Christus-Treff

Today was my second Sunday spent here in Mar-velous-burg, so I thought it would be appropriate to give an account of the Church body I have found here.

Christus-Treff, literally, 'Christ-meeting' is the name of the church, and it meets every Thursday night at 8 and every Sunday morning at 10. Thursday nights are the best though, because we meet in the Old Gothic Lutherische Kirche, who's tower I see right out my window. It's freezing in there, so the second time I went I was sure to bring gloves! The acoustics there are amazing, and I have a new appreciation for Gothic architecture; it draws your attention to the majesty of God in a way that modern Churches often fail to.

Christus-Treff is contemporary, and a lot like many churches I've been to back home (except auf Deutsch). It's really neat, because many of the songs that we sing are the German counterparts of English worship songs. This is especially nice, because I already have an idea of what the song is about, so when a grey vocabulary word crops up, I can usually make an educated guess as to the meaning. Worshipping in German has been amazing. It has helped build my vocabulary in areas that I wouldn't learn in my Sprachkurs, but areas which are nonetheless very important to me. Learning how to understand my faith auf Deutsch has been exciting.

Christus Treff is also helpful, because it is a time of structured listening, with a specific context. My years of Bible quizzing are proving to be invaluable as I hear a Bible passage and instantly have a framework to infer new vocabulary from. It's exciting to see how much my comprehension has improved just from my first Sunday here a week ago. Today I understood almost the entire sermon (except when I spaced out writing down a particularly long word to look up later), and felt like I came away not simply having had a good language\culture experience, but feeling like I do at home when I come away from a sermon with real life things to think about.

Today was also really neat because they had the equivalent of the 'Missions Moment' that my church has back at home. Today's moment was about the country of Somalia. That was really awesome, because last semester I got to be an English tutor for some Somali refugees. Hearing about their country, all the way across the world in Germany, and then breaking off into small groups and hearing the voices of a hundred Germans praying for Somalia the way I would after sessions last fall, it just made me realize that this is what life is all about, hardcore.

I can tell already that Christus-Treff is going to be one of the most significant parts of my time here in Germany, and I am already thinking about how much I will miss it!

P.S. I don't think I can ever sing Agnus Dei in English again...it's just so much better in German,
sorry Michael W....