Jetzt ist die Zeit! (Now is the Time!)

The 38th German Protestant Kirchentag, 2023

Just over a month ago, I was setting off for Nürnberg (Nuremberg), in Bavaria to join over 100,000 other people from Germany and beyond in 5 days of exploring what it might mean when we read “Now is the time!” in the Gospel of Mark (or, in some translations “the time is fulfilled” – Mark 1.15).

I continue to reflect on the – at times, overwhelming – experiences of those days.

With over 2000 events and many more informal “happenings”, it was incredibly hard to decide where to be at any one time. The first evening presented the most straightforward set of choices, with 2 opening services – one in simple German- in large public squares in the city centre, and each of those was attended by thousands of people.

However, before the Kirchentag officially began there was, as every time, an opening act of remembrance, recognising the origins of the Kirchentag as a place of reconciliation for divided churches in a country that was only just beginning to come to terms with its past.

The past is never far away in Germany and each day as I walked to the station in Erlangen where I was staying, just outside Nürnberg, I walked past – or over – these Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks: small memorials to people who had lived in that place.

The Abend der Begegnung (Evening of Encounters) was a chance for the churches in the region to welcome guests from near and far, with food, culinary delights and entertainment. The Bavarian bagpipe band, complete with kilts and sporrans, drew a lot of interest!

As I look through the programme again now, I’m conscious of how much I didn’t see or experience, but I’ll mention some of my highlights.

Firstly, the brilliant Bible study led by Revd Dr Susan Durber, a URC minister, and Europe President of the World Council of Churches. Exploring Luke 17.20-25, Susan helped a church full of people to think in new ways about the Kingdom of God.

By way of contrast, I joined a tour, with the theme of “Difficult Memorials”, visiting the former Nazi party rally grounds and congress hall. The Mayor of Nürnberg greeted us and talked about the problems of dealing with memorials that have such negative histories, and the dilemmas about preserving them or demolishing them. Linking with the Kirchentag theme, the question remains about when is the right time to decide.

Finally, I’d like to mention the superb concert by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra in the wonderful surroundings of the Meistersingerhalle (I do love long German words!). Musically it was wonderful, and the prolonged standing ovation was an expression of solidarity with this displaced orchestra, acting as ambassadors for a war-torn country.

As well as all these events, formal and informal, there was a huge Markt der Möglichkeiten (Marketplace of Possibilities), taking over some of the huge halls in the exhibition centre with stalls representing a huge range of organisations and companies, offering things including pilgrimages to the Holy Land, ethical banking, chaplaincy with the German police force, and opportunities to give to charities. Alongside this was the enormous Kirchentag booksho.

As the Kirchentag closed on Sunday morning, the many experiences and emotions of 5 days in Nürnberg were brought together within the theme of a sermon entitled “There is a time for everything”.

The next Kirchentag will take place in Hannover, from 30 April to 4 May, 2025. Now is the time to start thinking about whether you might like to be there!

You can watch a video that gives a good overall impression of the Kirchentag here

You can read a reflection from another British participant here

Sarah Lane Cawte is the Education Officer for the Free Churches Group and a member of the Kirchentag British Committee.

Photos by British Kirchentag committee website and Sarah Lane Cawte

Hello I'm

Hello

I’m Andrew Georgiou, a chaplain at His Majesty’s Young Offenders Institution in Wetherby, West Yorkshire and appointed back in March 2007. I took up my role after much prayer and consternation about a change in direction after many years in local Church ministry. What I had failed to realise when I applied and got the job, was that my role would be working with 15–18-year-old males!

It wasn’t too long before the Lord brought back to my memory a tearful prayer that I had made back in 1992 when I asked the Lord to help me reach young people, this was an area of ministry that I had always struggled in. That evening as I walked through the chapel, the tears came again but this time with thankfulness that God had answered my prayer, albeit in a way I had not expected.

Ministry in a YOI brings many challenges, in the last year or two, these challenges have increased by the addition of young ladies to our establishment. Self-harm was always an issue but, in some ways, has risen to a new level with the complexity that most of our young people have experienced in their lives. Whilst we have struggled to recover numbers in attendance at our Sunday worship post-covid, we are slowly rebuilding, and I regularly enjoy the support of some wonderful church volunteers who love to come and support me in the services I conduct and in the mid-week groups I run. The groups include Youth Alpha, Four Points Course and more. One of the courses I am a facilitator of is Time Out for Dads. This is a parenting course for young dads and is a Care for the Family Course. It is hard to understand at times how some of our young men can learn how to parent when they have not really had any positive parenting themselves, but it is a joy at the end of the course, when possible, to see them holding their babies in the end of course celebration.

