“New Dean Dirk Schmid-Hornisch appointed to lead Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald Evangelical Church district amidst restructuring”

Since Dean Rainer Heimburger moved to the Oberkirchenrat in Karlsruhe last October, his position in the church district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald has been vacant. During the vacancy, the deputies Philipp van Oorschot and Fritz Breisacher headed the church district together with school dean Dirk Boch. Now, at the suggestion of Bishop Heike Springhart, Dirk Schmid-Hornisch has been elected as his successor. “With a large majority in the first ballot,” reports Deputy Dean Fritz Breisacher. “We’re all really looking forward to him.” It has already been decided that the new dean will take office on September 1st. According to Breisacher, the introductory service will take place on Friday, September 15, at 6.30 p.m. – in which church, however, it has not yet been decided.

Schmid-Hornisch returns to Breisgau as dean. Because the native of Pforzheim already knows him. He did part of his vicarage in 2001 in Freiburg-St. Georgen, he took up his first pastorate in 2003 in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer congregation in Freiburg-Weingarten. Here he supported the structural reform in the evangelical church district of Freiburg, as a result of which the Dietrich Bonhoeffer congregation was merged into the evangelical parish of Südwest in 2007. Schmid-Hornisch was also a district youth pastor in Freiburg before his job took him to Ortenau in 2010. Now he is looking forward to returning to “an area of ​​longing” with his wife and son.

And he is looking forward to his new tasks, for which he sees himself well equipped due to his professional experience and further training, even if the Evangelical Church is facing a transformation process, which he will now have to accompany in a responsible position.

Only recently did the church district make it clear that it had to save. Because the Evangelical Church is losing members – due to demographic change and resignations – which is why fewer and fewer people are paying church tax. As a result, among other things, personnel must be saved, by 2036 eight pastor and 1.5 deacon positions are to be saved.

This in turn will mean that church congregations will have to work more closely together. Four to six communities are to be brought together in so-called cooperation areas. This is what the ekiba 23 strategy process envisages. Dirk Schmid-Hornisch is currently working on this in Offenburg. The pastor announces that he wants to show for his new assignment that such changes also result in opportunities. He himself has had positive experiences with structural changes.

Schmid-Hornisch studied Protestant theology in Heidelberg and Marburg and then completed postgraduate studies at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Heidelberg. Then he spent a semester abroad in Sao Paulo in Brazil, where he worked at an ecumenical training center – “there was only one European there, that was me,” says Schmid-Hornisch. This period has broadened his horizons. Because the evangelical church in Brazil is “in an absolute minority situation”.

Schmid-Hornisch began his apprenticeship in Rheinau-Rheinischofsheim, “a village of 1,800 people near Kehl”. After the second exam, he worked in Offenburg in hospital pastoral care, where he gained insight into the “supra-congregational area”.

Schmid-Hornisch has also been a teaching pastor in Offenburg since 2011, and in 2014 he was elected deaconry pastor for the evangelical church district of Ortenau. He is the chairman of the supervisory board of the Diakonisches Werk and is involved, among other things, in the extended management committee for steering the upcoming structural development process, on the board of the Diakonieverein and on the advisory board of the Diakoniestiftung.

As the new dean in the local church district, Schmid-Hornisch’s task is “to fill the newly formed cooperation areas with life” and “to bear the upcoming reductions in solidarity”. In his experience, not everyone has to do everything. For him, for example, the merger of the Freiburg South-West parish was “very invigorating”. The pastor describes ecumenism and diaconia as major concerns, “but digitization is also part of it”. He wanted to make offers that would make it easier for people to accept the gospel message again – despite changed conditions. In this regard, he is already looking forward to a special feature in the church district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, the Silberlilly: The church comes to the people in the converted American Airstream caravan – at village hocks, wine festivals and market places. “My impression is that this church district is very committed,” says the new dean.