Faith Matters: The Church Program

The idea of a pastor living out his vocation on a bicycle may sound eccentric, but Michael Stahl, a German Lutheran pastor, is convinced that it's fully in line with the gospels. "If Jesus were out and about today,” he says, "I'm certain he'd use a bicycle.” Stahl is not only a man of the cloth but an enthusiastic cyclist.

Ukraine, alongside Russia, is one of the world's main grain exporters. When Russia attacked Ukraine, regular grain exports stopped. Since July, some cargo ships have been able to sail via Turkey, but none have reached Tanzania's main port of Dar es Salaam.

Rwanda: A poor, landlocked country of 13 million people. In terms of climate protection this East African nation is a role model for the whole region, a powerful example of how a country that is only minimally responsible for polluting the atmosphere is doing an impressive amount to reduce its CO2 emissions.

Between May and July 2021 Namibia suffered a devastating Covid19 wave. In those three months no fewer than eighty-two of Lorenst Kuzatjike's parishioners in the poorest district of the Namibian capital Windhoek died of Covid-related illnesses. The Lutheran pastor was conducting funerals almost daily. Like most states on the African continent Namibia had hardly any vaccine stocks.

Max Bode and Chris Schlicht had envisioned Christian ministry rather differently. These rookie pastors wanted to revamp the Lutheran liturgy: A sofa replacing the altar, a hoodie the cassock, and techno music the traditional organ - worship in the guise of a party.

The Cecosesola Cooperative Federation grew out of a practical necessity. Some fifty years ago, when a co-op member died, the other members founded a funeral home. Cecosesola now comprises a federation of more than fifty cooperatives, mainly providing food and medical services to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.

The small village of Tholey in southwestern Germany is home to the oldest monastery on German soil. Founded in the seventh century, the Abbey of St Maurice was plundered and badly damaged 1000 years later during the wars of the French Revolution, and only re-established in 1949. But local philanthropists have breathed new life into the old walls.

Anyone driving through eastern Germany may be surprised by the number of old churches east of the River Elbe. Almost every small village has one. Many of them are fieldstone churches built more than 800 years ago.

The artist Moritz Götze grew up in East Germany, in an atheistic environment. However, shortly after the collapse of communism in 1989 he helped turn a church ruin into a cultural center and conserved what was left of the historic building.

The first acute phase of the pandemic, in March 2020, resulted in a number of tragic deaths in German hospitals and senior citizens’ residences. To prevent new infections all visits from outsiders were prohibited. People died alone. Families were not permitted to see their relatives, and clergy were often not admitted to console the dying.

Running a monastery these days includes having good business sense. Plankstetten Abbey, in Bavaria, has a community of only twelve brothers, but the monastery is thriving. St Benedict’s motto was "Pray and Work.” Between prayers, these Benedictine monks run a highly successful organic farm.

Stefanie and Ellen Radtke are the Youtube stars of Germany’s Lutheran Church. The two female pastors from Eime, in the state of Lower Saxony, are a same-sex couple. With their Youtube channel "Anders Amen,” which roughly translates as "Different, amen,” they’ve always been controversial ministers. Their aim is to reconcile LGBTQ people and the church.

Wine cultivation is a continuous thread running through both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. No plant is mentioned more times in the Bible than the grape and its products. So it’s hardly surprising that wine is an important symbol for Christians.

Far-right vigilantes have become a familiar sight in many German cities in recent years. They claim to be maintaining law and order, but in reality they are striking fear into the hearts of law-abiding residents.

The history of the Oberammergau Passion Play reaches back to the seventeenth century, when a plague known as the Black Death swept through Europe. In 1633 the residents of this Bavarian village vowed to present a play depicting the suffering and death of Jesus Christ every ten years if they were spared extinction. Oberammergau has kept its word for more than 400 years.

The internationally acclaimed Berlin Radio Choir has joined forces with American theater director and visual artist Robert Wilson for a production that marries Martin Luther’s writings and translations with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Wilson’s image theater conjures both anxiety and hope in a timeless statement that places Luther among the great thinkers of history.

NoonSong has been called “thirty minutes of heaven.” A choral concert but also a church service. Every Saturday, NoonSong features beautiful a cappella singing from centuries of sacred Christian music by the vocal ensemble ‘sirventes berlin’.

Religions for Peace (RfP) is an association of people representing members of diverse religions in more than 100 countries. This independent organization is committed to mediating in religious conflicts worldwide. RfP will be fifty-years-old in 2020. The endeavors of these women is only now receiving international recognition.

