What American Churches Might Learn from a Church Plant in Frankfurt, Germany

Last Friday, we left for my first ministry sabbatical. The trip to Germany was mostly uneventful. Completely full flights. A strange delay of 2.5 hours at DFW. But no real problems.

We had an eventful Sunday, which I describe below. On Monday morning, though, I woke up with congestion, headache and sore throat. Since I had a couple meetings planned that day, I believed it wise to take a Covid test to rule it out. The result was positive. Shocker! No idea if I picked it up before leaving Fresno or somewhere on the flight over. This has led to the very sad cancellation of a number of activities and appointments I had this week. We're extending our stay in Frankfurt to try to get well quickly.

Back to our arrival in Frankfurt... We got checked in to our simple hotel in the heart of Frankfurt and then had one goal for that day: Stay awake until evening. The worst way to overcome jetlag is to succumb to the afternoon-nap temptation on day one. Mission accomplished.

I was in Frankfurt only once before (not counting airport transfers) in the early 1990s. From what I remember, there was little to no historical center. Frankfurt was pretty much leveled during World War 2, and the rebuilding focused on housing and business, not aesthetics. On this visit 30 years later, I was surprised to discover some recently rebuilt old buildings in the city's heart. It makes a nice impression. Overall though, Frankfurt looks more like an American city complete with skyscrapers than a typical European tourist destination with lots of winding streets amidst old buildings.

My main purpose for coming to Frankfurt was to visit with a few German evangelical church leaders, one in particular. We spent Sunday with Mosaikkirche Nordwest (Mosaic Church Northwest) and Jason Lim, a gifted German pastor and leader who planted this church.

Our time with Jason Lim and this young church (less than 6 years old) was a rich experience. Rather than just give you a narrative of long-form journalism, let me share six things I observed along with three brief yet complex questions this forces me to ask about how to reengineer American congregations toward mission and outreach. You can skim through the details or settle back to read it in full.

1. Frankfurt is a major, world-class city with an enormous immigrant background. It's the fifth-largest city in Germany with close to 800,000 people. As home to the European Central Bank, Lufthansa Airlines, and many other corporations, Frankfurt punches well above its weight. But read this next part carefully: More than 50% of the city's current inhabitants are immigrants! 51.5%!!! And three-quarters of all children under 6 come from an immigrant family. Some of these non-natives are Westerners here to work in the banking capital of Europe. But the vast majority have come from less-prosperous countries looking for a better life. We're talking Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Pakistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Bolivia, Venezuela, along with poorer European nations. We haven't even seen signs of Ukrainian refugees, yet we've been amazed by the diversity of this city. More than 180 nationalities are represented. A sizeable number have already gained their German citizenship. Many others have not. It's probably not what you think when you picture Germany.

2. Each district in Frankfurt tends to operate like its own village. There are 46 separate districts across this city. While some might trend more toward a concentration of office buildings or industrial space, every district tends to operate as a somewhat self-contained unit. Grocery stores, doctors offices, police stations, public transit are all available within each district. This doesn't mean that every district has equal access to the same kinds of amenities, but it's not like in major US cities where some poorer neighborhoods are food deserts without affordable groceries, not to mention a lack of banking or health care services. Not so in most European cities like Frankfurt. 

3. Nearly all Germans have given up on faith. Jason Lim estimates that 1% of all Frankfurters participate in a church in any meaningful way. I've read numbers that support a very low estimate, although his take is probably more narrow than some. Still, the point is clear. Germany is a nation with a Christian heritage. Past tense. If you dial back the clock just 100 years, you'd find almost all Germans actively involved in church and trying to practice their faith at home. What changed? That's a complicated issue about which many, many books have been written. Let me just say that the same trends are finally happening in the US as well. Americans are now giving up on faith, too.

4. Mosaic Church Northwest is able to focus its mission quite clearly. Church planter Jason Lim chose one of these 46 districts for a church plant. The northwest district they chose is home to 17,000 people with over 70% of the inhabitants from immigrant backgrounds. That 70% number blows my mind, but it was evidently true as we walked the neighborhood with Jason. Although this was an important factor in his choice, he primarily chose this district because of the absence of Christian witness. This neighborhood was built in post-WW2 Frankfurt when religion was already on the decline and the need for housing severe. The thinking was to build a Protestant church and a Catholic church in the neighborhood and call it good. Over the decades, that Protestant church has become what many mainline churches have become: an empty shell of a building with a few pensioners and a pastor who doesn't believe in the resurrection. It's pretty common. And the Catholic church, with its main entrance pictured below, has a less-than-inviting feel to it. Note the "beheaded saint" by the door! The priest for this parish church also has to care for 6 other parish churches. Jason has been in these churches and knows their clergy. They don't have a future. So there is a vacuum of active, Christian witness in this neighborhood of displaced and transitory people. Sounds like a space for the gospel!

