Gütersloh in transition: Church measures for the future started!

Gütersloh in transition: Church measures for the future started!

The Catholic Church in Gütersloh is currently making a name for itself. A public launch will take place in Christ the King Church on November 19th, at which plans to review the existing church infrastructure will be presented. The reason for this step is the declining number of members and the associated financial pressure. The community currently has around 26,000 Catholics, a decline of several hundred annually. This not only creates challenges, but also the need to make the remaining churches and parish halls fit for the future Radio Gütersloh reported.

Pastor Torsten Roland, who is driving developments, also sees opportunities in the crisis. In order to maintain the churches that still exist, modernizations and energy improvements are planned, among other things. The preparations for the inspection of the ten churches in Gütersloh are intended to give citizens the opportunity to actively participate in the discussion.

The trend towards declining membership numbers

The situation is not unique to Gütersloh. A look beyond the city limits shows that the number of members in the large churches in Germany generally represents a serious problem. According to current statistics from daily news Currently only 45.2 percent of the population belongs to a church, a decrease from 57.4 percent in 2014. Above all, 38.9 million people were still members of the two large churches in 2023, which corresponds to a loss of more than one million compared to the previous year.

Leaving the church has not abated either: while around 322,000 Catholics left the church in 2024, but at the same time only around 116,000 baptisms were recorded, a worrying picture emerges. “The number of baptisms has fallen dramatically,” says the overview statistics for 2024.

The future in sight

Given these challenges, the question of how the church can survive in the future is particularly relevant. Pastor Roland would therefore also like to modernize the remaining facilities and make them future-proof. “We still have potential, that’s exactly what we have to focus on,” says Roland. The planned measures to improve the energy efficiency of the remaining churches are a step in the right direction to increase the attractiveness of the Catholic Church.

The invitation to the public launch on November 19th is aimed at anyone interested who would like to actively participate in the discussion. It will be exciting to see how the community will respond to this difficult but necessary transformation.