The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary

Our church is a community of about 300 Lutheran congregations being bound to Jesus Christ. In spite of all their differences, the members belong to "one body" - in the smallest diaspora congregation as well as in the congregations having more than ten thousand souls.

The service of three bishops directs the work running in the congregations, for getting the gospel even to places where only one Lutheran person lives, but it should be heard also in places where our congregation members are in majority. The seats of the three church districts (Buda, Győr and Pest) serve also as spiritual centres for all Lutheran people.

The administrative centre of our church - Budapest, Üllői út 24 - is such a place of service which supports the work of the congregations and the church institutions. Besides the departments for education, economy, building activities, legal cases and youth questions (being all at the disposal of every Lutheran), it is also a place where everybody can reach the services of the clinical-, as well as the prison pastoral care, or the help of any other missionary lines, further the University Congregation, too.

In our 37 educational institutions (nurseries, schools), about seven thousand students prepare themselves for life, with the help of nearly one thousand teachers. At the Lutheran Theological University, more than hundred students carry out their studies at the faculties for the pastors' education, or the religion teachers' training for primary and secondary schools.

 In our charity homes, several hundred old people get a home in fraternal community for the last part of their life. We undertake also the care for disabled children. The homeless people's home in Nyíregyháza, the rehabilitation centre for alcoholics in Györköny, the social employing house in Piliscsaba, the home care service in Kiskőrös and Szarvas, all prove the social empathy of the Lutherans.

 In our rest-houses- eg. Balatonszárszó, Gyenesdiás, Sopron -, we offer recreation in body and soul for the exhausted, and in our conference centres - eg. Révfülöp or Piliscsaba -, we ensure psychical and spiritual strengthening for those who seek the deeper sense of life

We are Lutherans - we can be Lutherans

What are Lutherans recognized by?

• They are open,
• community people, not liking extremes,
• cheerful,
• resolute, but ready for compromises,
• they love songs, music and culture,
• they hold together.

What does it really mean to be Lutheran?

It means that following Luther's church reforming work, we walk along a way,

• on which we can get into the power field of the risen and living Jesus Christ,
• on which the Bible represents the compass, and the cross the point of orientation,
• where in every situation of our life, the confidence of God's providence is determinant,
• where we do not trust in our own sense and strength but in God,
• where we would like to live in fraternal relationship not only with those who belong to our own denomination,
• where work and profession can become to a worship,
• where the family is appreciated by us as a special gift of God.

We should like to wander through the way together!

The risen Christ drew near and went with the desciples on the way to Em-ma'us. This is how we should like to act standing by our fellow people

• to announce and experience in the baptism that God's love takes precedence of anything else,
• to relate and show at weddings, that God's love represens everlasting reserves,
• to share the confidence with the crying and those who are of a fearful heart, that after death not the nothing but the love of God will wait us.

And along the way...

• at our worships, we watch week after week the timely Word of God, and in the Lord's Supper we participate in the Nutriment of Life,
• with daily Bible reading, we try to orient ourselves along the true and stable values,
• we learn the secret of inventive love, that we do not live for ourselves.

We present ourselves - but we do not advertise ourselves...

We are present not only at settlements, where there is a claim for this but we appear on the television screen in the broadcasting of church-services, in the Lutheran programme "Good News", in the church newsreals, in the Lutheran half-hour of the Radio Kossuth, in the programmes of other national or local broadcasting stations. We appear also in our national weekly entitled The Lutheran Life ("Evangélikus Élet"), and also on the pages of other Lutheran issues, edited by the Lutheran Publishing Office. The Broadcasting Mission, the Zaccae'us Mediacentre, the church television- and radio editors all should like to help us to live as well informed Lutheran church members - paying attention to each other and the world, in Jesus Christ.