And a new friend, Mike Eaton, recently joined me for a week in Berlin to film a video to increase the interest in joining the ReachGlobal-Berlin City Team.  The testimony is touching and the cinematography is great.  Take-3min and have a look.

For those that might be interested in learning more, drop us an email at berlin@efca.org

Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexanderplatz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw: treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere, that sphere that towers over all Berlin, the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

The Fernsehturm (Television Tower) was commissioned under the atheist ideals of East Germany’s leadership.  With the cross so prominent a symbol over the city, Berliners called the Tower, Rache des Papstes, or “Pope’s Revenge”.

In my wanderings around a city with so many not knowing Christ, the cross reflected off the Tower on a sunny day is a reminder that God cannot be suppressed.  <><

During the Summit, Timo Heimlich and I were interviewed by a radio affiliate of TransWorld Radio. (Catch it here in German.)  The interviewer was intrigued by the idea of why churches in America would be interested in the spiritual condition in Berlin.  Perhaps I was caught off-guard because it did not feel abnormal to me.  During the interview I responded to this question by stated that my American colleagues were here to serve and learn.  Is that unusual in today’s political climate? It must be, as this piqued the reporter’s interest.

My view.  In many U.S. regions, America is dealing more and more with the decreasing influence of Christianity.  While the U.S. is not yet post-Christian, many think that this is the path that lies ahead. Post-Christianity is the situation we see in Europe.  Americans need to learn from what church planters and pastors face daily in a city like Berlin.  The secular, spiritually- tolerant mix creates a living-learning-laboratory than can be very important to evangelism and discipleship in the American future.

The church in eastern Germany is small in numbers and young in experience.  Yet they are rich in learning how to deal with issues that are on the forefront of the next generation of young adults.  The American church can help directly with increasing resources, including sending workers, to grow the church in Europe.  Yet they too can directly learn about life transformation (discipleship) in a place that is relatively hostile to the gospel.

We can learn from one another.

• Forged on the inside
• Growing emotional intelligence
• Choosing a posture of humility
• Embracing spiritual transformation
• Allowing suffering to mold me
• Managing the dark side (being alert to temptations)
• Choosing intentionality
• Contrarian thinking (question status quo)
• Coming to clarity
• Mentoring others
• Leading from who God made me to be
• Persevering in adversity

One of the most exciting things for the ReachGlobal-Berlin team is a partnership with National Community Church in Washington, D.C., to create a new platform for ministry.  This is an incredible story of convergences, i.e. God-stories, which are bringing together a like-minded team to experiment with another way to impact post-Christian Europe.

We each bring a unique story to how this began.  My starting point for this was my graduate studies in urban theology.  The idea of God “bringing peace on our cities” (Jer 29:7) through the gospel working in His people, opened my eyes to explore ministry more holistically.  I have a keen-and-true church planting passion and commitment, yet widening the front-door toward this has been a good journey for me.

Dan Kimball (They Like Jesus But Not the Church) explains that post-Christianity has widen the gap between the church and culture to the point that misperceptions and distrust have created a great chasm. This chasm can be crossed through authentic relationships usually outside the setting of the church. The church tradition often positions the church for people to come-to-us to engage in relationships. The challenge (in post-Christian Europe) is to go-to-them, or to create safe environments outside the suspicion of the church to engage in community together.

So as I converge with this like-minded business-as-mission team, my hopes are to create a safe place, often called a ‘third place’ for the church to cross paths with unchurched people.  The business part is important so that we can create the environment and model life in the marketplace.  Part of the hope is for business to give back profits directly to help the local neighborhood (e.g. service to the needy).  It is also an active place of community and dialog about conversations that matter.

The other team members bring more creative ideas into a melting pot of innovation.  The journey is organic and filled with a strong sense is that God is taking us somewhere in our dialog.  We are aggressive moving ahead, yet have a spirit of waiting on the Lord to synergize our discernment and creativity with the specific opportunities in Berlin.  There are exciting days ahead as we discover this together.