It started half a century ago with a campaign to provide vocational training for young Brazilians. Today the Catholic social services association Kolping International is a worldwide network with some 400,000 members in more than 60 countries.

Burial sites in all cultures speak loudly of the prevailing values and beliefs of the societies that design them. Germany’s cemetery culture is unique. But it is currently changing. Many Germans are no longer choosing the time-honored cemetery for their final resting place; more and more people are seeking alternatives to the traditional family grave.

The Papa Francisco is the best-equipped hospital ship in Brazil’s Amazon Region. She was launched in August 2019. Her mission is to serve more than 1,000 isolated communities along the world’s longest river - villages where there is no hospital and no doctor.

Emissary, pastor and director: Life in the Holy Land is a life full of tension for Wolfgang Schmidt - invigorating, but also exhausting.

Creative Church, a German Lutheran foundation, has produced another musical for mass choirs: Martin Luther King - A Dream Changes the World. In a series of flashbacks the show sketches the life of the great American civil rights leader and Nobel laureate from the perspective of his fellow activists.

The churches of Europe are pretty empty generally. But in Indonesia, with its mainly Muslim population, Christian seminaries are overwhelmed with applicants. On a hill in the middle of the jungle on the island of Flores lies the world’s largest seminary. More than 1000 students study at Ledalero, and at least 600 of them are candidates for the priesthood.

The Lutheran pastor Nikolaus Schneider held the highest office in the Evangelical Church in Germany, but his life has often been clouded by death. Aged 22, his daughter, Meike, died of leukemia. He preached at the memorial service for the victims of the crowd disaster at the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg. Then his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

Dieter Vieweger is a Lutheran theologian and an archaeologist. He has been Director-General of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem since 2005. With his infectious enthusiasm for unravelling the past, Professor Vieweger succeeds in fascinating young and old with his exploration of the Holy Land’s 5000-year-old history.

Those looking for a quiet retreat are unlikely to find it in Dusseldorf’s Dominican monastery. The monks there live in the heart of the city’s nightlife district. Their evening prayers are accompanied by drunken bawling from the street. Revelers and homeless people are a permanent challenge. How has this community of eight priests come to terms with their very unusual monastic environment?

"Mega, awesome, cool!" That was twelve-year-old Linus’s comment. He is one of 60,000 Catholic altar servers from across the world who made the pilgrimage to Rome this year to see the pope. With the Eternal City sweltering in temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius this summer it wasn’t always "cool." But nothing could stop these kids.

Finally declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Naumburg Cathedral is one of Germany’s finest churches - significant not only for its architectural splendor but because it contains a portrait of one of the great beauties of the Middle Ages: Margravine Uta von Ballenstedt. The statue was carved by a mediaeval stone sculptor who, in spite of his fame, is known to history only as the Naumburg Master.

A thousand years ago, the Benedictine abbey on the island of Reichenau was a center of scholarship. The monks created some of the finest illuminated manuscripts ever produced. But in the early 19th century, the religious community was expelled. In spite of secularisation, the islanders struggled to preserve the monks’ legacy and today Reichenau is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Moravian Church is one of the oldest Protestant denominations. Since the eighteenth century it has been sending missionaries to many parts of the world. In the former Dutch colony of Suriname, on the northeast coast of South America, the church is especially strong. Surinamese Moravians will be organizing the World Day of Prayer in March 2018.

The Lutheran School in Berlin doesn’t simply follow a curriculum; it is committed to Christian values. In classes called "Responsibility" and "Challenge," the students at ESBZ learn to act on their own initiative and to take responsibility for their own lives and for society.

Four Cistercian monks from Austria are bringing monastic life back to Neuzelle in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. The town's name comes from the Nova Cella abbey that was founded here in 1268. The building hasn't been used as a monastery for centuries, but the monks hope to restore its role as a spiritual center of Catholicism.

A woman is running the Vatican Museums for the first time in their 500-year history. One year ago, Pope Francis appointed the 56-year-old Italian art historian, Barbara Jatta, to manage the papal collections, which contain a staggering quarter-million objects and attract some six million visitors each year.

As the Lutheran World Federation celebrates 500 years of Protestantism, Namibians remember a grim chapter of their history. Missionaries set sail for the future German colony of South West Africa in 1840 fired with the ideals of the Reformation. But their message of humble service prepared the way for economic exploitation - and a conflict that ended in genocide.

Most Russian Lutherans are ethnic Germans. Although services are now conducted in Russian, the "Our Father” is still prayed in the language of Luther. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Russia has some 40,000 members and is headed by 34-year-old Dietrich Brauer, the youngest archbishop in the Lutheran World Federation.