The president of the Bund Freier evangelischer Gemeinden (FeG), Henrik Otto, has used the closing instalment of a three-part series in the federation's magazine Christsein Heute to argue that local congregations must be "spaces of trust" — and to restate the federation's zero-tolerance position on the abuse of power. The series is an extract from his book Was die Welt am meisten braucht (What the World Needs Most), offered to readers as a preview of the book's argument.
Otto writes as a pastor who grew up in a Free Evangelical congregation and later became its pastor and then the federation's president, though he came to faith in a Brethren assembly — a background he credits to the quality of its youth work. That personal history frames his third and final article, in which he acknowledges that congregations also have weaknesses and even shadow sides, and that difficult or wounding encounters occur within them. People misuse the responsibility and power entrusted to them, he writes — spiritually, emotionally or physically — and on this point there can be no compromise: "Null Toleranz!" He points to the many staff and volunteers who work to make congregations safe, especially for children, and singles out the federation's Initiative zum Schutz vor Gewalt und Missbrauch (Initiative for Protection against Violence and Abuse) as one of the most important things the Bund FeG has to offer its congregations.
Beyond the question of safeguarding, Otto asks what healthy and living congregations might look like in the twenty-first century. His answer is deliberately plural: after everything he can observe, there is no single successful model of congregation, because congregations differ greatly in their history, resources, forms of expression and gifts — and the word "successful" itself deserves scrutiny. The coronavirus pandemic, he suggests, taught churches to reconsider their success stories, and to ask what counts as success in the eyes of the heavenly Father, "who gives as much to the last as to the first".
What congregations share, he argues, is a kind of basic configuration: components without which a congregation would not be Christian at all, however much their cultural expressions vary. The ground and cause of every Christian congregation, he writes, is the gospel of Jesus Christ — good news that is "a power of God that saves all who believe" (Romans 1:16) and that both transforms lives and forms the community around them. The article closes the serialisation, which ran across three issues of the federation's magazine.
(Originally published in German. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Bund Freier evangelischer Gemeinden (FeG Germany) / Christsein Heute — feg.de/praeses-vertrauen_3/
