After freedom

If your average Leipziger thinks of church at all, then it will be to the events of October 9 1989 that his mind will be drawn.

Since the 1970s a small group of church members had been meeting on Monday afternoons in the Nicholas Church to pray for an end to communist rule.

The meeting attracted wider support when, in May 1989, church leaders exposed the falsification of election results and on October 9 1989, 200,000 people, centring on the Nicholas church, filled the streets of Leipzig.

Their protest had been given fresh fuel by the recent arrest of those attending a similar demonstration in East Berlin and the state security services soon arrived with tanks. What became clear to the authorities was that they were being confronted with much more that a single issue demonstration by a minority group. As one tank driver put it: 'This is the whole city we're up against.' To everyone's amazement this night passed off peacefully, and within a month the Berlin wall had come down. Many, looking back, see the church's protest as providing the impetus for the change, and it was not coincidence that it was church leaders who played a leading role in overseeing the dismantling of the Stasi (The State Security Service) and planning a new way forward.

Gone to Macdonald's

What is striking if you visit the large city centre church buildings today, is how empty they are. I asked Manfred, a member of the Leipzig English Church, where all the people had gone and he said: 'Oh, they've all gone to Macdonald's.'

From a distance the church may have looked strong but, as the only organisation officially independent of the state, it became an umbrella under which political activists could shelter. Being a church member was costly, but the massive drop in church attendance since reunification is testimony to the fact that it was for political freedom that many were prepared to go to prison and not for Christ. Although people are now free to travel, free to shop and free to disagree, the last ten years have been a painful demonstration of the fact that there is no true freedom without Christ.

Manfred is typical of those who, though not blind to the ugliness of communism, are alive to the ugliness of its counterpart capitalism. One ride on the tram is all it takes to bump into the concrete outworking of a society that has lost all connection with the God of the Bible and with the sort of values that only make sense in his universe. You meet long-faced old ladies and men who shove you in the back as you try to lift the pram off onto the pavement. The refusal to look in the eye, the pushiness, the not wanting to engage with you seem to mask a basic fear. It is not just that the future is uncertain, and that many of the hopes raised in 1989 have been dashed, but that the present is bewildering. On a political level people are still struggling to come to terms with what it means to have lost one's national identity and become united with a former West Germany.

Mistrust

On a personal level the revelations of the extent of the network of Stasi informers has bred all kinds of mistrust and recrimination. Lives have been broken and the dominant atheism has left people with no tools with which to put things back together. Forgiveness is a peculiarly Christian currency, and this is a place that is spiritually broke. Communism meant that links with any residual knowledge of the gospel of God's grace have been severed. The average person knows about as much of Christ as the average Westerner knows of Marx, - about zero.

English Church

These are the waters in which Leipzig English Church sails. Five years ago Martin Reakes-Williams came out to Leipzig and started doing bible study with an architect. That Bible study has grown into a congregation of around 80. Although an English speaking church, we have very few members who have English as their mother tongue, and most of those who come are students. Some come because they want more than the politics that dominates the agenda of many of the German churches; and some come because the English language provides them with cover. If friends challenge them for going to church they can say they want to improve their English. Sabine said she came because we served coffee after the meeting. It's a detail we hardly notice, but church as a place where people stood around to get to know one another was a new idea to her. Grit said she had never heard the Bible taught in an expository way before, and Hanna, who comes from a church-going background, said she had never understood grace before she heard it in English at the LEC. Most of the congregation have no experience of being part of a church. We are very average trying to do the sorts of things that most evangelical churches in Britain are doing but what is striking is how much we might take for granted is new to most of our members.

Poison

The so-called Enlightenment worked its poison into the German life-blood in a way that was more far reaching than in Britain, and the theological tradition was badly infected. The Christians we have met here feel the weight of critical scholarship's attack on the Bible, and though they themselves see it as God's Word in their private lives, have little confidence that that is a claim that can withstand public scrutiny. This is partly because they've not been helped to answer the critics, and partly because they have never seen the life-changing power of Bible ministry. We need to be very careful not to reproduce middle England in middle Germany, but there is no doubt that Martin and I feel that we have been enormously privileged to have been part of Bible-based churches in England, and our longing is to give people here a taste of the same, in the hope that they would move on after their time in Leipzig as agents of reform throughout Germany. If you pray for Germany, pray that the Lord would raise up more men like Luther: that the church would go back to the Christ of the Bible and hold out his gospel of grace as the only hope.

New chapter

This June marked a new chapter in the story of Leipzig English Church in that, having outgrown our temporary accommodation, we are moving to a new site. After some to-ing and fro-ing we have been allowed to use the buildings that go with the Luther Church. Once 500 strong, it is now and elderly gathering of about 10, and they seem pleased that their building will be put to good use. There are still ideas afoot to turn the whole complex into an old folks home. The money that such a project would raise a real draw for the people in authority, so our prayer is that as we start to use the building the equivalent of the PCC would be so thrilled by the spiritual potential of the place, that the financial plans would be tempered. The good news that goes with our move is that a German fellowship of Christians who have moved out of the state church has been granted use of one of the rooms for their regular meeting. Our hope is that we would work together more and more and make this place a centre for the gospel in Leipzig. It is in a great position, with plenty of useful rooms off a main hall, but walking into the building is like walking into the Forties and a great deal of scrubbing, painting and rewiring will need to happen to make the building hospitable. Please pray that over the years to come many would find their way through these old doors and come to experience the miracle of new life in Christ.

Mike Cain has been Assistant Minister of Leipzig English Church since November 1990.

A report on the church in Leipzig in Germany since the Berlin wall came down

Gone to Macdonald's

Mistrust

English Church

Poison

New chapter

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