A view of Uummannaq, one of the two settlements in Greenland with a New Apostolic congregation. Photo: Algkalv.

1. Overview
2. International links
3. The NAC in Greenlandic society
4. Notes

Founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1863, the New Apostolic Church (NAC) began life as a splinter group from the Catholic Apostolic Church, the largest institution in the Restorationist strand of Christian theology that combines aspects of Protestant doctrine and Catholic ecclesiastical tradition. It has had a small presence in Greenland since 1989. At its height, the NAC had congregations in three settlements – Nuuk, Ilulissat, and Uummannaq – but its following in the country has never exceeded the lower double-digits.

Overview

The NAC began its Greenlandic operations in the capital city, Nuuk, in 1989. It introduced itself to the residents of the city in December by placing an open invitation to a Christmas choir event in the main national newspaper,¹ and it would continue to host events in third-party venues in 1990 until the opening of its own facility that summer. A music concert marking the inauguration was held on 18 August in the hall of Samuel Kleinschmidt School; the next day, Apostle Gijsbert Pos of the Netherlands, who had travelled to Greenland for the occasion, led the congregation’s first service in German, with his words being translated into Danish and West Greenlandic/Kalaallisut by interpreters.²

Beyond Nuuk, the NAC also established congregations in Ilulissat and Uummannaq, the latter becoming its northernmost outpost.³ Uummannaq still has its own NAC facility, but the mission in Ilulissat had been closed by 2016.⁴ Gijsbert Pos allocated responsibility for the missions to Greenland and Iceland to Karlheinz Schumacher, who later became District Apostle of Northern Germany.⁵ The administrative connection to Northern Germany is still the congregation’s primary link to the international NAC community today,⁶ with ‘all administrative and pastoral care matters’ in Greenland being managed by leadership in this region,⁷ and with German priests remaining the primary facilitators of the occasional NAC services in Nuuk and Uummannaq.⁸

Together with other NAC ministers and members from the Bremen area, Apostle Schumacher focused his efforts on organising musical and information events on the island, and this group translated some NAC songs into Kalaallisut.⁹ Since the very beginning, musical events have been an important element in NAC outreach in Greenland, constituting a considerable portion of its publicity footprint in the national press.¹⁰

Jörg Steinbrenner, District Apostle for Northern Germany since 2012, decided in 2016 to ‘cut back on [NAC] activities in Greenland’ because the cost of sending priests and bringing them back via plane several times a year was disproportionate to the size of the Apostolic population, which at that point consisted of just 13 members split between Nuuk and Uummannaq. The diminutive scale of the NAC’s following was one reason for its lack of official recognition as a religious organisation in Greenland. Nonetheless, Steinbrenner did not plan on a full withdrawal, saying: ‘What is important for me is that the people who attend our divine services there do not feel abandoned, but have the opportunity to have pastoral care through regular divine services.’¹¹

International links

Opportunities for international engagement have arguably become more frequent in recent years – for example, representatives from Greenland participated in Nordic NAC conferences in 2018¹² and 2019.¹³

In April 2024, a group of four NAC musicians from Berlin and Brandenburg travelled to Uummannaq, where a ‘handful of members’ are currently visited four times a year by NAC priests, to deliver a music workshop for a local children’s home. A report on the Church’s official website states that 150 people (constituting around 10% of the Uummannaq population) attended the concert at the conclusion of the workshop, which was held in the auditorium of Edvard Kruse School and featured the premiere of a new piece, ‘Let There Be Light’, by the Austrian composer Julia Maier. District Apostle Helper Helge Mutschler delivered three divine services during the course of the workshop, and the group also visited the town’s retirement home where two NAC members were living.

Apostle David Heynes, leader of the NAC in the United Kingdom, took on partial responsibility for the Greenland mission in 2022 and was among the party that visited Uummannaq. He said: ‘We’ve seen how well we can get in touch with the community through music and joint events. In my opinion, this stay showed us that there are still souls in Greenland who are open to Jesus’ offer to follow Him.’¹⁴

The NAC in Greenlandic society

Whereas many of the newcomers to Greenland’s religious scene like the Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses were commonly excluded from ecumenical (cross-denominational) initiatives, the NAC was generally accepted as part of the Christian whole and as a legitimate part of national life.¹⁵

One of the more prominent representatives of the Apostolic denomination in Greenland, John Østergaard Nielsen, came to Nuuk from Denmark in 1987, joining a small existing congregation of five Danes and two Inuit Greenlanders. He worked as a pastor and teacher, while his wife Ulla worked as a nurse at Queen Ingrid’s Hospital. The Østergaard Nielsens played a central role in the formation of New Life Church/Inuunerup Nutaap Oqaluffia (INO), an alliance of Apostolic, Missionary Union, and Swedish Pentecostal churches, in 2000. John became head pastor of INO Nuuk. He went on to lead the creation of a dedicated INO radio station, Inuunerup Nipaa (Voice of Life), in 2009.¹⁶ By this time, INO had attracted many other evangelical churches to join and had grown to a membership of 500 across Greenland,¹⁷ making it the second-largest religious group in the country after the Church of Greenland, a largely autonomous branch of the Danish Lutheran Church.¹⁸

