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2025 – Volume 6 – Issue 1

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Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef22222

C O N F E R E N C E  R E P O R T

DOI: 10.54195/ef22222

Christian Empowerment, Secularity and 
Church Development

Michael Herbst and Patrick Todjeras

1 Introduction
The annual international meeting of the International Consultation on Ecclesial 
Futures (ICEF) took place this year at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 
Halle/Saale (Germany) with the title “Christian Empowerment, Secularity and Church 
Development” on 10–14 June 2024. The host institution was the recently founded 
Centre for Empowerment Studies (CES).1

The aim of the annual meetings is to exchange research findings, promote 
 critical dialogue and develop and discuss suggestions for missional, sustainable and 
context-sensitive church development. The guiding questions of the ICEF are: What are 
the specific conditions of our own context? How does God’s mission manifest itself in 
our environment? Where do we discover traces of the work of the Holy Spirit and how 
does church life develop in our contexts? What theological questions arise from this 
and need to be reflected upon in greater depth? What can we learn from each other? 
What can be empirically ascertained and how can it be interpreted theologically?

The topics of the conference centred in particular on secularity and empower-
ment. The East German context and the development of a missional church were the 
specific local resonance space for this. The term “empowerment” was intended to 
enrich the question of the future of the churches through critical reflection.2

1 Key questions of the CES include: How can the communication of the gospel succeed under the current 
conditions of secularity? How can people experience the Gospel as enabling and empowering for their 
lives? The CES conducts research with different focal points on Christian empowerment in religious 
education and practical theological contexts. https://ces-halle.de/forschung/  (22 November 2024).

2 On the CES homepage, empowerment is understood as aiming to “provide life support that enables 
people to trust their own strengths and shape their lives independently. This requires certain skills 
and competences on the one hand and strength, power and courage on the other. Anyone who 
addresses empowerment looks at both the resources of the individual, i.e. the personal space of 
opportunity, and the resources that are available for this, i.e. the structural space of opportunity. Ulti-
mately, the aim is to explore in more detail how, from a Christian perspective, the possibilities can be 
expanded so that people can live their lives in a self-determined way.” https://ces-halle.de/forschung/  
(22 November 2024).

https://ces-halle.de/forschung/
https://ces-halle.de/forschung/


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Didactically, there were lectures and discussions, spiritual impulses, field trips 
and visits to church plantings and missional and innovative communities and 
congregations in the local context (Evangelical Church of Central Germany, Evangel-
ical Lutheran Church of Saxony, Halle Free Church).

The public day, this time at the Halle-Wittenberg Faculty of Theology, addressed 
local and national theological issues in a special way, including the current German 
membership studies (Michael Herbst, Hanna Kauhaus), the approaches to empower-
ment in a hereditary-secular context (Michael Domsgen) and international perspec-
tives, such as the missional potential of interculturality (Harvey Kwiyani, Nigel Rooms, 
Ariane Schneider), as well as methodological impulses (Dorte Kappelgaard, Marten 
van der Meulen, Thomas Schlegel).

2 Personal Reflections
What do we remember after five days of thinking, discerning and “walking together”? 
Some personal reflections:

2.1 Academic discourse and spirituality
The special character of the meetings of the ICEF network is the combination of 
academic reflection, exchange of experiences, reading the Bible together (“Dwelling 
in the Word”), and consistently one text for each of the five days: Lk. 10.1-12. One 
can recognize the integrative approach of the consortium’s work in this: theological 
reflection and academic discourse are always combined with spiritual fellowship. 
However, one can also find the particular theological impulse that had a formative 
and determining effect throughout all the lectures and debates: that God not only 
“is”, but also works and can be experienced – and his work is first and foremost the 
impetus for missionary work in the church and through the church. The question 
repeatedly asked is therefore: “Where is God already at work here?” And only then: 
“What should we do about it?” It has always been clear in the background that this 
attitude after the Enlightenment is certainly controversial, but nonetheless neces-
sary.

