptures of the world religions. "We promise that we will not only look after the degree programmes, but also develop them further in a direction that has already been established in Hermannsburg," says Prof. Hermelink.