More Observations

Part of the reason Susan and I came on this trip was to see the homeland of our ancestors and find out more about the origins of our church traditions.  Those objectives have been met.  The countryside looks very much like Ohio.  There are corn fields and wooded areas.   We have seen many hunting blinds at the edges of fields and forests, so a lot of hunting must take place.  It sounds like towns can have several hunting clubs where they have shooting festivals.  The person who shoots down a certain target is given the title of shooting king.  In the town where we stayed, Borchen, the men wear green garments and green hats with feathers in them and the women wear fancy dresses to the shooting contest.

The churches that date back to the 1500’s and 1600’s are huge by our standards but have the same symbols in them such as chalices and doves. It’s a little confusing in that some of the buildings were Catholic Churches before the reformation and are now Protestant.  The objects inside, like large crucifixes look very Catholic.  A little more confusion is added because some of the churches were heavily damaged in WWII and you can’t tell what was original and what was rebuilt.

We were fortunate to attend a couple of church meetings that were run very much like ours at home.  We attended a mission/environmental committee meeting where they discussed a trek that is underway to protest global warming.  They talked about conflicts between people who want to mine coal and people who want to build more wind turbines for cleaner energy.  They discussed the requirements for a church to serve as a sanctuary church for a girl from the Mideast and the obstacles the German Government seems to be putting in front of them.  All of the discussions were very timely.

Some of the questions asked at the meetings and forums we attended included “what can the church do?”  I believe that we have taken a step in the right direction by sending people to other areas of the country/world to see that we are all basically alike and face the same problems.  A church has to look outside it’s walls to see what’s really going on.  If you only look within your four walls they will shrink and close you in. We sang a song several times, “Grow the Circle Wide, Grow it Wider Still.”

I think that is what churches need to do today.   John Muskopf