Pastor Werner Dullinger is the new chairman of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Germany. On December 4, the church committee elected the president of the SDA South German Conference during the annual meeting in Altena / Westphalen. The Deputy Chairman is Pastor Johannes Naether (Hanover), President of the North German Conference, who has already been presiding. The chairman is usually replaced every five years.
South German Conference based in Ostfildern near Stuttgart includes the three regional church leaders of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Middle Rhine (Hessen, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saarland) with a total of 15,618 adult baptized members in 221 churches. The North German Conference in Hanover consists of the four regional church councils of North Rhine-Westphalen, Lower Saxony and Bremen, Hansa (Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) also Berlin-Central Germany (Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thüringen) and counts 19,366 members in 337 Adventist churches. Dullinger has been President of the South German Conference since 2015. Naether has lead the North German Conference since 2012.
Hospitals, schools and media
The Church in Germany manages about 5,000 boy scouts, teenagers and youth through its youth ministry. It is a public corporation in each federal state. It maintains the Berlin hospitals and day clinics "Waldfriede" and "Nikolassee", the Theological College Friedensau near Magdeburg, the school centre Marienhöhe in Darmstadt, as well as other primary and secondary schools and kindergartens. The media centre Voice of Hope, in Alsbach-Hähnlein near Darmstadt, with the "Hope Channel" TV and radio stations, the "Hope Tape-Library" and the "Hope Bible Studies Institute" as well as Advent-Verlag, Lüneburg, are all under Adventist management.
Other social services
The Advent Welfare Organization (AWW) is non-profit and, together with a number of social institutions and various small companies, forms the social work of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Germany. AWW includes four day-care centres and a special education day centre, a school, four nursing homes, two residential care homes, two in-patient hospices and an out-patient hospice service, an overnight shelter for homeless women, a day meeting for the homeless and socially disadvantaged. "Schwedt refuge" with various offers for the long-term unemployed as well as a contact point for addicts, a specialist clinic for addicts, two residential homes for addicts, an addiction and treatment centre, as well as several soup kitchens and psychosocial counseling centres. Through volunteers, various self-help groups and social projects, the needy are cared for regardless of religion, culture or social background.
The German Association for Health Care (DVG) has 34 regional groups, clubs and companies that promote health. The Adventist Development and Disaster Relief ADRA Germany carries out humanitarian activities in various countries.
Inter-church relations
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a guest member of the Working Community of Christian Churches (ACK) in Germany and the Association of Protestant Churches (VEF) as well as a member of the German Bible Society (DBG).
