Report from Germany

FIRST LETTER FROM FREIBURG     January 2015

We have now been in Germany for nearly a week.

My first thought is how blessed we are to have this opportunity, of being here and looking forward to six weeks as members of the community of people who make up the Anglican Church of Freiburg. And, as we have noticed before, there is wonderful reality that this apparently random collection of people – young and old, British and of many other nationalities – do make up a family - part of that world-wide family that is the Church of Christ, and which foreshadows the eternal gathering of “that great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev 7:9.) And one of the great strengths of many of the congregations in the Diocese in Europe is that they have more of a sense of that universality of God’s people than we often experience in our more monochrome English settings.

Our accommodation here is a comfortable holiday flat in the small town of Kirchzarten, 20 minutes from Freiburg itself. We are surrounded by the hills, rivers and trees of the southern Black Forest. At the week-end, local trains and buses have many families setting off with skis, snowshoes and toboggans. Last Saturday we took the Höllental train to Titisee, which ascends through a narrow valley rising to over 830 metres above sea-level. There we walked round the (originally glacially formed) lake. Either side of the lake, the hills rose steeply, covered with snow-clad conifers; a beautiful and tranquil place, and the air was clean and stimulating.

Leading Sunday worship in a new setting always feels like a bit of a challenge, but it was once more a good and even enjoyable experience. There were some 70 or 80 people - a wide range of ages and nationalities (for many of whom English is not their first language). They meet in Petruskirche, a Lutheran church that has recently been extensively modernised, and provides a good setting for worship. As in all good Anglican churches, there was coffee and fellowship afterwards (interestingly, the Lutheran congregation had slipped away quickly after their earlier Communion service.)

It was encouraging and challenging to discover how many German people had come to faith or found their spiritual home with the Anglicans. It reminded me how often we in England  disparage the strengths of the Anglican mixture of tradition and openness, catholic liturgy and evangelical conviction. (We had a similar experience when we visited Singapore some ten years ago.)

So we are settling in, and getting to know people. We are about to go to meet a couple to arrange the baptism of their first child; there will be older church members to visit, and a variety of services to prepare. What a privilege it is to minister to people like this, touching their lives in important ways.