5. This young, evangelical "German" church provides provides more than meets the eye. We joined them for their biweekly worship gathering. They meet all together only every second week, and this is intentional. It's hard work to "put on" the big assembly. They don't want to distract from making relationships in the neighborhood and inviting people to house-church meetings, so they only do this twice a month. All the flavors of emergent evangelicalism were present: simple worship band (guitar & keyboard), smiling young people making announcements and reading scripture, helpful programs and overhead projection, simple & clear message explaining why Jesus answers life's questions. Change the language to English and this could have been a church plant in midtown Fresno or east Nashville. But once the service ended, the real Mosaikkirche Nordwest appeared. Rows of chairs were quickly replaced with tables. Potluck items appeared on a long serving table. New people arrived also bearing food. In addition to Germans and Americans, we met or saw people from Iran, Bolivia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Croatia, Ghana. There were no doubt others, but I was trying to be a passive observer. Some of the people here are not even believers in Jesus (yet), but they are drawn to this community. When non-believers want to come hang out in the presence of believers, that tells me the Kingdom is here.

6. These German church leaders are well resourced by the good things of American Christianity while well aware of the sickness of American Christianity. For decades, American churches have been the standard bearers for the missionary enterprise across the globe. In Europe where traditional Christianity is dead or dying quickly, evangelical (or charismatic) church leaders with ties to America have often been the ones who keep alive the embers of hope. The ties here in Germany run to Greater Europe Mission (GEM) and to Tim Keller, founding pastor (now retired) of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. GEM is heavily invested in Jason Lim's work here, and Frankfurt is now one of GEM's focus cities for training up church planters and leaders for across Germany and beyond. Tim Keller has turned his significant clout to helping European church leaders like Jason and like Steffen Weil in Hamburg, our next intended stop. The good and positive of American Christianity is finding outlets here in "post-Christian" Europe. Yet Jason, Steffen, and no doubt others see the warning lights of American Christianity's demise. Both German church leaders brought up to me the damning podcast "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" as one example of American Christianity's problems with toxic masculinity, one-sided political activism, nationalism, and the love of power—to name a few. Many American churches no longer know what the mission of Jesus's people ought to be, yet that mission is clearly visible here in a northwest district of Frankfurt, Germany. Can enough American churches (in time) rediscover what it means to be people who follow the way of Jesus?

Finally, here are three questions (without answers) that come to mind from our one day with Mosaic Church Northwest in Frankfurt:

#1 Can an existing American church transition into this kind of a neighborhood-focused church, and would that even work in cities like Fresno where neighborhoods are very different from the districts of Frankfurt?

#2 Can American Christians put away their "political lens" that views immigrants as threats and instead use their "Jesus lens" to view these people as potential recipients of God's Kingdom? This is very much the picture laid out by Soong-Chan Rah in his book The Next Evangelicalism. Like in the German church, the American church's future may lie not with native-born Americans but with immigrants. God is providing a future for the church, but many people cannot see it. I'm not sure if most US Christians even realize they have a political lens rather than a Jesus lens.

#3 Can American churches let go of things that do not help them in their mission of reaching truly unchurched or non-churched people? Let's be more optimistic than Jason Lim (he probably knows best, but just for generosity's sake) and say that 2.5% of Germans have some meaningful involvement in church. What would you say about churches whose primary mission is to compete for the 2.5%? In the US, that number of church folks is more like 20%, but it's falling year by year. Most churches spend their resources on trying to retain and attract people from within that 20%. Even most new churches wind up trying to compete for this pool plus maybe the small number of recently dechurched people who might be open to returning. How many churches are turning their resources toward actually reaching the 80%, or in Germany on the 97.5%? It's staggering to think about what needs to be done. But also wondrous to consider the possibilities of what God can do with a people willing to embrace his mission for the lost.

Thanks for reading. More later. Post-Covid.