“You can’t imagine how intensely people get involved in the World Cup unless you see it,” Larson says. “The celebration makes the Super Bowl look like a little league game.”
Larson was part of a group of twenty-four Covenanters from Faith Covenant and from Christ Covenant Church in Novi, Michigan, who took part in a short-term mission trip to Germany during the World Cup. The group traveled in two teams from June 10 to June 24.
The intensity of German soccer fans took the teams by surprise, and forced them to change their plans midstream. The group started out by inviting crowds to a church to watch the games on a large-screen TV.
But no one showed up, because the games were broadcast on a Jumbotron in a town square where people could drink beer and better congregate with one another.
That led the teams to the streets, says Nathan Pawl, pastor of Christ Covenant Church. There they handed out cups of cold water and lost at athletic contests – which proved to be good ways to connect with the crowds.
“It was very hot, and so we had the opportunity to give water,” says Jody Eidnes, office administrator for the Great Lakes Conference. “They wanted to know why we would come from the United States to offer water to them. That opened the door for conversations.”
Team members also organized various athletic competitions, failing to impress anyone with their athleticism. The groups competed in soccer matches against visitors from Australia and Croatia. “We were pretty bad,” Eidnes says, laughing. They also played volleyball with water balloons. “They beat our socks off in that, too.”
The mission teams distributed the Jesus film DVD, which included interviews with Christian soccer players. “People wanted to know why we would give it away for free,” Eidnes says. “Everybody thought we wanted to sell it. When we didn’t, that always was a huge surprise for them.”
“People were very open to talking about spiritual things,” says Pawl, adding that, “when I asked about the church, they all thought the church was irrelevant.”
Other Germans expressed animosity toward the church. They told team members that they resented being taxed to support the state Lutheran church, Eidnes says. “The older people feel shut out because they can’t afford the taxes, and the church sees it as a right and takes it from them.”
According to team members, Germans can opt out of paying the taxes, but that means they can never be baptized, married or buried in the church. Eidnes related the story of a woman whose financial hardships from a divorce forced her to opt out from the taxes. Still, she snuck in during Easter and Christmas services.
“She felt like a thief,” says Eidnes.
The teams also met with two local Free Evangelical churches. Pastors from that German denomination recently traveled to the United States to learn more about church planting from Evangelical Covenant Church leaders. The two Michigan churches are helping the German church plants in their ministry.
Pawl says that the Germans he met seemed to be “inoculated against Christianity.”
“Sharing the gospel is a much longer process,” Pawl adds. “It’s not something that can be done in a couple of minutes.”
The skeptical attitudes of Europeans toward Christianity should be a wake-up call to American congregations, says Pawl. In planting Christ Covenant Church, he says got to know many young people in Michigan who expressed similar doubts about the relevance of the church.
“Churches are getting older demographically (in the U.S.),” he explains. “Generation Y – people in their 20s and younger – is almost like where Europe is today.”
Copyright © 2011 The Evangelical Covenant Church.