Note: John Hasler will be leading this effort for the Berlin team.  This is a direct mission effort of National Community Church.  John is moving to Berlin in late-2010 and will remain part of the NCC movement while serving on the ReachGlobal team.

The following is a short interview with the current German Chancellor. She is from former East Germany and was in Berlin on that night, 20-years ago. Worth a quick watch.

(If this window does not open, click here)

“The cross must be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church.”

The common person in eastern Germany sees the church as marginalized in society.  Misperceptions create a large jump for them to look to the church for answers.  To multiply the church requires us to move away from primarily asking people to ‘come to church’ and to be equally active in taking the church to them – ‘going to them’.

A focus of the ReachGlobal-Berlin team is to stimulate approaches in the marketplace (the places people gather), which engage people outside the traditional structures of the church.  We partner together with Kingdom-centered business leaders and local churches to develop projects that moves the gospel relevantly into the marketplace.

Our means to do this is to develop, empower, and release marketplace leaders, through:

BAM Projects: To catalysis entrepreneurs to start Kingdom-based businesses which also stimulate growth in the church or establish new communities of faith. ReachGlobal BAM projects aim to achieve a ‘triple bottom line’:  1) a positive social impact on individuals and the community; 2) a positive ministry impact: people reached for Christ; and 3) a positive financial impact: profitable business and stimulating giving to the local church.

Training/internships: To further equip business leaders to think and act theologically (gospel-centered) within their full-time calling into the marketplace.  To develop cross-cultural internships which equip young leaders operating in the marketplace.

Partnerships: To partner together organizations, churches, and individuals towards innovative approaches to being actively present in the local marketplace.

This is a new area of development for the ReachGlobal-Berlin team.  We are seeking and developing new partners in this effort.  Inquire at berlin@efca.org

The Berlin City team currently engages this in three different areas:

Church-based training: Spiritual formation in the context of the local church is an essential part of obeying Christ’s instruction to make disciples.  It is a foremost question to ask how we can help further efforts within the many different local church contexts in our city to develop leaders.

Mentoring/coaching: Church and ministry are the context, but personal heart-to-heart interaction is also essential.  Each member of the RG-Berlin team sets aside time to mentor and/or coach leaders one-to-one.

Internships: Using our existing ministry partnerships to equip the next generation of leaders.  The value of practical experience is very high in our cultural context.  Berlin offers a complex laboratory for learning leadership and ministry principles.  We also find that short-term experiences often lead to a long-term commitment to the city.  Internships go both ways: people coming to Berlin and indigenous leaders going to other parts of the world.

Practical examples of developing, empowering, and releasing leaders are found throughout the stories of these web pages.

To that end, the months of April and May were full of activity from the U.S. partners:

Two Rivers Church (Knoxville TN): Continued walking alongside the FeG Chemnitz church, influencing them in prayer, strengthening their leaders and members. On this trip we began the process to develop a partnership between 2RC and the Berlin International Church (BIC) which will focus on several prayer initiatives for the region.

Team from Two Rivers Church serving in Chemnitz

Cornerstone EFC (St Louis): Jerry Orf and John Ritland visited the FeG partnership in Magdeburg. We had the chance to interact over their existing partnership and talk about future direction. The visit to Berlin also showed them another ministry context in our region.

Fellowship Church (Knoxville TN): Kevin & Vicky Huggins (staff), Lee & Joyce Bell (elder) visited Berlin as part of an evaluation and advisory trip related to the ReachGlobal ministry in eastern Germany. In addition to seeing many aspects of the ministry, several suggestions were made to strengthen the work here.

EFCA Central District Pastors: A group of pastors from various ministries in the Missouri/Iowa area visited as part of a three-city tour. This is part of the process of identifying global connections for their churches and possible strategic partnership locations.

FeG/BrookLink: Dietrich Schindler, the leader of the FeG Inland Mission (church planting), and Lee Hayward, BrookLink, visited as part of the initial exploration of a new project focused on beginning an English-speaking church in Berlin.

Pray for:
* Further partnership connection with the church planting projects in Berlin
* Further application of resources to this planting projects.