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Johannes Evangelista Gossner (14 December 1773 – 20 March 1858), German divine and philanthropist, was born at Hausen near Augsburg.

He was educated at the University of Dillingen. He, like Martin Boos and others, came under the spell of the Evangelical movement promoted by Johann Michael Sailer, the professor of pastoral theology.

After taking priests' orders, Gossner held livings at Dirlewang (1804-1811) and Munich (1811-1817), but his evangelical tendencies brought about his dismissal and in 1826 he formally left the Roman Catholic for the Protestant communion. As Reformed (Calvinist) minister of Bethlehem's Church (1829-1846), a Lutheran and Reformed simultaneum in Berlin, he was conspicuous not only for practical and effective preaching, but for the founding of schools, asylums and missionary agencies.

In 1836, he founded the Gossner Mission, which aimed for a holistic understanding of mission (preaching the gospel and church social service). Its purpose was “to train young men from the craftsman class and every other class in a shorter and less expensive way than usual to become assistants in the mission, to become deacons, catechists, school teachers and collaborators in the holy work.” They have to work in “apostolic, unbound and humble simplicity”, following the example of the congregation of the Moravian Church “under the presidency of Jesus Christ.“[1] This missionary work is still active today in Germany and, among other places, in India and Nepal.

Lives of Gossner have been written by Bethmann Hollweg (Berlin, 1858) and Hermann Dalton (Berlin, 1878).

Sources

• Werner Raupp (Ed.): Mission in Quellentexten. Geschichte der Deutschen Evangelischen Mission von der Reformation bis zur Weltmissionskonferenz Edinburgh 1910, Erlangen/Bad Liebenzell 1990 (ISBN 3-87214-238-0 / 3-88002-424-3), S. 258-261 (Sources from the founding periode, incl. Introd. and Lit.).

Further reading

• Walter Holsten: Johannes Evangelista Goßner, Glaube und Gemeinde. Göttingen 1949. • Charlotte Sauer: Fremdling und Bürger. Lebensbild des Johannes Evangelista Goßner. Ed., Berlin 1966 (2. Edit., 1967; new Edition: Stuttgart 1969).

References

See also

• Gossner Theological College
• Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chotanagpur and Assam
• North Western Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gossner, Johannes Evangelista". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Gossner, Johannes Evangelista, from Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
• Gossner Missionary Society, from Christian Cyclopedia
• Gossner Mission Homepage
• Free scores by Johannes Gossner at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

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