I first want to start by thanking you for all of your prayers. This past set of trips, both to Poland and Germany, were some of the most challenging. Even in these last couple of days as I’ve processed and rested from the trip, I’m still not sure what to make of all that I’ve seen and experienced. These trips have confirmed several suspicions in my mind, and challenged others.
Our experiences in Berlin, a culture that is fully immersed in post-modernism, were extremely challenging. As we served the Family Center (our partnering church in East Berlin) the leaders of the church challenged us to try different ways of engaging the culture. Our team became a test unit for evangelism in a post-modern culture. We had our doubts, but we were up for anything. Our team tried something the Family Center called “The Hand Project,” where we asked people the question, “Who is God?” From there, we asked them to write their responses on their hands, which we took photos of for the Hand Project website. This experiment was met with mixed feelings, as some people gave us honest answers, some tried to impress their friends by saying something silly like “table tennis,” and others wanted to start an argument, telling us God was “Hitler.”
We also did something that I was both scared and unsure of. It was something that the Family Center requested we do, and I was, to say the least, hesitant to move forward. In fact, most of the time I cringe when I see people do this. As a matter of effectiveness, I’m not convinced it works, but on our trip, this experience led to great spiritual growth in our students.
On Friday night, we went to Alexanderplatz and did soapbox preaching. You read that right. Street preaching. Four of our students sang a couple worship songs to gather a crowd, and intermingled with the songs were personal testimonies from several of our students. We topped this off with the youth pastor, Carter, and I preaching the Gospel. On all accounts, this felt like the craziest thing I’d ever done. As our team played songs, people started stopping and checking out the commotion. When students started sharing their testimonies and mentioning God or Jesus, most people walked away. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), when it was my turn to preach, no one listened to me. All the people standing around were engaged in conversations with people from our group. Despite our initial reservations, engaging conversations were started as a result of our street preaching. It was in this moment that students gained confidence in what they believed; they even begged us to cancel some of our remaining “touristy” trips in order to do it again. From shaky hands and students hiding in order to not be picked to share their testimony, to requesting we evangelize in such a bold manner again, this was the turning point on our trip.
As a whole, we didn’t have very many opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue about the Gospel in Berlin. In that frustration, it occurred to us as a team that we haven’t made the most of our opportunities here in the US. Minimal opportunities to share in Berlin lead to an increased desire to share the Gospel with our friends at home. Berlin opened our eyes to the fact that for most of us, home is often a place where opportunity is abundant, but our own boldness is lacking. The Gospel is not news to be shared just one week a year, but on a daily basis. Our desire to share our faith with friends back home continued to grow throughout the trip.
In closing, I ask that you would please be praying for the students as they make the transition back to school this week. Pray that the experiences and lessons learned in Berlin, don’t stay in Berlin.
For the Glory of God
