Mülheim Association of Free Churches and Evangelical Communities

Ekkehart Vetter ( Präses ), Heinz -Werner Korte and Harald Volz (Managing Director)

The Mülheim Association of Evangelical Free church - communities (MV ) ( formerly: Christian Community Association Mülheim a d Ruhr / CGV ) is a Free Church Pentecostal embossing.

Self-understanding

The association sees itself as an Evangelical Free Church in Germany on the basis of an evangelical - charismatic piety or theology, providing independent local churches a spiritual life and service community.

In the understanding of the MV church of Jesus is the community of people who are joined together by a common faith in Jesus Christ. By faith, baptism and communion offer of salvation of Jesus is made a holistic experience. The Bible is the basis for faith and life of the individual believer, as well as the community.

Organization and task priorities

The association is organized as a registered association, which includes the individual legally independent local churches as members. It is governed by a board, which is the opposite General Assembly accountable. First Chairman of the Association and at the same time Präses the MV is currently pastor Ekkehart Vetter, Mülheim an der Ruhr, who is also a member of the Main Board of the Evangelical Alliance.

The highest decision- making body of the MV is held once a year, Congress of Delegates, composed of delegates from the individual municipalities.

Currently, the association includes 45 municipalities with a total of about 4,400 members (without children and regularly participating non-members; Booth 2012). Most communities of the Mülheim Association are their legal status by registered associations. Thus, they are independent within the association in their courses, institutions and decisions. The local church is autonomous and thus remains valid, the bearer of the spiritual life.

The head of each local church is usually exercised by appointed community leadership committee (Oldest circle). The ordained Pastor or the church leader exerts its service in this line circle as primus inter pares. The financing of salaries and congregational life happens on voluntary donations from the church members.

The association puts an emphasis on the re-evangelization of Germany, particularly with the aim to start new churches. In addition, foreign missionary work in Zambia and Indonesia are supported.

In addition to the association also persists the GmbH was founded in 1913, from which the Mühlheimer Association was created. It takes over according to their initial purpose as an auxiliary for the MV and its affiliated communities important support tasks, such as publishing, magazine, events, supply of pastors in retirement and estate management.

History

The Association is the oldest Pentecostal Association of Germany. It has its historical roots in a revival that began in 1905 in Mülheim an der Ruhr and continued in other regions of Germany. Even before it had in Germany, triggered by the revivalism of Wales and under the influence of the Holiness movement since the genesis of the Keswick movement, a strong expectation for a revival and a new Pentecost given. The leading men of the German community movement were influenced by these expectations. Influential were, for example, the Mülheim Pastor Ernst Modersohn and Martin Girkon, the evangelist and founder of the German Zeltmission cousin Jacob and Jonathan Paul, who attended all furnished in regular by Modersohn 1905 prayer meeting in Mülheim. The revival erupted in Mülheim and the surrounding area has therefore been seen as a parallel to the events in Wales but also interpreted as a new Pentecost.

In parallel with the revival in Mülheim was Pentecostalism, which had taken in 1906 with the Azusa Street Revival its beginning, to Europe and Germany, and took effect on the revival. Within the community, there was movement in the following years, however, to a different assessment of the evolving Holy Spirit Movement. The initial hope to give the new Holy Ghost experience a reform impulse in the established churches, thus not fulfilled. In the Berlin Declaration of 1909 leading men convicted of Gnadauer Association and the Evangelical Alliance, the phenomena of Pentecostalism as " not from above but from below" and Jonathan Paul's sanctification of the " pure heart " as unbiblical.

Individuals and communities, who clung to the Pentecostal revival, were forced out in the wake of the community movement and the Evangelical Alliance. Sufferers joined 1913 Jonathan Paul to the Christian trash -Gesellschaft mbH together. From 1938 the official name of Christian Community Association was a Mülheim Ruhr d ( CGV ). The name reflects the proximity to the community movement. The organizational form as a limited company was chosen because the founders did not believe in a final separation from the community movement and therefore strove no corporate status.

In the following decades, the Mühlheimer Community Association has developed into a moderate Pentecostal organization. Got to the churches of the Association in the early decades rather than communities with close ties to their country ecclesiastical roots, so they have developed since the 1970s, more and more communities to a free-church type. In February 1998, this process resulted in the adoption of a new identity and a new name: Mülheim Association of Evangelical Free church - communities.

In April 2013, the Association announced on its delegates meeting in Bremen a new legal form of a registered association. Until then, the MV was historically organized conditionally recognized as charitable GmbH, with the decision processes and the coexistence of communities from the outset were more to a club than a limited liability company.

Ecumenism

Different levels of the Mülheim Association maintains relations with other churches. Since 1970 there has been a member of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK ), first as guest member, since 2007 as a full member. Since 1981, the MV is a full member of the Association of Evangelical Free Churches (VEF ).

The previous affiliation to forum Pentecostal Churches ( FFP) in 2002 terminated by the Mülheim Association, he sees neither doctrinally nor organizational longer than Pentecostal church.