2.2 Mission
It is therefore a special characteristic of this community of academic theologians and 
church practitioners that they share a distinctive understanding of mission, which is 
based on God’s presence and his reconciling, healing and faith-creating work – and 
understands the church as a messenger who perceives where God is at work and then 
makes itself available to serve and celebrate God’s salvation. Andrew Root’s theo-
logical work has therefore been quoted in Halle repeatedly, including by Edwin van 
Driel: Root’s “project aims to empower churches in this new missional era by helping 



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them focus ministry on the presence and work of God”.3 In contrast to a “functional 
atheism” that no longer knows how to speak of God’s presence and action and there-
fore places the entire burden of mission on human shoulders, spiritual discernment 
is called for here, which – taught by the Holy Scriptures – seeks to perceive God’s 
existence and action in the world.

2.3 God’s preferred future
Beyond what is “already now” and can be perceived, however, the church needs an 
eschatological mindset (the “not yet”). Those who follow Christ do not live in the 
perpetual repetition of the old, but rather seek “God’s preferred future” (Frederick 
Marais) and strive to embody something of it now. Here, social science theories about 
the diffusion of innovation (Everett Rogers) or the creation of prototypes and the 
“presencing” of the emerging new (Otto Scharmer) can support the spiritual insights 
and practical steps of the church.

2.4 Local congregations
Not only the meetings between theological and church leaders were in focus, but 
also the local congregations themselves. If an important task is for congregations 
to be independent actors in God’s mission (and not just “care cases”), then the task 
of spiritual formation is on the churches’ agenda. This was discussed using the 
example of a South African model (South African Partnership for Missional Church, 
Tom Smith), which introduces congregations (and not just their pastors) to a mission- 
oriented “rhythm of life” with spiritual disciplines and missionary explorations.

2.5 Secularization
Local churches develop in a very specific context, which also influences their mission. 
That’s why the subject of secularization was a recurring topic of debate in Halle, not 
least with reference to Charles Taylor’s insights into the “Secular Age”. But the East 
German context, with the experience of 40 years of state discrimination and margin-
alization of church life, illustrated Taylor’s insights in a highly impressive way.

2.6 Abundance
At the same time, this context should not put local churches in a depressive mood:  
There is abundance in places of scarcity. The conference did not just coincidentally 
take place in East Germany, one of the most secularized regions in the world (Felix 
Eiffler). The model of the “Volkskirche” (folk church) as the church of the majority 

3 E. v. Driel refers to several publications by Root (2017; 2019; 2021; 2022a; 2022b; 2023).
 The books are presented as volumes of a series entitled “Ministry in a Secular Age”.



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is obviously coming to an end here. The church finds itself in the diaspora: smaller, 
poorer and older. This became apparent, for example, at the presentation of the latest 
church membership study (Michael Herbst, Hanna Kauhaus). What was remarkable, 
however, was the less depressive mood that was conveyed, e.g. in the field trips, but 
also in the theological reflections on the diaspora. Without glossing over the situa-
tion, it became clear that there is abundance in places of scarcity. An East German 
pastor told of small new beginnings, e.g. of a church children’s choir led by an atheist 
– and some of the children were then baptized. Equally revealing was the report of 
a pastor (Martin Golz, Halle) whose congregation has a presence in the middle of a 
socially deprived area with a construction trailer and has become a contact point for 
people from the neighbourhood – for fellowship, counselling and church services. 
They are not a church for others, but with others, and they  experience in their osten-
sibly deficient situation: the resources can be found in the context. At first, secularity 
seems to be primarily a problem, but it is precisely when congregations seek God’s 
presence and work anew that it becomes clear that this challenging starting position 
can also be a gift. Can one even say that the church in East Germany could be some-
thing like the “forefront of the church” (Dorte Kappelgaard)?

2.7 Crisis
Another danger was addressed in the discussions in Halle: The crisis of the Western 
churches could lead them to only concern themselves with themselves and to see 
the actual mission of the church as “fixing” the church. Marten van der Meulen distin-
guished between crisis 1 (the decline of the church) and crisis 2 (the forgetting of 
God’s mission). Although crisis 1 cannot simply be ignored, it is precisely in crisis 1 
that it is important not to lose sight of the right order of things and to recognize 
God’s work. Signs of abundance can then be found in completely normal people, and 
shalom can be experienced in poor communities - as in the feeding of the people in 
the desert (with enormous leftovers!) according to Mt. 14.

