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Mission in the Diaspora| Multicultural Churches in Urban Germany Initiated by Church Planters from the Global South

<p> Although Germany&rsquo;s increasingly multicultural population presents challenges to the nation, it must also be seen as a <i>kairos</i> moment, ripe with opportunity. Immigrant believers from the Global South have come to Germany to bring back the gospel and establish new churches. Although most of these immigrant churches in Germany tend primarily to reach people who have a similar ethnocultural background to the church planter, some have become multicultural and include indigenous Germans in their congregations. The purpose of the study was to discover and describe factors present in immigrant churches in urban Germany that contributed to their becoming multicultural and reaching Germans. Most of the literature on multicultural churches comes out of the North American context. Although some literature exists on multicultural churches in Germany, this study considers another church model in Germany that the literature largely overlooks&mdash;namely, multicultural churches that have been initiated by church planters in Germany who have come from the Global South. Through qualitative case study research, data from three immigrant multicultural churches in varied urban settings of Germany were collected and analyzed. From the data, the researcher concludes that all three immigrant multicultural churches in the study have in common the &ldquo;four Cs&rdquo;: (a) specific <i>characteristics</i> of the church planters, (b) <i>contextualization efforts</i> on the part of church leaders, (c) the presence of German and 1.5/2.0 generation immigrant <i>connectors, </i> (d) and a <i>Christ-culture.</i> The study adds to the existing body of knowledge on the topics of immigration, immigrant churches, multicultural churches, reverse mission, missionaries from the Global South, and diaspora missiology in the context of Germany and beyond.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10280777
Date19 May 2017
CreatorsDye, Stephen D.
PublisherBiola University
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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