A Case Study in Contextualization

The History of the German Church Growth Association 1985–2003

Fred W. McRae

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781620328507
  9781498266567
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630873301
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The content of the gospel never changes; however, communicating it constantly fluctuates. Conveying the gospel to a homeless, hungry woman may include providing a hot bowl of chili, while an agnostic co-worker might be open after several rounds of golf. The message is the same, but the method of communicating it is as wide and varied as life itself. Finding the correct method is like hitting the "sweet spot" on a tennis racket or golf club. It takes time, study, and practice, but once you find it you have more success. The "sweet spot" in missions is called contextualization and involves much more than learning a new language. It means knowing a country's religious, political, and social conditions. Correct theology, financial backing, and language acquisition are meaningless without contextualization. This book tells the story of a German organization struggling to contextualize the gospel in a very hostile environment. Its mission was to revive a dying church, characterized by centuries-old religious pride and pluralism. This study details the challenges of faithfully communicating the gospel in a post-Christian culture and serves as a study to enable missionaries to recognize and respond to cultural issues affecting the contextualization process.

1

Defeat and Disgrace

Germany in Context

Proclamation No. 1

To the People of Germany:

I, general Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, do hereby proclaim as follows: The Allied Forces serving under my command have now entered Germany. We come as conquerors, but not as oppressors. In the area of Germany occupied by the forces under my command, we shall obliterate Nazism and German militarism. We shall overthrow the Nazi rule, dissolve the Nazi party and abolish the cruel, oppressive and discriminatory laws and institutions, which the party has created . . . Issued, March 1945.1

History in Germany is the national pastime. Everything centers on it whether it be familial, parochial, or political. This is something many Americans have failed to learn. According to Germans Americans have no history, relatively speaking, so they ignore it. Germans have a point, especially when you realize the doors of the local German bakery are older than our country. American missionaries and business people ignore this fact to their peril. Why does it take Germans so long to make a decision about anything? Why do they think Americans are rude and pushy? Why do Americans think Germans are so unfriendly? Why have so few Germans accepted Christ as their personal Savior? These problems are solvable, but not without contextualization.

I want to introduce you, the reader, to the German culture. This is the first and most important step in contextualizing the good news about Jesus, and will take some effort on your part. To understand Germans, you have to understand the aftermath of World War II. Yes, you can skip the entire story of WWII, but you have to know what happened to Germans after their defeat. This is what still haunts them today and is key to understanding the German psyche and the contextualization process. Most importantly, Germany is a mission field. There are 82 million Germans, making it the most populated country in Europe, but only 2.5 percent of Germans have trusted Christ as Savior. Understanding how the postwar period affected the German mind and heart is the key to contextualizing the gospel in this very complex and needy mission field. Finally, the postwar period serves as a direct link to the founding of the German Church Growth Association.

The Effects of the War on Germany

In 1937, the German Reich extended over 470,662 square kilometers. During the course of World War II more land was added through the acquisition of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, and Russia. Following the May 8, 1945 unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces Germany lost 24.20 percent of its original area.2 It no longer included the lands of the former Reich east of the Oder-Neisse Line such as parts of Pomerania, West Prussia, Silesia, and East Prussia. These former German areas were then integrated into Poland and Russia.3 Since the Russians had insisted on holding on to all the parts of Poland they had annexed in 1939 (the Curzon Line), the Poles were compensated with the lands of the former German Reich.

The Allies were divided on administrating postwar Germany. The Russians’ idea of democracy was a Bolshevized Germany, a people’s republic subservient to Moscow. In October of 1945, it became apparent this problem with the Russians was not going to be resolved. In April of 1949, the western Allies agreed to replace the military government with a civilian government. In May, the Constituent Parliament adopted the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of the future Federal Republic of Germany. In the Russian zone, a constitution for the Democratic Republic of Germany was adopted, and by August, the institutions of the new country were in place. Politically and ideologically, the division of Germany was initiated. With the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the division of the two states of Germany was complete.4

The Effects of the War on the German People

The German problems of 1945 were immeasurable. Beyond the fact that they were a conquered people, their immediate needs were food, shelter, clothing, purging (of Nazis), and disarmament. Refugees and displaced persons numbered in the millions. Almost 4.5 million Germans were expelled from the land annexed by Poland and poured into western Germany. Hundreds of thousands of these refugees, mostly the elderly, women, and children never arrived at their intended destination. All central and state governments had collapsed; county and city governments no longer existed. People searched for shelter, clothing, loved ones, and food.5 By the end of the war, few Germans were living in their homes. Millions of city dwellers had sought safety in the countryside, and millions fled from the east to the west, fearing the hordes of Russians.

Two and a half million German civilians died in the war. Every major German city was a pile of rubble. For example, in Berlin, a city of four million, there were more houses destroyed than ever had existed in Munich. The historian Friedrich Meincke wrote that in 1945 “Germany was a burned out crater of power politics.”6 Everywhere there was hunger and despair. The end of the war created more hardships instead of less. Three million German soldiers had died in the war. Nearly a million German prisoners of war died in captivity in Siberian prisons. According to the official calculation in 1959 of the West German government, 7,032,800 Germans perished in Hitler’s war. War tribunals tried 22,000 Germans for war crimes. Fifteen hundred of these were executed and 15,000 imprisoned.7

The Allies’ desire to rehabilitate the Germans was applied to a demoralized and wretched people. One hundred thousand people were dying of hunger in Hamburg at the end of 1946. In Cologne, only 12 percent of the children were of normal weight. Millions of Germans were without the basic needs to exist. The misery endured by the Germans is hard to imagine. Refugees had nothing but the clothes on their backs and no hope. They wandered from place to place, barred from every form of shelter, simply because there was nothing left to share. The death statistics of the German military and civilian war do not include the number of German refugees who died. The humiliation, physical and psychological damage to German women has yet to be fully comprehended. As the Red Army “freed” Germans from National Socialism, they raped over a million German girls and women.

Every aspect of German life felt the influence of the occupational forces. All four powers carried out de-Nazification efforts. However, in the West-Zone the Americans were especially fervent in carrying out this aspect of the occupation. Where the British and the French were somewhat liberal in how they carried out investigations, and willingly compromised on some issues, the Americans had no interest in compromise. They fired school teachers, university professors, public officials, and business leaders. Everyone having any dealings with the old regime, and any directly affiliated or even remotely involved with the administration of the Nazis was arrested. By the end of 1945, approximately one hundred thousand Germans had been detained. The Americans tried to sift through the population and found themselves inundated with over 13 million dossiers. This de-Nazification and re-education program continued until 1947 when it was obvious the program not only had failed, but actually hindered the r...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword - Dr. William Wagner
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Defeat and Disgrace
• Chapter 2: The Formative Years of German Church Growth 1967–1979
• Chapter 3: The Foundational Years of German Church Growth 1980–1985
• Chapter 4: German Church Growth Takes Root 1986–1990
• Chapter 5: The Zenith of German Church Growth 1991–1995
• Chapter 6: The Decline of German Church Growth 1996–2003
• Chapter 7: Analysis–German Church Growth and Missiology
• Appendix: For Further Reading
• Glossary
• Important Events in the Development of the GCGA
• Bibliography