2.8 Resonance
In addition to Charles Taylor, Hartmut Rosa’s reflections on Resonance were 
 repeatedly referred to. In a certain context, resonance also became a criterion for 
congregational development. Knut Tvetereit used case studies on various commu-
nities to show that resonance is contextual: “What resonates in one place, might not 
resonate in another place.”

2.9 Experiencing faith
However, according to Edwin van Driel, resonance arises through being with and not 
only through being for. The first experience of resonance is that people experience 
faith: There is someone who hears us. Faith carries with it a promise of resonance. 



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That is why joy is its characteristic. God not only wants to remedy our needs (being 
for), but also to be with us and on our way (being with). “The church is the community 
in which God’s gift of being with is already experienced.” The fact that it exists, that 
people gather to listen and pray, is in itself a sign of God’s goodness.

2.10 Unanswered questions
Of course, there are still unanswered questions regarding the willingness to learn 
new things, especially in times of uncertainty. The question was raised several times 
(and quite emotionally) as to whether the European church is finally ready to take 
the experiences of the African churches seriously and learn from them. The ques-
tion arises not only with regard to global contacts, but also on their own doorstep: 
to what extent are the ministry and insights of the migrant churches (especially in 
Central and Western European cities) being taken seriously by the long-established 
majority churches? In the end, we are left with gratitude for the special opportu-
nity to reflect on the church and God’s mission with theologically and ecclesiastically 
active leaders from four continents, but also the challenge of continually entering 
into an intercultural dialogue on an equal footing.

3 Conclusion
To sum it up: There is a unique character of the ICEF network, which integrates 
academic theological discourse with spiritual fellowship, particularly through prac-
tices like Bible study. It emphasizes a theology rooted in recognizing and responding 
to God’s active presence in the world, shaping a mission-oriented approach where 
the church discerns where God is at work and participates in it. This mission focuses 
on celebrating God’s reconciling and transformative action, avoiding a purely 
human-centric view of ministry. Additionally, the church is called to adopt an escha-
tological perspective, seeking “God’s preferred future” by embodying innovation 
and spiritual discernment to navigate the present and future challenges of faith and 
practice. The local congregation is an active participant in God’s mission, focusing on 
spiritual formation and contextual engagement. Using models like the South African 
Partnership for Missional Church, churches are encouraged to adopt a mission- 
oriented lifestyle. The challenges of secularization, illustrated by East Germany’s 
history, highlight the potential for abundance in scarcity. Stories of small beginnings 
and community-focused ministries reveal that even in declining or marginalized 
contexts, God’s presence and resources emerge in meaningful ways. The discus-
sions also warn against inward-focused “crisis management” that neglects God’s 
mission. Instead, the church should prioritize recognizing God’s work, as exempli-
fied by moments of unexpected abundance (e.g., feeding the multitude). Concepts 
like “resonance” (Rosa) highlight the importance of contextual responses and the 



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promise of faith as relational joy, grounded in God’s being with” people rather than 
merely “being for” them. The church itself embodies this divine presence, offering 
hope and purpose through shared worship and prayer.

About the Authors
Professor Dr Michael Herbst is Professor of Practical Theology (till 2022 at the 
University of Greifswald, Germany). He is researching and teaching on church devel-
opment, pastoral theology and mission. Contact: michael.herbst@i-m-k.org

Reverend Dr Patrick Todjeras has been a theological consultant at the Lutheran 
Church of Austria and is the director of the Institute for the Study of Mission and 
Church (www.i-m-k.org). Contact: patrick.todjeras@i-m-k.org

References
Root, A. 2017. Faith Formation in a Secular Age. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
———. 2019. The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God. Grand Rapids: 

Baker Academic.
———. 2021. The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life. 

Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
———. 2022a. Churches and the Crisis of Decline: A Hopeful, Practical Ecclesiology for a Secular Age. 

Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
———. 2022b. The Church after Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entre-

preneurship. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
———. 2023. The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms: Why Spiritualities without God Fail to Transform 

Us. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

mailto:michael.herbst@i-m-k.org
http://www.i-m-k.org
mailto:patrick.todjeras@i-m-k.org

	EDITORIAL
	Christian Empowerment, Secularity and Church Development
	Michael Herbst and Patrick Todjeras


