The St. Pauli Church will remain closed for three months in winter due to the high energy costs. “Due to the shortage of energy and rising prices, the St. Pauli Church wants to do its part to save: From January to March 2023 we are doing a “winter church”,” the church announced on its website. The motto would then be “Church makes school”, because the congregation would offer their services and events in the cafeteria of the neighboring district school at the harbor in Bernhard-Nocht-Straße.
“The residual heat from school operations is enough for us and we have a wonderful room with a view of the Elbe just a few steps away from our church,” it said. The first church event there is the service on January 1, 11:00 a.m. The Gute-Leude-Fabrik podcast had previously reported in the “Hamburger Morgenpost”.
The church will be used until the end of December and heated to 17 degrees Celsius, said St. Pauli pastor Sieghard Wilm. “It can get colder with the door open. We also ordered blankets. You should be well dressed, but nobody has to freeze.”
The North Church had already called on its congregations to save energy in March of this year. Against the background of the war in Ukraine, the congregations should reduce the heating in the church buildings by one degree in order to reduce energy consumption. As an immediate measure that is easy to implement, the permanent reduction in the heating temperature in the churches also helps to reduce energy costs and protect the climate, according to a letter sent to all parishes, provosts and bishops’ offices.
Even with a temperature reduction of just one degree in all fossil-heated churches in the North Church, a saving of 4 million kilowatt hours per year would be achievable.
