Here you will learn more about our community’s life. If you are curious, take a look at our calendar to find out when we’ll meet next. We are happy to welcome everyone. You can also ask for more information in our church office. The following are just a few of our community’s events, and opportunities to participate and serve. You can receive more information in our church office.
Church services
Divine Service/Worship
We come together to draw near to God; to hear God’s Word; pray; to commune with one another; and to celebrate through music and song. You’re invited to celebrate together with us. Services are conducted in German and Italian.
Normally we celebrate service every first and third Sunday of the month and on important ecclesiastical holidays at our Evangelical-Lutheran church in Florence (Lungarno Torrigiani, 11). We also gather once a month in Pisa and Bologna. Please check the calendar for meeting dates and times, as they do change.
Children
“Every newborn child brings the message from God to us that God has not lost his faith in humanity”
Rabindranath Tagore
Children are most welcome in our community. We regularly have activities for families, as well as day-long family events. In our parish hall we have a children’s room with some toys and many children books.
Youth
Faith, love and hope – in your own way. Young people need free spaces to explore their faith. Our church provides that space where youth can meet. Throughout the two year long course preparing for confirmation young adults confront questions about God and the world. In our library we have fascinating literature in Italian and German for young adults.
Women’s group
“Heart and hand” of our community for more than thirty years. Our women meet every Wednesday afternoon. Any subject can become a topic for further discussion: family, politics, music, literature, art, history, theology – in short everything that life has to offer.
Quite rightly Barbara Streisand once said sassily:“ You can persuade men, but you have to convince women.”
Our women stand together to serve. Whoever needs help whether it is just someone to talk to, a helping hand, or global outreach, you’ll find someone among them to help. As has been said above: they embody the idea of God’s Work, our hands.
Encounters in homes
We're coming to you.
“Lord, allow that all those who seek you, find you, and all those who have found you, seek you again, until all our seeking and finding is filled with your presence.”
These words by Hermann von Bezzel (1861 – 1917), express the meaningful purpose of the encounters in our homes very well. About four times a year our group in the Emilia-Romagna meets in one of the members’ homes. After coffee and cake starts the discussion of a topic.
Everyone is invited to participate. We can only find truth together. Every meeting, even after the most heated debates, ends with a comunal dinner.
Recreational excursions
Family free time
Time-off from the daily grind. Repose for body and soul. Twice a year on a weekend our community offers recreational excursions to a beautiful spot: members from every corner of our community participate. We offer fun and diverse activities for all ages built around an interesting topics.
The choir
Power of music
“Music is a pure gift and God’s donation; it ousts the devil, it lets people rejoice and bans all thoughts of vice” has been said by Martin Luther. Singing is joy, especially in our choir “The church choir of joy”
Everyone can join: women, men, old, young, Italians, Germans, Catholics, Protestants, settled and temporary Florentines.
We sing during church services, at events in our church, and even under the sky – but always with joy! We also enjoy being merry.
Choir leader Margherita da Ronco
She leads the choir and brings it to shine not only in the realms of music.
Concerts
The works of Johann Sebastian Bach will resound nowhere else as lovely as in our Evangelical-Lutheran church with its Bach-Organ; but our church also offers a wonderful acoustic for other composers and musicians.
We also have a Bechstein concert grand in our parish hall for intimate concerts in the style of the romantic salon. Four times in spring and four times in fall we offer sophisticated and varied concerts under the artistic direction of our cantor Francesco Giannoni. All are welcome! Entry is free of charge.
Cantor and organist Francesco Giannoni
He is the musical director in our community. Besides the musical accompaniment of church services he is also responsible together with the committee for music for the organization of musical events, especially the concert series in spring and fall.
More events
Talks etc
When Philipp Melanchthon, the great humanist and collaborator of Martin Luther, was asked about the essence of Christianity, he said: “Freedom – that is Christianity”.
He was referring to the wonderful freedom to trust in God, the freedom to be free from the forces of oneself and the helpful and useful freedom to shape this world in Christian love.
The reformers through their studies of the bible had regained a profound awareness of this freedom to be children of God and they understood this freedom, as a duty to educate, foster curiosity, and encourage reading. In the same vein we offer thematic days dedicated to a topic, seminars and talks to current questions of theology and ethics.
Culture committee
Whether you want to wander at night through Florence tracing the footsteps of German poets, enjoy live jazz while sipping on strawberry wine coolers, eat veal sausages on a Bavarian themed evening, listen to stories, learn all the tricks and themes of Argentinian Tango, talk about Friedrich Nietzsche, or to wonder together with Navid Kermani about Christianity from a Muslim perspective: you can do all this and more at the events organized by the culture committee. We always provide snacks and drinks hoping for enthusiastic and interesting encounters among all.