






























Ecclesial Futures
2025 – Volume 6 – Issue 1

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Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef22223

A R T I C L E

DOI: 10.54195/ef22223

Regional and/or local: Can church be 
present in close proximity and in regional 
cooperation at the same time?1

Michael Herbst

Abstract
This article deals with the efforts of the churches in Germany to rebuild the structures 
of church life in view of the loss of members and resources. The experiences with struc-
tural reforms of the last 20 years are evaluated. A critical light is shed on the associated 
danger of prioritizing structural issues and losing sight of theological aspects as well as 
missional calling. In addition, structural reforms are creating ever larger units; the life 
of the local community is drying up more and more. In contrast, it is proposed here to 
pay equal attention to local and regional church work, to promote the maturity of the 
local community (including in worship services without a pastor), to promote regional 
cooperation and to focus on the church’s mission to serve the Kingdom of God in local 
and regional social spaces. Missional ecclesiology proves to be a critical and construc-
tive corrective to a church reform that is only oriented towards structures.

Keywords: Regional church cooperation, Structural church reforms, Missional 
ecclesiology, Decline of the “Volkskirche” (People’s Church)

1 Introduction
This paper deals with dilemmas of fundamental changes of church life. Due to the 
decline of members and resources, the churches in Germany restructure church 
life and services and bring together several local congregations in greater regional 
units. This strategy causes controversial debates. Local churches complain about 
the loss of proximity to their people. They expect more cuts – in waves. Today’s 

1 This article was first presented as a lecture at the ICEF Conference from 5 to 9 June 2024 in Halle 
(Germany). The oral style was largely retained.



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solutions could be tomorrow’s problems. The idea of a “regio-local” church tries to 
reconcile the idea of a local church which is close to its people with the need to save 
resources. Under the bottom line this concept is based on the idea of self-employed 
local churches; it recommends encouraging the local Christian people to take over 
responsibility for local church life and to concentrate activities on local worship and 
gift- or charisma-oriented services. This is in tension to the parochial principle that 
has been customary in the Evangelical Churches in Germany to date. Its aim is the 
sacramental and pastoral “care” of all church members in a certain area, who are 
automatically listed as members of a local church when they choose their place 
of residence. This parochial way of organizing church in Germany is under severe 
pressure, because the number of people who are members of the church is rapidly 
declining. This dynamic has an immediate effect on resources, like money and paid 
staff. Thus, the German Evangelical Churches are looking for new attempts and 
ways of being church and organizing local ecclesial life, which is strategically linked 
to a more regional level. Ideally, the regional and the local level of being church are 
deeply connected and support each other. This is the basic idea of regio-local church 
development. For the future of the church at least two things are needed: one the 
one hand, a regional ecclesial strategy is important. On the other hand, vital and 
inviting church communities that are places of attraction for their surroundings are 
crucial for being church, where people are.

Which paths lead to a good future for the church? We should pay particular atten-
tion to the relationship between local communities and the regional church.

2 Mission statements of the church
We start with the question of what really is meant, when talking about the church 
whose path into the future we are looking for. I want to remind us of three key state-
ments.

First, Church exists for the sake of the gospel. In 1530 the Reformers said in very 
concise terms what is important when talking about the church (Cf. Amt der VELKD 
2013; Confessio Augustana, 1530: Art. VII). The church is the assembly of believers. In 
this assembly people should hear and experience the gospel. They should hear who 
Jesus Christ is for them, they should hear that their lives are sustained by grace and 
mercy, that they are justified before God, regardless of what they achieve, but also 
free from all their guilt. We can put it this way: that they are justified by grace and thus 
free to live a life of faith, love and hope. Church is the gathering where people come 
together to hear and celebrate this gospel. And to emphasize that, the Reformers tell 
us something else: In order to be a church and to get along with others who are also 
a church, it is not necessary to agree with each other on all the ceremonies instituted 



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by people. With this statement the reformers tell us what is mandatory and where 
we are more flexible (Cf. Abraham 2007).

We are fundamentally bound to what makes faith possible and brings the church 
into being: the gospel, which the Holy Spirit brings to the people through word and 
sacrament and through which he calls the people of God together. This is what 
Church is for.

But we are fundamentally free to adapt, rebuild and redesign the church’s “cere-
monies”. Ceremonies are structures, liturgies, church professions, forms of commu-
nity, financing, size and layout of congregations – always in connection with the 
fundamental task of making the gospel accessible. We are free to adapt, rebuild and 
redesign. If circumstances so require, we are even obliged to do so. It is not completely 
irrelevant how we arrange our ceremonies, but our ceremonies can be arranged in 
different ways and our current ways can be changed. Perhaps one could say with 
John 12.24: Even ceremonies sometimes have to die like a grain of wheat so that the 
service of a church can be fruitful again.

My second image comes from the Anglican Church, the Church of England. Here 
we can see that the Church is a creature of the Word of God (creatura verbi). Figure 1 
shows more precisely how the church that hears and celebrates the gospel will live. 
Its life consists of four relationships (Moynagh 2012: 99–119). She should maintain, 
develop and expand these relationships:
 – It is (1) the relationship with God (“up”), to whom she listens, to whom she prays 

and whom she praises.
 – It is (2) the inward relationship (“in”): those who have heard the gospel cannot be 

indifferent to one another. They become sisters and brothers. They may be highly 
different, but they share the same faith. They are there for each other. They live 
in some form of fellowship.

 – It’s (3) the relationship to the outside (“out”): the inward community is important, 
but it doesn’t exist for its own sake. We are on the Lord’s mission, and this means 
we are on our way to the people in our world. The church shall bear witness to the 
gospel and pass it on, in word and deed. She should introduce people to faith in 
Christ and recommend it to their hearts. It is “the universal task of the church: to 
witness to Jesus Christ and to make disciples in the challenging context of secu-
larized Europe” (Paas 2016: 240).

 – And it’s (4) the relationship “downwards” (“of”). Every congregation is a church, 
but no congregation is the whole Church. That’s why local churches are connected 
to other local churches. This is important for our topic: local churches cannot be 
indifferent to one another. They form a network of communities that share faith 
in Christ – even if our ceremonies differ significantly from one another (Herbst 
and Pompe 2022).



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Figure 1 The four sets of relationships

A congregation thrives when it nurtures these four relationships, striving to grow 
and mature in each of these four relationships.

Thirdly, in Ephesians 4 we read (4.11-14, NIV): “So Christ himself gave the apos-
tles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for 
works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in 
the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to 
the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Cf. Barth 1974;  Böttrich 1999; Hofius 
2006).

In the church there are people who take on special tasks. Here in Ephesus there 
are five. There are apostles and prophets, but there are also evangelists, pastors 
and teachers. There could be others (with other titles) too, that’s not the point here. 
We can roughly imagine what they do, the founders and preachers, the pastors and 
the missionaries, the teachers. And today we say very consciously: there are men 
and women in these and similar tasks. But the point is this: These people with their 
special talents are a gift to the community. But why? So that they take good care of 
the community and do everything a local church does in their place? No, the apostle 
puts it like this: These special ministries of pastors, teachers, evangelists and so on 
exist so that the church, that is the saints, the baptized and gifted, so that the people 
in the church are equipped: encouraged, trained, empowered, accompanied. And 
then the church should be built up through this service of the saints, which means 



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the relationships should be maintained upwards and downwards, inwards and 
outwards. The pastors and deacons, the musicians and educators, the youth leaders 
and administrators (and other full time, paid staff) do not replace the actions of the 
fellowship of believers, but rather they equip the “saints”.

3 What we are currently experiencing as a church: 
On the way to become a minority

One central insight of the latest (sixth) church membership survey in the Protestant 
Church in Germany (EKD 2023) is that we are not simply becoming smaller at a high 
level, but that we are experiencing a massive shrinkage. The number of people actu-
ally leaving church remains at a very high level. The willingness to leave, particularly 
among young people, remains high. Only 35 % of our members rule out leaving the 
church. Fifty years ago, it was 83 % (EKD 2023: 57). The Church is becoming smaller 
at a rapid pace.

Today we are interested in local church communities and the regional network 
of churches. In local churches people often feel the decline somewhat late, because 
the local worship services and the groups and meetings can still function quite well 
and may be well attended. Maybe they have fewer confirmation candidates, maybe 
slightly fewer baptisms and weddings. But at the bottom line it feels normal. And the 
active members are faithful.

That’s because the shrinkage is starting at the edges of the church, among those 
who were once unquestionably evangelical without attending church every Sunday. 
But even as rather passive members they thought it was a good idea to be Protes-
tant and to celebrate the major transitions in life with church, like baptism, confirma-
tion, marriage, burial. They also sent their children to Protestant kindergartens and 
attended worship services on Christmas Eve. The number of these people is now 
decreasing at a relatively high rate. So we are crumbling mainly at the edges.

You can picture it like this:
The majority of people in our country live secular lives. It is becoming more and 

more normal not to belong to church and not to share Christian beliefs. The new 
normal exerts gentle pressure on those who still belong – in one way or another – 
to church. But this pressure affects the fringe of the minority – not the core of the 
convinced and active (Müller, Pollack and Pickel 2013).



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Figure 2 “Pressure”

We are on the way from a “Volkskirche” (people’s church) (Huber 2003) to a still 
considerable but minority church. In the long run, the church will be composed of 
those who are convinced and more or less involved – and that is at least partly good 
news. That’s why we don’t immediately see the demolitions on site: the convinced and 
active people are there – and mostly remain so. But the “naturalness” of faith is lost.

This minority church will operate in a highly secular environment. The latest 
Church Membership Survey shows the trend towards a secular society that doesn’t 
know what to do with the Christian message. Among Germans, 56%say that their 
worldview and their way of life are completely secular. In other words, they can 
make ends meet without some remaining Christian traditions (Evangelische Kirche 
in Deutschland 2023: 15-23). They still trust and welcome the church’s social engage-
ment, the services for the poor, the old and the sick. But the religious content hardly 
resonates with the majority of people. There is no need to mention that the abuse 
scandals are increasing the distrust of church (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 
2023: 51–7).

Philosopher Charles Taylor looks at the change in Western society from a condi-
tion in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which believing 
in God is simply one option among others – even for religious people (Taylor 2007: 25).

The church is therefore faced with the question of how to cope with this situation. 
It is not easy to hold on to faith and stick to the church when fewer and fewer people 
in your environment do so.

Which attitudes can support us? It wouldn’t be good if church people resigned 
and thought: Now it’s the end for the church. Nor does it help to ungratefully over-
look everything that is vital and thriving in the church. Of course, we shouldn’t sugar-
coat the massive decline because the churches are still full at Christmas. And we 



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shouldn’t fix our hopes on the past and dream that things could maybe go back to 
the way they used to be.

It would be more helpful to accept the new situation as God’s instruction. 
Throughout its history and throughout the world, the fellowship of Jesus has often 
been a minority, even a persecuted minority. And in many cases that didn’t stop them 
from hearing, celebrating and sharing the gospel. Even as a minority the church can 
be church, with one another, before God and still for all people in our world.

But there is also something painful about it: namely a yes to the fact that the 
“ceremonies” must change, that the church will be different from what Christians 
have been familiar with and loved for so long. The dominant mental image of church 
is the local community with its church, its parsonage, in which “the lights should be 
on”, and the Sunday service that “our pastor celebrates with us”. This is a possible, 
beautiful image of church, but it is not the one and only possible image; it is actually 
about “ceremonies”.

And this brings us to the painful transformations that the church is currently 
going through:

4 A painful transformation
As a result, the Church is not only becoming smaller, but also poorer. The resources 
are becoming scarcer. But this is now also being felt in the local communities and 
is the core of the problem local church people are dealing with today. This core 
concerns precisely the central mental idea of the church as a local community to 
which people belong because of their place of residence. The traditional system of 
the parish or local church community ensures that there are no “church-free spots” 
in our country, so to speak. There is always and everywhere a church nearby, with 
short distances and pretty much the same programme for everyone. And the local 
priest is the central player. Around him or her, church life revolves. Without her or 
him, church life withers.

However, the local churches are becoming smaller in terms of membership. Their 
resources are shrinking. And there are fewer young people for pastoral ministry. 
And this has resulted in structural reforms across the country for many years. And 
the central strategy of these structural reforms is regionalization (Ebert and Pompe 
2014). Communities, parishes and places of worship are becoming increasingly 
united in the region. It begins with cooperation, and it continues with joint worship 
service plans and united parish offices. At the end there is often a complete merger.



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You can see this as a fictional example (Figure 3):

Figure 3 Regionalization

In a rural area, the independent local churches are united step by step. And today’s 
parish plan is usually just a prelude to tomorrow’s parish plan. Michael Domsgen 
puts it this way: The “stroke rate” is increasing: “As soon as one structural reform is 
implemented, the next one has to be initiated.”

Put differently, there is a double movement of contraction and expansion: people 
and resources are shrinking, districts and areas of responsibility are being expanded. 
But the expansion means that not only resources and people are shrinking on site, 
but also the presence of community life, the number of worship services, the visits 
of “our” parish priest. The processes are more or less consensual, but hardly anyone 



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is really happy with them. There are some features that stand out in the strategy of 
regionalization:
 – On the one hand, there is a well-intentioned desire to maintain area-wide provi-

sion of church services in the region. However, the decisive measurement is and 
remains the number of available pastoral persons. When there is still a pastor, 
there is still a congregation, perhaps only with part-time staff and a somewhat 
reduced programme, but it still exists. The principle is that of comprehensive 
coverage.

 – On the other hand, the structural processes turn out to be basically endless. 
There are endless seasons of this series. One parish plan comes and goes, and 
the next one follows quickly. The compressions and expansions seem to never 
end, so no one can be sure that the worst is behind them at some point. And that 
has a high potential for frustration.

The processes primarily focus on restructuring the structure. I’ll come back to this 
later: the structural often dominates, while the question of relationships with one 
another or praying together and asking about God’s promises and orders takes a 
back seat.

In addition, not all hopes for relief are fulfilled: life will by no means become 
easier after a structural reform, the number of meetings will not (as promised) be 
smaller and concentration on genuine spiritual tasks will not be easier. There just 
doesn’t seem to be an end. And the price is high: the church presence is decreasing. 
The dominant principle is dismantling. Who would have the courage to try out new 
things at the same time, hope for growth and give space, money and resources to 
new ideas? But that is exactly what is needed.

The former bishop of the church province of Saxony, Axel Noack, said: “A ghost is 
haunting the church – the specter of regionalization” (Noack 2012).

This motivated us, together with Hans-Hermann Pompe, the former head of the 
EKD-Centre for Mission in the Region, to take a different approach. And that leads to 
the idea of regio-local church development:

5 One possible approach: regio-local church 
development

The church in 2030 will either have continued the process of downsizing/enlarging 
undeterred and in many places will have reduced church life to homeopathic 
dosages. Or it will have reconciled the idea of the local community with the idea of the 
larger regional community and thus gain new opportunities for action, enable relief 
and promote a spirit of hope alongside the dismantling. This is how the neologism 
“regio-local” was born (Herbst and Pompe 2022, 2023).



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This is not a bypass that simply saves us from having to make cuts. Nothing will 
just stay the same. But it is a different approach that relies on the fact that regional 
cooperation does not have to be the end of local religious fellowship.

When it comes to regio-local church development, we are not talking about a 
method, but rather about an attitude.

The first thing is to look away from your own church steeple and towards the 
community of communities in the region. In the New Testament the same word for 
church, namely “ekklesia”, is used both for the small home group and for the local 
congregation, but also for the entire church in a region. The church in the region is a 
church, it is more than just an administrative unit. Our new attitude should focus on 
the region as a shared mission. The local churches and the full-time and volunteer 
workers, are responsible together in this area for the Christian faith to be passed 
on, with the Augsburg Confession (Art. VII), for the gospel to be accessible to as 
many people as possible, and with the Anglican idea of church, that the community 
can develop upwards and downwards, inwards and outwards. They are collectively 
responsible for this. This is what they pray, plan and work for – together. Regional 
church development calls for exchange, mutual trust, willingness to work together 
for the common good, for prayer and fresh ideas and the treasure hunt for all the 
good gifts that have been entrusted to the church here and there.

At the same time, the church teams say goodbye to toxic attitudes. There are a 
lot of things that must be put under the cross. These are the old stories about why 
someone can’t go with someone else under any circumstances, the pride that we 
have to handle it alone, the worry, our small community could be coming under the 
wheels, the prejudice that the other person is far too liberal or unbearably pious or 
too progressive or too conservative, the arrogance that we alone know how things 
can work with the church, the first calls for self-preservation (“Make my church great 
again”). Likewise: This includes not least the willingness to put aside envy, and to 
orient oneself towards the common goal.



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Hopefully they will cultivate a slightly different culture together. They are still 
dealing with changes in structures. But unlike many structural debates, this is about 
the harmony of structure, mission and relationship (see Figure 4). And they can look 
at two aspects of this complex picture:2

Figure 4 Structure, mission and relationships

 – On the one hand they can see that structural processes always work better when 
trusting relationships have developed. But that means: If everybody has invested 
in a healthy relationship. When they have taken the time for talking person to 
person and for getting to know each other. When trust could grow.

 – And on the other hand: When they have agreed on their mission. They often have 
structural discussions and try to save buildings or places of worship. Nothing to 
say against it! But it would be better if they had clarity about what they are tasked 
with doing in this region – and then asked what structures they need for this. 
Designers say: Form follows function.

But then there are six questions that local and regional church people discuss with 
each other, in their local communities and together in the region (Figure 5). But 
behind every question there is a challenge!

2 The idea and illustration were developed by Hans-Hermann Pompe.



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Figure 5 Six questions

 – What can we do to build good relationships with the other communities and their 
paid staff/volunteers and to allow trust to grow?

 – Where can we cooperate better voluntarily? What would be easier and more 
successful for us if we cooperated with others? Voluntary is an important keyword: 
When things get tight, everything works better if we have already had good expe-
riences together. This can happen in very different areas. Maybe a nurture course 
like Alpha is too expensive and exhausting for one local church alone, but with 
three neighbouring congregations it can work. In Pomerania (East Germany), the 
confirmation classes were often so small that even urban local churches had no 
more than 1 or 2 candidates. This led to a joint confirmation course for the inner-
city churches in Greifswald. Or perhaps several parishes can work together to 
employ a curator for construction and finances and to relieve the administrative 
burden on the local priests.

 – What is our profile? What are we particularly passionate about? What are we good 
at too? What would we never give up? Then that is what we should continue to 
focus on. Theological profiles also belong here! Regio-local church development 
says: Our differences do not have to separate us. Our diversity is our strength: 
It allows different people to feel at home here or there. Profiles should not be 
levelled. We can confidently say: We are so charismatic, so liberal, so progressive, 
so traditionally Lutheran – and that’s a good thing. That’s just how we are, and 
others don’t have to be like us. We are strong in music, we have a special calling 
for families, and we are invested in evangelism, we are passionate about working 
with refugees.



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 – The consequence of this approach and perhaps the downside of this idea is hidden 
in this fourth question: This is about saying goodbye to the idea that in a church 
region every local church or congregation should offer a full programme: Everything 
everywhere and mostly the same for everyone. By trying to offer everything to 
everyone, we are over-exerting ourselves. In church reform processes this insight 
is gradually emerging: to say goodbye to the claim of full spiritual care. We don’t 
have to do everything! What do we need to do to be a church? Something like 
worship service of course! But is Sunday at 10 the only proper time? We live from 
the gospel and from communal prayer. We want to maintain relationships in some 
way: upwards, inwards, outwards, downwards. Do we need our own choir? Do 
we need our own scout work? If we knew: We don’t have to keep everything in 
reserve, because the other church a few kilometres from here offers exactly that, 
because it is their strength and passion. We could get rid of this burden.

 – Can we then imagine that our region will become a kind of ecclesiastical Schengen 
area? What is that? The European Schengen process allows free border crossing 
back and forth within the Schengen area. This means for our church life: We say 
yes to people in our region settling there, becoming at home there, and getting 
involved wherever it suits them. This also follows from our specific profiles and 
the waiving of a full programme. We do not view Christians as the property of 
the local church. We are one church in the region with many local congregations. 
And we are happy when people choose their best place to live their spiritual life 
with others. In the end, what matters is that people find a spiritual home, but not 
where they find it or that they necessarily find it with us. We allow border traffic 
without tedious passport controls. But that means something else: We no longer 
see ourselves as a community in terms of our boundaries. We see ourselves as 
a community based on our profile, which attracts people who are looking for 
exactly that in our region. We respect that late modern people seek options and 
make their own choices, including church ones. Perhaps we now feel what it 
means that the grain of wheat must first die before it bears fruit.

So, what can our region look like? In the diversity of communities? Not just with 
different profiles, also with different structures. There are larger, central, well-equipped 
communities (“resource churches”) (Philipp 2022: 315–70) that are highly visible and 
publicly attractive. Well-functioning parish churches play their role in coexistence. 
There are also fresh expressions of church that focus on specific topics or target 
groups ( Mission and Public Affairs Council 2004; Müller 2016; Lings 2018). In this 
respect too, the position of the parish church is not abolished, but it is reduced in size. 
The church also tries out new forms of community wherever local or regional initia-
tives are available (Moynagh, 2024). And the mode changes from official permission 
to willing enablement. And then there are also smaller communities without full-time 
paid staff. There may be a small communitarian fellowship in a former rectory. There 



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is a diaconal initiative, which also includes fellowship through word and sacrament. 
There is a youth church and a music church. There are analogue and digital forms of 
community. All of this can be expressed if we ask each other how we can together give 
as many people in the region as possible as many opportunities as possible to explore 
the gospel, take hold of it and live out the gospel in community with others.

An ecumenical horizon is helpful as well: Is there a Methodist community here or 
there? Can’t it too be part of the regio-local landscape? Can’t the worship service of 
the YMCA, which has long seen itself as a sort of church, in a village be the worship 
service for this village (Figure 6)? To show the biggest annoyance once again: The 
church ‘Schengen area’ has long been a reality: people vote. They do it when shop-
ping, choosing a school, joining clubs. And they also do it by choosing the church 
that suits them! Faith and church loyalty cannot be taken for granted. They are not 
handed down but chosen, considered as an option and affirmed. Being a Christian 
is not a given. We should reintroduce and suggest it to a religiously inexperienced 
population, recommend it and practise it with people. But then we need diversity of 
access for such different people. We need the ‘Schengen area’. We need it so that we 
can be grateful about everyone who is won, either by us or by our neighbours. This 
is how the church grows, with one here and one there, one by one. One local church 
alone cannot do this. But we can use our profile to ask: Who could we attract? Who 
will gain from us what he or she needs for their own journey of faith?

Figure 6 The ‘new region’



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6 Who is supposed to do all that? For example, the 
worship service …

There are still some loose ends. Forgoing the full programme, regional cooperation 
– this saves resources! But there is not more money or more people, especially not 
more pastors, youth workers, deacons or musicians. There’s still something missing.

Churches have lived for a long time with very comfortable facilities and more 
than sufficient resources. They have simply practised and enjoyed area-wide provi-
sion with church services. But in many places, not everywhere but in many places, 
they have also got the local church folk used to being something like ‘assisted living 
for the baptized’. They have been less successful in promoting the ‘priesthood of 
all believers’ with local church folk using their gifts, as was intended in Ephesians 4, 
where leading ministries equip the saints and the saints do the work in building up 
the church. Every baptized person is also a charismatic, entrusted with a gift, with 
a measure of strength and time. Regio-local church development will not work if 
churches do not manage the turnaround from a supported to an independent 
congregation, from assisted living to team sports.

But this doesn’t happen by appeal. Just like in Ephesians 4, there is a need for guid-
ance, formation, encouragement and empowerment. And that is where churches 
should concentrate their efforts. In everything they do, they should ask: Who can 
we do it with? What can a team be formed for? Where am I not needed as a full-time 
employee? And what measures do we need to take to ensure that people in our 
community work happily and competently? Who do we need to train and who can 
help us? And who should we no longer burden? Can we perhaps tackle this through 
regional cooperation? And how do we celebrate our talented volunteers?

One of the most difficult questions in all regional processes is worship life. It’s 
easy to say that local churches should become more independent and take their lives 
into their own hands, but seriously – leading worship services as lay people? Possibly 
preaching or administering the Lord’s Supper? Are we allowed to do that? More than 
that: Can we do it? Who would dare to do that? That’s a task for those who have studied 
for years, isn’t it?

On the other hand, it hurts, especially this: regionalization means so often that 
there will only be a few worship services in our church. First every 14 days, then 
monthly, then at odd times like Sundays at 2:30 p.m., then only on holidays, and 
eventually not at all. We cannot simply impose more and more worship duties on 
pastors without jeopardizing their joy in ministry and their health. And then we are 
told that we can drive to the neighbouring town if there is no worship service in 
our local church. There is always a worship service somewhere in the regionalized 
community. Maybe they can also offer a transport service.

But the former dean of Fürth (Bavaria), Ludwig Markert, told me at one of my first 
lectures (1993): “The people from Veitsbronn don’t go to worship in Obermichelbach, 



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and the people from Obermichelbach don’t go to worship in Veitsbronn.” Two small 
villages, only three and a half kilometres (about 2 miles) apart from each other. People 
travel around for shopping, for their children’s activities, for medical care – but not 
for church. Church has to be here, in our village, in our local church. There’s no other 
way!

This is a real worship dilemma. Regio-local church development is not the magic 
wand that can solve this problem. But it provides a direction in which a solution can 
be found. As always, this can work in many places, but certainly not in all places. Here 
are a few such pointers:
 – Local/regional churches can increase the number of people who can prepare 

and lead worship services by encouraging and training people to become lay 
preachers. In a local parish in Bamberg (Bavaria) there are five volunteers who 
have such training and who now lead the worship services after the pastor’s posi-
tion was halved. No worship service is cancelled.

 – Local/regional churches can set up a fair plan: worship service reliably on every 
Sunday in a central, accessible location;; in all other locations, worship service 
reliably once or twice a month, including Christmas and Easter.

 – Local/regional churches can also assign churches a certain type of worship: here 
an evening service in a free form, there a weekly traditional service, here a ‘messy 
church’ (Moore 2006) for the whole family once a month, there a monthly youth 
service. Each place then has its own special liturgy – and everyone can find the 
service that suits them somewhere.

The “Michelbach/Veitsbronn syndrome” (MVS) is a common problem. What shall we 
do if people just don’t play along? Here is a somewhat robust answer and suggestion: 
deal with them as adults. Respect and empathize with their sense of loss, but don’t 
use their refusal as an opportunity to choose worse solutions: You are adults, so we 
expect this from you: We can no longer celebrate worship services everywhere without 
exploiting our resources. You drive 20 kilometres to go shopping, your kindergarten is 
20  minutes away, as are the sports club and piano lessons. We believe you can do it. 
Worship is important to you; then you will be able to change. And those who can’t do it 
get support. This won’t completely fix the MVS, but here are some more ideas:
 – Local/regional churches can make leading worship services easier. Here is an 

example from the Evangelical Church in Central Germany. Hardly any other region 
has as many church buildings as Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt. And at the same 
time, the number of pastors is no longer sufficient to celebrate worship services 
everywhere. Now it happened that on the Open Monument Day the elders of 
a village community turned to their dean and said: it is such a shame that the 
church was open for visitors on this Sunday, but no worship service was being 
celebrated. Couldn’t he help? He could! He sat down with his team, and they wrote 



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a small script for a simple worship service led by the elders in the village. They 
were able to follow this script with prayers, readings and song suggestions. The 
village community did not hesitate; the service took place, and the dean thought 
everyone was happy and content. But what had he done? The Christians in this 
village community were so excited that they asked for more (Bremer and Wegner 
2012). Long story short: In the Central German Church there is now a so-called 
‘community liturgy/book of prayer’ with service plans for all Sundays in the church 
year. In some East German regional churches, there are now congregations that 
celebrate together on many Sundays without a pastor. There doesn’t have to be a 
sermon: maybe someone reads aloud a devotional text, maybe there is a period 
of silence or those present talk about the sermon text for a few minutes and use 
the ecumenical seven-step-method of Bible sharing (Hirmer 1998).

