Church in Motion

"Mission is nothing but the one church of God in motion." With these words the famous German Lutheran theologian Wilhelm Loehe described the essence of missionary work. Mission moves the church and crosses boundaries to form the one universal church. In 1842, Loehe started missionary work in the small Bavarian town of Neuendettelsau in southern Germany, as he sent two young men as "emergency helpers" to North America. He supported the formation of Lutheran congregations that later joined together to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Together with Friedrich Bauer he founded a mission seminary that sent, until 1985, nearly 900 graduates as pastors and missionaries not only to the USA, but also to Australia, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Palestine. From this the present center Mission One World of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria developed, which maintains partnership relations to churches in Africa, Asia/Pacific, and Latin America. This book describes the history of this missionary movement up to the present time and puts the Bavarian missionary work into the context of mission theology and strategies in the twentieth century.