175 Years of Change, but God's Mission Remains!
When the first missionaries and colonists set sail for Ethiopia on behalf of the Hermannsburg Mission in 1853, the vision of its founder, Pastor Ludwig Harms, came to fruition. Today, the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM) no longer has a ship. But it is still committed to God's missionary mandate. How has the understanding of mission developed? This question will be explored here.
In the 19th century, there was a strong awakening in the church to interpret the Gospel not only from the perspective of the Enlightenment, but also to reconnect it with the lives of believers. In a memorandum dated 28 July 1849, Pastor Ludwig Harms set out how he envisioned mission. He modelled it on the Anglo-Saxon missionaries who had once proselytised the Germanic tribes. They introduced Christianity through their exemplary work and founded communities."[1] The settlements of the Hermannsburg missionaries, craftsmen and farmers were also intended to demonstrate what a Christian life was all about and invite imitation.
It can be assumed that the Hermannsburg seminarians carried out their ministry in an authoritarian and patriarchal manner. This is because Pastor Ludwig Harms and, after him, the leading men of the missionary organisation acted with strong personal authority and, from today's perspective, patriarchal power in the first decades.
At the same time, the main actors in the mission were always the indigenous people, writes Fidon Mwombeki[2]: "They taught the missionaries the language, they showed them what to do, they accompanied them, they gave them food and land to build churches, and they built the churches with their own hands,
After the beginnings in the 19th century, the first World Missionary Conference was convened in Edinburgh in 1910. The conference discussed the evangelisation of the world. Africa and Latin America were not represented. The focus was from the North to the global South. Structurally, the path of the mission conferences ultimately led to the Conference on World Mission and Evangelisation in 2000.
Today, the churches of the global South are indispensable and raise their voices in the consultations. The plan for the pure spread of the Gospel, as formulated in Edinburgh in 1910, has expanded considerably through the discussions and theological reflections, but above all through the greater influence of the churches from the Global South. Since the World Mission Conference in Willingen in 1952, the idea of missio Dei has become established. God is the subject of mission, which is understood as a holistic mission and must be orientated in its actions towards the named needs of the other person. It is carreid out in the spirit of Jesus, who asks: "What do you want me to do for you?" (Luke 18.41)
During the period of National Socialism from 1933 onwards, the missionary organisation sought a position that would somehow make it possible to continue its work without being too closely associated with the party or the German Christians. The position on the racial laws was not clear. Gunther Schendel states: "A decisive point of intersection is thinking in the categories of difference: just as National Socialism made a strict distinction between races and peoples, the Hermannsburg missionary representatives also emphasised the distinctiveness of peoples and races and cemented this by referring to their character as a 'gift from God' or 'God's order of creation'. Although this emphasis on distinctiveness was intended to protect the culture and language of the peoples concerned, there is also the danger that emphasising difference becomes an endorsement of political inequality."[3]
In the 1960s and 1970s, the popular mission, i.e. missionary proclamation and strengthening of the congregations, was given high priority in a return to the beginnings and as a reaction to society. In 2005, the regional church of Hanover decided to reorganise and consolidate this work of the "Gemeindedienst" into the missionary services of the Haus kirchlicher Dienste (HKD) and to close the missionary seminary.
The mission now worked with the slogan "Partner in Mission". The question of what kind of cooperation the partner churches wanted with the ELM became important. The need to send personnel changed because the churches of the South, which had become independent after the Second World War, had long since trained and deployed their own personnel. To this day, the ELM finances positions for local staff in the churches of the South through its project funding.
Since 2012, partner church consultations have been held every two to three years. The ELM's international partners meet with representatives from the regional churches of Hanover, Schaumburg-Lippe and Braunschweig. Topics prepared by an international team are discussed together and agreements are made for further cooperation.
In this way, the work has changed from the idea of "taking the gospel to the Gentiles", as it was formulated in the 19th century, to the idea of Christians from all over the world accompanying each other on the way to being church, proclaiming the message of the Gospel in the respective contexts, giving it shape in word and deed and thus inviting people to faith.
[1] Grüßet alle meine Kinder, ed. Ernst-August Lüdemann, Hermannsburg 1998 in Quellen und Beiträge zur Geschichte der Hermannsburger Mission und des Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony Vol. VI, p. 33f
[2] Fidon Mwumbeki, Begegnung auf Augenhöhe? In Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Theologie (ZMiss) 2010, 72-85, 75 quoted from Anton Knuth, Unterdrückt oder befreit? In Mission, Colonialism, Partnership, Theologische Impulse der Missionsakademie 20, Hamburg 2022, p. 75 (F. Mwombeki was General Secretary of the United Evangelical Mission (VEW) in Wuppertal from 2006 - 2016.
[3] G. Schendel, Die Missionsanstalt Hermannsburg in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, in: Die Hermannsburger und das "Dritte Reich", op. cit. S. 83
