Europe – From the Field – Jan. 30, 2018
The CLC is in fellowship with Pastor Blanchard in France and David Weiss in Germany. Contact with others continues.
Below you have excerpts from emails with David Weiss on his outreach efforts.
8/21
! The people in Oldenburg are mostly very young people who wanna come to a more biblical and confessional position. They are from a mostly russian german church with ties both to the state church and (partially) the Latvian church. My first impression at our first meeting was quite positive, but it´s just the start of further contact as I hope. Creation is a great problem for the state church would break with them if they would openly confess 6 day creation- I told them about the biblical commandment to separate from false teachers. Once more we are reminded, that a position which takes the biblical account of creation as factual account is more and more under fire of the larger churches, not only the most liberal churches but more and more also by more conservative churches.
Thanks for the text on creation!
By the way: I just finished arranging the correspondance course material in German. It´s mostly made of translations of our texts in English and of my writings from my lectures in Leipzig in 2013 and 2014. We have text about hermeneutics, biblical history church history, fellowship, sacraments, end times and some other things; it might not cover everything, but it´s something to start with I guess and it took me a lot of work to arrange it. I also added a lot of copies from various books, but these aren´t digitalised on my computer yet. As I said in the past, teaching material in German is extremely important for outreach and I hope that some people will be interested- I thought of the Oldenburg people first and also
10/3
Some conclusions so far: Biblical hermeneutics is soooo important! The whole struggle about end times is mostly related to flawed hermeneutics. Another issue that I came across in that book is the claim that creation started in Gen 1:3 and the earth therefore is much older than the 6-10 theousand years that we normally refer to. another example of weird ideas that you have to deal with if you do mission work in Germany…
11/8
The main issue with the Oldenburg people is the doctrine of fellowship. I had some contact by Email in the past few weeks, that´s why I´m pointing at fellowship as the biggest problem (closed communion, prayer fellowship, doctrinal unity). Actually, there´s few people there that I would expect to be willing to have further discussions, many are already too much influenced by the state church. Creation is another important topic, but those who really disagree with us will stay with their church anyway if you ask me. The state churches officially reject six day creation and everyone who attends services or Bible classes there will be taught so! That´s a big problem here too
11/21
Some good news: I got in contact with a good group of Polish Lutherans in German Pomerania (Greifswald and Stralsund). One of them was friends with my granduncle. Most of the only know Polish and little German but I do my best to revive my Polish:)
No news from the Oldenburg people yet. I started watching the ILC classes again, but progress is quite slow so far.
12/22
year I´m going to move to my new place where I will have much better access to the internet. As soon as this is done, we should talk more about our future mission work in Germany as there are opportunities for a lot of new contacts- I wasn´t able to write much about this for I was busy with my work and as I lay down due to a heavy flu – but keep this in your prayers!
1/19
Some news about the Polish guys that I met before Christmas: They are having a bunch of contacts in Siebenbürgen (Transilvania). One of them met me last Saturday in Cologne: He is a Hungarian from Siebenbürgen and brother in law of one of the Poles. He and his daughter invited me to go there in spring in order to visit some churches of both Hungarians and Germans there. I don´t have many further details, but it might be a chance to meet people there- What do you think?
Also before Christmas, I met Konstantin Bauer (Gräfenstein was visting another church at that time) I shall say greetings from him- we had a nice talk and later another man from Bonn came who left the larger Bruedergemeinde some years ago.
There´s also a pastor Iliian who gave me his skype and Email. He is a Romanian lutheran pastor who works in Germany atm, mostly with Romanians. As he said he is neither with the state churches nor with LCMS/SELK.
From Pastor Jean Pierre Blanchard. He with his wife live in Athis-Mons continuing his social work with street people and needy in Paris. He has a French publication, Identite Lutherienne, that prominently features the CLC in it. The place where they are living has been sold so that they will have to find a new place to rent. Recently he wrote about a development in Alsace and what he has done lately.
12/28
A thing delights me, these that in France The CLC is more known than the synod of the Missouri, and the WELS, I had a debate on the radio last week further than 2 hours, to speak about my new book of sociology (attachment), the organizer one is Catholic author of works of philosophy, I was able to say about the Lutheran Orthodoxy and about the CLC a lot (this cultural radio is very listened in the country.).