The African pastors were sitting down with the general secretary of the Association for Missionary Services, a large umbrella organization for churches and groups in Germany who are involved in evangelism. "Can't you see that we are like manna from heaven?" one of the African pastors asked the German. "God has sent us here to help you evangelize Germany. Why don't you make use of us?"

The young Korean German woman came to see me at my office. She had been born and brought up in Germany, but then gone back to Korea for a while. There, she had married a young theological graduate. Now she has returned to Germany with him: he was invited to serve as pastor of a Korean congregation in Essen. "We have to break out of our isolation," she said about her congregation. "We know that we have a calling to reach out and witness to the gospel, not just to Koreans, but also to Germans. So she came to offer German churches their help: "We have a good choir - we could go into old people's homes and other places to sing. We also have several retired nurses who are still fit and would like to volunteer their services where they would be needed."

These are just two examples of the reverse mission movement that has been reaching Germany from both African and Asian countries. African and Asian missionaries are coming to Germany in ever growing numbers, preaching the gospel and establishing churches. They were not invited by the German churches. Neither did they ask for the German churches' permission to start their work here. They did not feel the need for this: they have been called by the Holy Spirit to do this work, that is enough.

For a long time, this mission movement was not noticed by the German churches. After all, the evangelism work of the immigrant pastors and evangelists was not very visible. Mostly, they gathered congregations of their own nationality and language background, with the odd German member or two.

Only very recently have German churches started to take notice. In May 2000, the United Evangelical Mission organized a conference under the theme "From reverse mission to common mission". The conference brought together missionaries from Africa and Asia and church workers from Germany who wanted to explore ways of doing mission together.

But many German churches remain very critical of the reverse missionary movement. Rather than receiving it as a godsend, they react with dismay. The reason for this can be plain racism ("Why should our country be evangelized by blacks?") as well as theological rejection ("Why should we be evangelized by Pentecostals?"). Difficulties also arise from the very different concepts about what the mission of the church is, about how evangelism should be conducted, or whether it is needed at all!

How is mission in unity possible in such a situation? I believe that a practical approach is needed first, and that theological dialogue should follow practical cooperation rather than precede it. Black Pentecostal and white mainline churches have fundamentally different ways of doing theology and fundamentally different hermeneutical paradigms. Dialogue without common praxis will just lead to misunderstanding. But where common experiences are the basis of theological dialogue, new insights can be won.

Some German churches have started out on this difficult path.

Two examples from the Ruhr area

1. The blue and white square building sitting between the highway and the railway tracks does not look like a church at all. But the Weigle-Haus in Essen, named after its founding pastor, is a church, albeit a rather unusual one.

Founded as an inner city youth ministry more than 100 years ago, it has long since developed into a congregation of sorts, or, in the words of its current pastor: "into one church with four congregations." First, there is the "normal" Sunday morning congregation, consisting mostly of young adults and older people. Then there is the youth congregation that meets on Sunday nights. A few years ago, an African congregation asked for rooms at the Weigle-Haus. It was not just given a place; it has become part of the whole set-up. And when the German pastor learned that a Tamil congregation was coming into existence, he specifically invited it to meet at the Weigle-Haus, too.

There was a reason for this: the Weigle-Haus has long been active in both social and evangelistic outreach to young people in Essen's inner city. Many of the youth living in the vicinity of the church are the children of Tamil refugees who have sought asylum in Germany. To help them cope with their schoolwork and improve their language abilities, the Weigle-Haus set up an after-school programme. Children and youth can do their homework at the church under supervision and get help if needed. But the church also wanted to reach out to the parents - and failed, as most Tamil refugees speak little or no German. Now the Tamil congregation has taken over the outreach to the Tamil parents: no more language problems!

The cooperation of the four congregations at the Weigle-Haus is quite unusual. After all, the German congregations are mainline evangelical (if with a strong evangelistic impulse), while both the African and the Tamil congregations are neo-Pentecostal. The differences in theology and style are acknowledged and talked about on all levels. This way, understanding slowly grows while each church keeps its characteristics.

Occasionally, all four congregations have a joint worship service. All congregations love them and would like to have them on a regular basis, but the pastors and church workers are not quite ready for this yet: "Such services just take too much time to plan and prepare," sighs one German church worker who nevertheless admits that she loves the intercultural contact with the Africans and the Tamils.

This summer, a black church worker from the African congregation, who is currently undergoing theological training at a seminary in Belgium, did a month-long internship at the Weigle-Haus. Together with the church's full-time street worker, he established contacts with immigrant children and youth hanging out on street corners and game parlours. When he suggested running a drumming workshop, the response was enthusiastic. Street kids who had never responded to the German street worker came in droves and just loved every minute of the sessions. Now, the Weigle-Haus is thinking of establishing a longer term "united in mission team" of immigrant and German street workers for this kind of outreach.

