Klauslis in Korntal

Albrecht Bengel-Haus

The process of reaching Germany for Christ is a complex task. On the one hand, some advocate a “missions” approach that advocates evangelization and the establishing of new churches. On the other hand, others emphasize working within the existing church structures that already exist to bring about renewal from within. A couple of weeks ago I had the unique opportunity to visit and institution who focus on this second way. Named after the famous 17th century German theologian, Albrecht Bengel, the Albrecht Bengel House in Tübingen (about 45 min. south of Korntal) serves students studying to become Protestant pastors in the "Landeskirche" or, as it is usually translated, "State Church."

In order to understand the ministry of the Bengel House a bit more, a little background on the German church might help. There are roughly 60 million people in Germany (out of 83 million) could be classified as “Christian.” Of these “Christians, about 30 million are Roman Catholic and 30 million Protestant. And while among the Protestants there exists a wide array of denominations, the vast majority still belong to the Protestant State Church. The name “State Church” does mean that the government runs the church. Rather, the government participates in the administration of the church by collecting the money needed to support it through the taxes of members (both Catholic and Protestant) and by providing training for pastors and priests at the state universities.

In order to become part of the State Church, one need to have only been baptized as a baby and have gone through confirmation in the early teens. After these two steps, the majority of these cultural Christians rarely darken the church door (with the exception of Christmas) or seek a meaningful personal relationship with God. To make matters even more difficult, the state universities, which are the only venue where students can be trained as pastors, tend to be very liberal in their approach to the Scriptures and often end up damaging the faith of students wanting to serve God.

Enter the Bengel House. Their basic mission is to provide spiritual guidance for students at the state university in Tübingen so that they remain true to their faith through the onslaught of higher-critical teaching they receive. The hope is that they can keep “believing” students spiritually strong through their theological studies so that they can go on to bring about a revival from within the churches to which already the bulk of cultural Christians already belong.

Although it is called “house” in German, the Bengel House complex consists of two large dormitory-style buildings that house about 100 theology students. In addition to dorm rooms, there is also a chapel, dining hall, classrooms and a decent sized theological library. To be a member of the Bengel-House, a student doesn’t need to live there. Rather, they agree to take one (or two) classes concurrent to the regular theological studies that provide an alternative to the liberal perspectives they are exposed to at the university. As a member they can take part in chapel services, prayer groups and other activities that seek to keep their Christian faith alive.

What was I doing at the Bengel House? No, I am not secretly going for another theological degree!! One of the guest lecturers here at the AWM (a former professor of mine from Columbia International University) gave a guest lecture there on the Emerging Church and I had the privilege of driving him there. Before he gave his evening lecture we had dinner with the director (Dr. Rolf Hille) and his wife where we both learned more about this ministry.

So that’s the Bengel House in a nutshell. If you want more information (in German, but they do have pictures) following this link: http://www.bengelhaus.de.

Do you have any questions? What do you think about it? I’d love to hear.

JuMiKo!

Last Sunday (Jan 6) I had the opportunity to be part of a team that manned a information stand at the largest missions festival currently in Germany: the Jugendliche Missionskonference ("young people's missions conference"), or JuMiKo, for short. In addition to numerous talks given by well known (for Germany) evangelical and missions speakers, there was a large missions fair where missions organizations and Bible schools (like ours) provided information for those interested in pursuing missions. Both surprising and encouraging were the amount of people who were there. During peak times, I think it would be fair to say that hundreds of people walked passed the various stands. Also noteworthy were there were the number of AWM alumni who came by--people who are currently in missions or in missions leadership. It is both exciting and sobering to assess the role played by the AWM in German missions. Thank you for your prayers . . . .

See the the photo album (to the left) for some pictures!

Christmastime Traditions

One thing that characterizes the Christmas holiday are the traditions that each culture and family brings to the celebration. I thought it might be fun to highlight a few "different" Christmas traditions that we experienced this year in Germany:

1. Herring Salad
This is probably the most unusual one. In Julia's family the "salad" consists of shredded apple, onions, beets, pickles mayo, fresh cream and, of course, cut up pickled herring filets. Although, I am usually not that big a fan of seafood, I took seconds of this.

2. Christmas Eve Service
Nothing that unusual here, with the exception that virtually everyone goes. In the baptist church in Julia's hometown in Braunschweig (the largest of its kind in Germany) they had four different services ranging from classical to gospel choir (2pm 4pm 6pm and 11pm) at which most of the attendees were non-members. Even people who have nothing to do with church the entire year go on Christmas Eve in order to catch the "Christmas mood." Needless to say it is a great opportunity for evangelism, and many churches take advantage of the opportunity.

3. Opening gifts on the 24th
This is an unusual one for me since growing up (and the majority of our friends) opened gifts on the 25th morning. This fits, however, with everybody going to Christmas Eve service.

4. Christmas Goose
As a I kid, I only sang about eating Christmas goose at Christmas time, but having a goose is one of Julia's family's traditions.

5. Christmas Market
Almost every town in Germany seems to have, of one sort or another, a Christmas market consisting of little huts built in the center of town that sell all kinds of gifts as well as traditional Christmas foods. This year we went to three: the one in Stuttgart, the smaller one in Ludwigsburg, and the one in Julia's hometown of Braunschweig. Especially noteworthy were the foot and half long sausages that are grilled up and served on a much smaller roll.

6. Fireworks on New Years Eve
If you can imagine everyone in the USA all agreeing to set off their fireworks at the same prearranged time this would give you some kind of picture of what it's like at midnight New Year's Eve in Germany. At midnight every kind of firework imaginable is set off--not by large firework shows (though these exist, too) but also but in front of every house and apartment building. It's quite breathtaking (or is that all the smoke?) but also a bit chaotic and lots to clean up on New Year's morning. Since our kids went to bed early, we lit sparklers when the sun went down and a couple rockets. The other three rockets we saved for midnight . . . .