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SwitzerlandCountry
Bordered by Italy to the south, and Germany to the north, lies the beautiful, Alpine country we familiarly associate with chocolate, cheese and watches – Switzerland. Switzerland is sometimes called the “roof of Europe” because of its towering Alps, which cover more than half of the country, running east to west.
People/SocietyThe people in Switzerland place high on value hard work, sobriety, thrift and independence. They admire traits like tolerance, punctuality, a sense of responsibility, cleanliness and orderliness. The Swiss are proud of their political and social system. They still practice direct “grassroots” democracy. The country has one of the strongest and most stable economies of the world; its people enjoy a very high standard of living and unemployment and inflation are very low.
Religion
Switzerland’s 7.45 million people consist of a variety of ethnic groups: German 65 percent, French 18 percent, Italian 10 percent and Romansch 1 percent. About 6 percent of all residents have come from the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Spain, Greece and Italy. Similar to other countries in Europe, material well-being has produced indifference toward Christianity and religion in general. Church attendance is often reserved for special events and holidays. Officially, 41.8 percent are Roman Catholic, 35.3 percent are Protestant, 0.4 percent belong to other Christian churches, and 4.3 percent are Muslim.
History
When Rev. Richard Zanner became district superintendent of the Middle European District in 1969, his successor as pastor in Frankfurt was Rev. Rudy Quiram. He was born in Romania, grew up in Germany, was educated in the United States, and then returned to Germany. In 1975 he was loaned to the Free Evangelical church in Thayingen, Switzerland, and while serving there, he started the first Nazarene church in Switzerland at Neuhausen in July of 1978, later becoming its full-time pastor.
The Church Today
In the following decades the Church of the Nazarene reached out to other areas, and started services and church ministry in Effretikon and Schaffhausen. The ministry of the church in Neuhausen includes a vital and growing youth ministry called the “Drei16project.”
Other countries in the Northen Europe Field: Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
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