2. The Evangelical churches in Oberhausen have long had partnership relations with churches in South Africa and Tanzania. They are known throughout the region for their tireless anti-racism work and their long-term support of the WCC Programme to Combat Racism. Therefore, when African congregations started to come into existence in the early 1990s, the churches in Oberhausen opened their buildings and their hearts.

The Markuskirche is one of them. Within the congregation, an interest in Africa has long existed. The congregation even has its own marimba group, consisting of Germans of all ages. So when Victory Christians Ministries, a church of mainly Nigerian refugees, asked for a room to meet, they were given a warm welcome. The Nigerians use the church for their worship services on Sunday afternoons, for their revivals and for their monthly night prayers. Their other activities take place at one of the two church centres, where there is always room for a Bible or prayer group or a committee meeting. Even a small office was found within one church centre which the Nigerian pastor has been using.

While both congregations remain independent - after all, the Germans are mainline Protestant and the Nigerians neo-Pentecostal - there is a sense that they are growing together. Joint Sunday services take place regularly. When they feature the German marimba group, the church is really rocking! There are common festivals, meals and even soccer games.

Both the black and the white church are very active in local anti-racism work. Just recently, they jointly participated in the organization of a big rally at the Oberhausen city centre. But their common mission does not just end with political statements: when a woman from the black congregation was, together with her three small children, threatened by deportation, the churches jointly organized a church asylum which has now already lasted five months.

Tolerance as a first step

These two examples - the Weigle-Haus in Essen and the Markuskirche in Oberhausen - have in common that churches started out doing something together. This way, trust and community were built before difficult theological issues were tackled. But this approach also needs a lot of tolerance on both sides, and the willingness to accept the other church as a sister church, a member in the body of Christ, even if it expresses its faith in a totally foreign way. The mainline churches had to realize that Pentecostals are not a sect, even if they drive out demons during their night prayers. Conversely, the Pentecostal churches had to learn that mainline churches are not necessarily dead, even if nobody there speaks in tongues. Such tolerance also means that both churches abstain from crude attempts to "convert" the other church to its own theology and practices, while at the same time they acknowledge that their contact and cooperation will eventually change them both in ways they may not foresee yet.

Such tolerance is no liberal laissez-faire. It is based on the knowledge that it is Jesus Christ himself who builds his church through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is formed by the understanding that each church is a corpus mixtum, that each falls short of its calling in certain ways, but that the Spirit nevertheless works in them in unexpected ways.

To come back to the scene at the beginning: when the African pastors offered their help in evangelizing Germany, the German pastor did not know how to react. There are multiple stumbling blocks to a mission in unity between immigrant and indigenous churches. To name just a few:

The German Landeskirchen, the former state churches, are still strongly influenced by an understanding that they are the church in Germany. They define what a church should look like and how it should work. (This attitude has, until quite recently, also made life difficult for the so-called "free churches", like Baptists or Methodists which are small minority churches in Germany where about 90% of all Christians are still members of the main Catholic or Protestant Church.) As former state churches and present "people's churches" (Volkskirchen), they have actually become ethnic German churches that are only now beginning to realize that Germany is becoming more multicultural, and that a people's church should reflect this. This coincides with the fact that German society has until recently denied the fact that Germany is a country of immigration. Hence, to be able to embark on a mission in unity with immigrant churches, the German Landeskirchen have to recognize their own relativity. This is not easy at a time when the churches are undergoing a deep financial crisis and struggling with dwindling membership numbers.
Racism is structurally inherent in German society, and the churches are not free of it. Of course, any accusation of racism is immediately denied by the churches. Nevertheless, immigrant Christians often face it in their contact with German congregations: while Korean churches usually have little difficulty in renting church facilities for their own services, African or Tamil congregations often find all doors closed in their faces. German church workers worry about noise, dirt, and generally seem to distrust people with darker skin.
Anti-free church prejudice is a big problem. German churches have a hard time understanding why the African church using their rooms has no "mother church" in Ghana that one could get in contact with. A church that does not belong to a denomination that is organized along institutional patterns can only be a sect. There is generally very little knowledge and understanding of non-mainline churches, their organization and their theology.
Anti-Pentecostal prejudice adds to this. Especially among the theologically trained, there seems to be an almost neurotic fear of emotion in a worship service. "Strange manifestations" of the Holy Spirit, trances, speaking in tongues etc. are usually perceived as induced by manipulation and rejected without any closer understanding. At the same time, Pentecostal pastors are assumed to be without any "proper" theological training, and therefore not taken seriously. Hence, while an African choir might be invited occasionally to add some colour to a special German Sunday service - but is then only allowed to sing two songs! - there is very little willingness to let an African Pentecostal pastor preach.