I think that one of the most satisfying achievements I have made over the years, is the establishment of a charity of which I am the co-founder and a trustee. This amazing charity is called In2Out, a registered charity that aims to reduce reoffending among young people aged 15-21 through our mentoring and resettlement process. Our foundations are firmly based on the Christian Faith, and this is the motivation of most of our staff. You can look at our website for more information about this, https://www.in2out.org.uk/about-us .

I never imagined that God would answer my prayers by putting me inside a custodial setting, over the years many young people have made a response to the Gospel in our services and groups. As a chaplain, to my fellow chaplains, we can never be sure about the progress of the seed sown in our ministries in prisons, but we must never give up believing that one day the seed sown will produce good fruit in the lives of those we have the privilege and joy to minister too.

I love the opportunities which being a chaplain bring to me, I am able to serve as a small part of the Prisons Week Working Group, a facilitator on the Welcome Directory courses for those considering becoming Welcome Directory members and also as the Assemblies of God Lead for Prisons.

In the juvenile estate, no day is ever the same, you feel that you are working with an age group that are still open to change. Their broken lives can make you cry but their openness to soak up a message of hope for their future is a massive encouragement to press on.

First Flight Feathers: The best of worship live

Our writers are drawn from a variety of Christian traditions, and include a number who will be known to us through the Free Churches. Methodist hymnwriters, Andrew Pratt, and Marjorie Dobson were core members of the Worship Live editorial team and their vigorous, down to earth texts have become well-known and loved. Salvation Army officer, John Coutts' writing is full of gentle humour and compassion, while Sara Iles from the Congregational Federation leads us to the shelter of the Tree of Wisdom. There are some challenges too, with Graham Adams' take on 'Away in a manger': 'So dare we, then, follow? Dare we?', and Ruthie Thomas, the gospel singer/songwriter, wakes on Christmas morning, 'Crying for the children, crying for the world'.

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Life on the Breadline

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group 

I was glad to be sent a link to the report from Coventry University sharing new research called ‘Life on the Breadline: Christianity, poverty and politics in the 21st century city’ in the form of a report for Church leaders in the UK.

 The report is available to read and download here.

 This has been written for Church leaders across the UK to support Christian responses to poverty and to develop more effective anti-poverty responses. Importantly, it is about Christians responding to poverty experienced by people of any or no faith, not simply Christians working with Christians.

 Life on the Breadline was a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council that from 2018 analysed the nature, scope, and impact of Christian engagement with poverty in the UK in the context of austerity. The research team combined three theologians (two of whom are former colleagues of mine) – Dr Chris Shannahan (project lead), Professor Robert Beckford, and Professor Peter Scott – with Dr Stephanie Denning as a social scientist, and it has been the most in-depth empirical theological analysis to-date of poverty in the UK. The research included interviews with over 15 national church leaders in the UK, an online survey with over 100 regional church leaders, and six case studies with Christians responding in differing ways to poverty in London, Birmingham, and Manchester.

On the project web-site you can find the report and as well a toolkit for churches, an anti-poverty charter and an austerity time-line, a Lent course written for 2022 but adaptable for Lent 2024. In addition to these resources, there will be further resources published later this year for theological colleges, for students to engage with as part of their ministerial formation.

The Church, with its provision of foodbanks and warm spaces in cities, towns and villages, has become an increasingly important player in the societal response to the challenges of poverty and continued austerity. This social capital possessed by the Church might be harnessed further if the Church took its vocation as prophetic community more seriously. The report contains a powerful challenge to consider government austerity as not just a political process but also “a form of social sin requiring a deliberate, direct, political and theological response”. The relationship between the Church and politics is a contested one: the report suggests that “political theology is integral to the prophetic mandate of the Church”. We are invited to critical reflection “to confront and overturn unjust policy, which leads to or maintains impoverishment”.

The report writers and researchers suggest that the development of A Kairos document Against Poverty could help church leaders “to develop a holistic, systemic and intersectional theology of poverty in the way that the 1985 Kairos document confronted the injustice of the church’s response to South African Apartheid and enabled an articulation of a theological and practical commitment to liberation by the Church.

