Mission Festival 2022: "And there is magic in every beginning".

After two years of abstinence due to the pandemic, it may have seemed like a new beginning for many guests of this year's Hermannsburg Mission Festival to be able to face brothers and sisters in faith from Germany and abroad again.

With a scaled-down program, but still in a festive mood, the approximately 200 guests celebrated "their" mission festival of encounter and mutual exchange under the oaks of the campus of the University of Applied Sciences for Intercultural Theology in the best summer weather. 

"What a celebration," said Pastor Indra Grasekamp at the opening service, "a celebration of faith!" "But what," said the speaker on international spirituality, "if we are invited to a celebration of faith in everyday life?" With this, she mentally took up the motto of the Mission Festival "Justice Moves..." and the invitation "to all of us" to take faith seriously and live it in everyday life. "We need to be a good example and work for justice," Grasekamp said, leading into the sermon by Pastor Lilana Kaspar, executive director of the Community of Lutheran Churches in Southern Africa (LUCSA) on the biblical story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). In a passionate sermon, she reminded the congregation that God expects impartial compassion for those in need. She called for overcoming the tendency of every human being not to want to see hardship and to become agents of change.

How this can be realized was the topic of various working groups following the service, which also included the results and discussions during the ELM International Partner Church Consultation. For one week, leaders from the ELM partner churches discussed different aspects of the theme "Justice". For Rev. Dr. Jonas Yigezu, president of the Ethiopian partner church Mekane Jesus, an "eye opener" on the topic of gender justice, for example, which is not just about women and men, but that the church must be open to all genders. Bishop Dr. Joseph Bvumbwe from Malawi also emphasized that women in particular formed the majority in the church and that in the future those who made up the majority should lead the church: Women and also the youth. And it was for them that Tobias .... from Brazil spoke, who, along with Eva Banda from Malawi, participated in the PKK as the youth representative of his church. "My dream is that women no longer have to fight for the rights they deserve." In this, men should support them.

Church must be inclusive for all people, affirmed also Senior Church Councilor Dirk Stelter in the working group on gender justice moderated by Thomas Wojciechowski and Gabriele De Bona, Gender International Officer. The latter pointed out with a wink that he was again surrounded only by men.

Further working groups then dealt with other justice topics such as climate justice and questions about a way to a just peace.

Thus the celebration, which was musically accompanied by the united Hermannsburg trombone choirs and the church musician Eike Formella from Unterluess, was in good tradition a meeting for common giving and singing, but also for exchange about the challenges for the churches in view of existential questions for the future. Justice moves - for some, this may not only be an eye-opener, but a beginning with an inherent magic.