However, the single most prominent Greenlandic NAC member is Aleqa Hammond, who became a government minister in 2005, leader of the Siumut Party in 2009, and prime minister of Greenland in April 2013, serving until September 2014 when she stepped down due to an investigation into her alleged misappropriation of government funds.¹⁹ Apostle Karlheinz Schumacher made note of her achievements and publicly wished her well upon her first cabinet appointment in 2005.²⁰

Notes

1. ‘Apostuulit Nutaat Oqaluffiat’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 129, no. 128, 20 December 1989, p. 7. https://timarit.is/page/3824768 ↩︎
2. ‘Nuuk får endnu et trossamfund’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 130, no. 94, 17 August 1990, p. 4. https://timarit.is/page/3826622 ↩︎
3. ‘Aleqa Hammond is the new Minister for Family and Justice in Greenland’, New Apostolic Church International, 22 December 2005. https://nak.org/en/db/15233/Bekanntmachungen/Aleqa-Hammond-ist-neue-Ministerin-fuer-Familie-und-Justiz-auf-Groenland ↩︎
4. P. Johanning, ‘Greenland: the world’s biggest island’, NAC Today, 27 May 2016. https://nac.today/greenland-the-worlds-biggest-island/ ↩︎
5. ‘Gijsbert Pos’, APWiki, 2021. https://www.apostolische-geschichte.de/wiki/index.php?title=Gijsbert_Pos ; ‘Karlheinz Schumacher’, APWiki, 2021. https://www.apostolische-geschichte.de/wiki/index.php?title=Karlheinz_Schumacher ↩︎
6. ‘A community of cultures’, New Apostolic Church International, as of 23 December 2024. https://nak.org/en/community/international ↩︎
7. P. Johanning, ‘The Church as part of society’, New Apostolic Church International, 3 February 2017. https://nac.today/the-church-as-part-of-society-3/ ↩︎
8. F. A. J. Nielsen, ‘Religion and religious communities’, Trap Greenland, 2021. https://trap.gl/en/kultur/religion-og-trossamfund/ ↩︎
9. P. Johanning, ‘Greenland: the world’s biggest island’, NAC Today, 27 May 2016. https://nac.today/greenland-the-worlds-biggest-island/ ↩︎
10. ‘Apostuulit Nutaat Oqaluffiat’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 134, no. 29, 19 April 1994, p. 8. https://timarit.is/page/3838102 ↩︎
11. P. Johanning, ‘Greenland: the world’s biggest island’, NAC Today, 27 May 2016. https://nac.today/greenland-the-worlds-biggest-island/ ↩︎
12. P. Johanning, ‘About dragons and skyscrapers’, New Apostolic Church International, 13 April 2018. https://nac.today/about-dragons-and-skyscrapers/ ↩︎
13. O. Rütten, ‘The horses are saddled’, New Apostolic Church International, 1 February 2019. https://nac.today/the-horses-are-saddled/ ↩︎
14. W. Wick, ‘Music offers glimmer of hope’, New Apostolic Church International, 14 May 2024. https://nac.today/music-offers-glimmers-of-hope/ ↩︎
15. K. Peterson, ‘Kristumiut oqaluffii akkunnerminni akkuerisaat’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 137, no. 17, 4 March 1997, p. 20. https://timarit.is/page/3845887 ↩︎
16. I. S. Rasmussen, ‘Chefredaktøren anbefaler: Mit gode liv i Nuuk’, Sermitsiaq, 24 August 2018. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/chefredaktoren-anbefaler-mit-gode-liv-i-nuuk/576748 ↩︎
17. ‘Grønlands frikirke i Sverige’, Sermitsiaq, 24 May 2009. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/gronlands-frikirke-i-sverige/547600 ↩︎
18. S. Öberg, Pingst i Grönland: En studie av den grönländska frikyrkan, Inuunerup Nutaap Oqaluffia (Uppsala: Institutet för Pentekostala Studier, 2010), pp. 20-22. ↩︎
19. S. D. Duus, ‘Kim Kielsen tager over efter Aleqa’, Sermitsiaq, 30 September 2014. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/kim-kielsen-tager-over-efter-aleqa/484237 ↩︎
20. ‘Aleqa Hammond is the new Minister for Family and Justice in Greenland’, New Apostolic Church International, 22 December 2005. https://nak.org/en/db/15233/Bekanntmachungen/Aleqa-Hammond-ist-neue-Ministerin-fuer-Familie-und-Justiz-auf-Groenland ↩︎