There is clearly a range of different approaches and modes of engagement adopted by a variety of churches and Christian NGOs. These are identified in the research as “caring”, “campaigning”, “advocacy”, “social enterprise” and “self help” approaches but these kinds of engagement are not closed and several approaches might be deployed by the same Church at the same time. Two case studies highlighted, Hodge Hill in Birmingham and Inspire in South Manchester highlighted a distinctive approach of “long-term incarnational solidarity and an asset-based community development approach”.

Participants in case studies and a number of Church leaders who were interviewed highlighted two examples of Jesus challenging poverty. In Mark 12:30-31 Jesus summarises the Commandments and called his hearers to, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength..” and “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Participants also identified Matthew 25: 31-46 as a key text where Jesus suggests that when people feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and clothe the naked they welcome, feed and clothe Christ himself.

How such approaches undo or address and transform social injustices in order that our caring does not leave systemic poverty untouched needs to be a challenge to us all. The report suggests that the Church, so far, may have left the causes of poverty unmet.

So, how might the Free Churches Group, with a wide and diverse membership reflect together on this challenge? Among us we have quite a range of responses to poverty, differing theologies of poverty and ecclesiologies.

How might our different voices, all of them, be heard in the public square?

How might we overcome our hesitancy to work together for proactive action for social change? Who might we work with collaboratively – wider networks such as the Joint Public Issues team, Church Action on Poverty, the Poverty Truth Network, the Trussell Trust or Citizens UK, the Breadline team?

I am grateful to the authors of the report for sending the link to the report my way. I continue to reflect on their invitation as to how God’s preferential option for the poor might be translated by local churches and by denominations into “contextualised responses to poverty that are characterised by an ethic of empowerment, affirmation and solidarity”.

Revd Helen Cameron 

Moderator of the Free Churches Group

Images from Aaron Doucett on Unsplash and Life on the Breadline website.

Free Churches Group, Health and Social Care Chaplains Study Day

Moral Injury, Staff Support and Looking After Ourselves

Free Churches Group, Health and Social Care Chaplains Study Day

27 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HH

Tuesday June 20th 10:30 to 15:30

Cost: £15 for chaplains whose denomination is a member of the Free Churches Group

 £25 for all other chaplains

Please register your place HERE.

09:45 doors open

10:30 to 11:15 Session one – Introduction to Moral Injury [Katie]

11:25 to 1210 Session two – Supporting Health and Social care staff to Navigate their way Through MI. [Diana]

12:10 to 13:05 Lunch (provided)

13:10 to 13:50 Session three – How we set up staff support work at G&ST [Tracy]

13:55 to 14:40 Session four – Sharing Good Practice [input from the panel and attendees]

15:00 to 15:30 Session five –Self-care and Creative Reflection [Bob]

15:30 cake and conversation for those who want to stay for a little bit extra

The focus of the day will very much be about lived experience rather than academic discussion. A well as the examples that the presenters will share we want to draw on the knowledge of those attending so please do think about examples of good practice from your context that you’d be happy to share in session four. If you have questions you’d like to ask both the presenter and those attending you can email them in advance to Mark at mark.newitt@freechurches.org.uk

A CPD certificate for 4 hours will be available at the end of the day.

Presenter Biographies

Tracy Morgan is originally from New Zealand. She trained as a health care chaplain in 2018 and works at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. First working in Paediatrics and acute adults, Tracy joined the dedicated staff support chaplaincy team that was formed in response to the Covid 19 pandemic in November 2021.

Diana Steadman worked in education and guidance before training in pastoral ministry at Spurgeon’s College. She is currently serving as Staff Wellbeing Chaplain at Kingston Hospital NHS Trust where from 2017 she has been establishing the role working alongside a Physiotherapist, Clinical Psychologist and Mind-Body Practitioner as part of an in-house Staff Wellbeing Team. Diana is now responsible for creatively supporting and advocating for the pastoral needs of staff within Unplanned Care, harnessing the tools of reflective practice, pastoral supervision, coaching and other development activities, and by reporting into divisional progress and Trust-wide steering group meetings.

Katie Watson is Head of Chaplaincy at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She has served there for 15 years. Prior to this she was a Military Police Officer in the British Army with operational experience in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 90s and Northern Ireland during the conflict. She runs ultra distance trails and does so that cake can be a major factor in her diet.

Bob Whorton is retired from Healthcare Chaplaincy but continues to work as a reflective supervisor. His interests are in creativity, writing, embodiment and the use of the imagination.

Note: If you are a Free Church Healthcare Chaplain, please contact Thandar at thandar.tun@freechurches.org.uk for a discounted price. The member denominations list is available to view here.

Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash