Helga Lawall is sitting in an empty church.
Here in Flonheim, a small community in the heart of Rheinhessen, she has been part of the Protestant church council for many years.
It's Sunday morning, but today it's quiet in the big church.
No pastor preaches, no one climbs up on the pulpit and the organ remains silent.
The Flonheim parish no longer has a pastor.
The Church is changing because the country lacks clergy.
More and more people are retiring and too few are moving up.
The Rhine-Hessian village is an example of a development that is not new, but is becoming more and more noticeable.
The twin towers of the Protestant churches tower high above the roofs of the village. The locals affectionately call their church "Cathedral of the Wiesbach Valley". Lawall has been active on the church council for more than 40 years, and today she is its deputy chairwoman. She remembers the last time the pastor's post was vacant. Four applications came in, and the parish could choose its pastor. That was more than 20 years ago. Today is a dream that will never come true again, says the Flonheimer.
60 years ago, over 90 percent of Germans belonged to a Christian church. At the end of 2019 it was just over 50 percent. According to the Evangelical Church in Germany and the German Bishops' Conference, more than half a million Catholics and Protestants left their religious community in 2019 alone. At the same time, fewer and fewer people are opting for the parish profession.
The Flonheim parish has two Protestant churches, a large rectory with a beautiful garden and stable membership. But nobody replies to the job posting. A few years ago the parishes of two neighboring villages joined. More and more often, church parishes only remain an association when parish posts can no longer be filled. Evangelical and Catholic so-called pastoral care units are being expanded. A pastor is responsible for more and more believers. In the Catholic Church alone, the number of parishes has decreased by more than 25 percent in the last 20 years.
Thies Gundlach is Vice President of the Church Office of the Protestant Church in Germany. “I have no sense of catastrophe at all,” says the theologian. Yes, there is a lack of pastors, but there are regional differences. The north is more affected than the south and rural regions more than urban ones. Large cities, in particular, have not had any difficulties in filling pastoral posts, says Gundlach.
Gundlach grew up in Hamburg. Even in his childhood, the church had a different meaning than it is today in a village like Flonheim. In Flonheim everyone knew the pastor - and his duties. Many people today seem to have wrong ideas about what constitutes a pastor's profession, says Gundlach. Of course, church services are part of it, but also accompaniment and consolation, especially in times of crisis. It is important to him to provide information about the pastoral profession, because the image of studying theology has changed in particular.