But stumbling blocks to mission in unity do not exist only on the German side. They can also be found within the immigrant churches. Among them are:

Lack of German language ability. This is a big problem especially for immigrant pastors. While members of the congregation usually learn at least some German once they have found a job, the pastor's work is usually confined to his own constituency, meaning that there are few chances to pick up German. Formal language courses are expensive and take time. And English-speaking immigrants realize that many Germans understand and speak English well enough, so there is less need for them to learn the language than there is for French- or Korean-speaking immigrants, for example.
Lack of understanding of the German churches and society. Mission needs contextualization, and that means that immigrant missionaries need to learn about and understand the context in which they operate. Cooperation in mission is difficult if there is little knowledge of the situation in which one operates.
Anti-mainline prejudice. Many Pentecostals fear cooperation with mainline churches because they are afraid that they will be controlled (this fear is not totally unfounded!). They perceive mainline churches as more or less dead - how can they have the Holy Spirit if there are no manifestations of that? - and individual believers as lukewarm at best. Many Pentecostal immigrant Christians are afraid that the power of the Spirit they see manifested in their own church will weaken if they adapt even a little bit to the ways of a mainline church. They sometimes antagonize German churches with crass attempts at "converting" them to the "true faith".
Competition and antagonism among immigrant churches and church leaders. Unity often remains elusive even among immigrant churches of a shared background and culture as individuals set up new churches and "steal" members from existing congregations. Churches and church leaders who feel threatened by such competition are usually not open to cooperation, especially as closer contact with German churches can, in the case of conflict with other immigrant churches or church leaders, lead to rumours about how that particular church or leader has been "bought" by the Germans.

It is clear that to achieve mission in unity among immigrant and indigenous churches in Germany, these stumbling blocks need to be rolled away one by one. It is also clear that this is far from easy, and cannot be done quickly.

Programme for cooperation

This is where the "Programme for Cooperation between German and Immigrant Congregations" comes in. It was set up in 1998 by the United Evangelical Mission¹ for its German region, which roughly encompasses the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse as well as some parts of Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saar area. The first step was a period of research about the presence of immigrant churches, the second step, some publicity work about the reverse missionary movement to Germany. Now the groundwork has been laid to go a step further.

Within the programme, we have started to create opportunities for immigrant and German pastors and church workers to meet, to listen to each other and to learn from each other. Seminars and study days are being prepared by an international, open working group which also identifies the topics that need to be treated. Seminars that were held recently or are being planned include topics such as "Reading the Bible through the Eyes of Another",² "The Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal movement", "Evangelism in Germany" and "Overcoming Racism within the Church". Within these seminars, we have started to develop a culture of speaking from one's own experience without assuming that one's own view must be shared by all, of listening very carefully to try and understand what the other is saying, and of going back to the biblical text. After all, the Bible is the one thing we really have in common, so it makes a good basis to develop contact, cooperation, community and, in the end, unity.

With the programme we are having the same experience as those churches which started to work together: cooperation is easier if a concrete, limited project is in view, and trust grows where concrete projects are realized together. The Pentecostal/mainline team of six people who prepared the seminar on the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal movement started off with a session where everybody was trying to convince everybody else that they were reading the Bible in the wrong way. Only after the plan for a seminar seemed totally in tatters did the group pull together again, spend a whole day in intensive discussion, and come up with a timetable and a curriculum for the seminar which was highly appreciated by both mainline and Pentecostal Christians present. But without the aim of preparing a seminar together, the discussion within the preparatory group might well have led to so much friction that no understanding would have come out of it.

Mission in unity - coming together as the colourful, multicultural body of Christ in Germany - this is the vision that is shared by a slowly growing number of Christians in both indigenous German and immigrant churches. Many steps will still be necessary until this vision becomes reality. But as the Chinese proverb says: "Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." We have started to walk together on the way.

Rev. Claudia Währisch-Oblau of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland coordinates the programme "Cooperation between German and Immigrant Churches" of the United Evangelical Mission. Her experiences as a migrant comprise more than a dozen years of living and working in different parts of Asia.

Notes

1. The United Evangelical Mission is an international partnership of churches in Germany, Africa and Asia.

2. Actually, this particular title sounded rather off-putting to Pentecostals. The Bible has to be read with spiritual eyes, and there are no other. Pentecostal participation in this seminar was therefore almost non-existent.