Institutions of Evangelical Counseling in Germany Feature and Organization

Abstract

Family counseling institutions are an important part of the mission of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Their importance could be considered in two dimensions: firstly as a task of the church referring to the Greatest Commandment about love of one’s neighbors and secondly, as the way of the Church towards the contemporary society. The article intends to describe the structure of the evangelical counseling, its subjects and its features. The aim could be achieved by a deep scrutiny of particular institutions of Church counseling, their history, their requirements of cooperation with parishes and requirements for social workers. The subjects of evangelical counseling should be considered as a final point of the article as they are a picture of evangelical interpretations of contemporary phenomena of the world. Three of them: abortion, domestic and sexual violence and family crisis are of high importance. Theological and sociological guidelines are introduced into the article as they become the ground for the interpretation of both challenges to the contemporary world and the ways of facing them by the Church.