Decades ago (1987), East German Practical Theologian Eberhard Winkler from Halle 
asked: If there are still 10 Christians living in a village (during GDR times) who would 
like to get together and celebrate communion, does the pastor have to travel from 
35 or 40 kilometres away? Or couldn’t we authorize these 10 Christians to celebrate 
the meal together, even without the priest? Yes, but that requires a calling, some 
people now reply. Yes, says Winkler, then let’s give them this calling! But, as they 
say, you have to be trained for that! Winkler doesn’t object there either, but asks back: 
Does this really have to be an academic training? Isn’t there the spiritual formation 
of the baptized? And how difficult would it be to teach them what they need? Under 
the conditions of a church in the minority, Winkler asked: Why don’t we empower the 
local community to become more responsible and self-active (Winkler 1987)?

And we can become even more resourceful when it comes to the shape and rhythm 
of worship services. The Church of England is an old folk church like the German and 
has experienced a somewhat even more brutal decline. At the same time, there are 
courageous and successful attempts to revitalize church life in England. Not only are 
local congregations being merged or even closed – on the contrary, new, fresh expres-
sions of church are being founded, with a special profile, often aimed at specific target 
groups and not at a specific residential area (Moynagh 2024).

Here is an idea that two theologians from Sheffield expressed and which has 
changed the worship life in the parish of St Thomas Philadelphia. Mike Breen 
and Bob Hopkins thought about having elaborate worship services every Sunday 
(Hopkins and Breen 2007). They ask: What was it actually like at the time of the 
Temple in Israel? Did people go to the Temple every Sabbath? No, they say, not at all: 
people made a pilgrimage to the temple rarely, perhaps once a year. And the visits 
to the temple were highlights in the life of faith. On all other Sabbath days, it was 
more modest, on site, at home or in the synagogue. Liturgical life in Israel had three 
places: the home, the synagogue and the temple. And now the two Anglicans suggest 



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translating this idea to their circumstances: house, synagogue and temple then 
become ‘cell’, ‘cluster’ and ‘celebration’. The ‘cell’ is the small format, the personal 
community on site or in the house, the home group or the end-of-week service in the 
chapel or the little church group that celebrates a short worship service in the church 
at the end of their meetings. A ‘cluster’ is the medium-sized community, perhaps 
weekly, on Sundays, in our church, sometimes with, but usually without the priest, 
but with us on site, 15 to 50 people who are happy that the local church is acces-
sible even without a priest. And then ‘celebration’, the big festival. How would it be if 
large, solemn church services were the exception, truly celebrations of faith, where 
we come together from all parts of the region, with special music, the ‘big’ sermon, 
with communion and baptism? For our topic: in the central church of the region, with 
our regional priest and the organist. Maybe every six to eight weeks. In short: At this 
crucial point, regio-locality would have to prove itself, it would have to be an alterna-
tive to a regionalization which leads to the church becoming less visible, less acces-
sible and less close to people.

At the end we return to the Augsburg Confession. There is still a biblically well-
founded promise in there, not as a cushion for defaulting church people who don’t 
want to change anything, but as a promise to those who set out and ask in what ways 
Christ will build his church today. At the beginning of the 7th article, it says: “Also 
they teach that one holy Church is to continue forever.” (Confessio Augustana, 1530: 
Art. VII) Of course, that is God’s work and not our contribution.

About the author
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

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https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/PDF/Wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_Kirche_–_Zur_Bedeutung_der_Kirche–in–der–Gesellschaft_KMU_6.pdf
https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/PDF/Wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_Kirche_–_Zur_Bedeutung_der_Kirche–in–der–Gesellschaft_KMU_6.pdf

	Michael Herbst
	Regional and/or local: Can church be present in close proximity and in regional cooperation at the same time?

