Talking about your own faith

At the online event "God spoke clearly ...", Christians from Africa and Germany spoke about how they "bear witness" to their faith.

Anyone who professes Christianity has a relationship with God. Christians speak to their God in prayer and experience that God speaks to them. But how can they themselves talk to other people about their faith and their encounters with God? Is "bearing witness to faith" even appropriate in a society characterised by secularism? How, when and where should Christians talk about their faith? This was the topic of an online event entitled "God spoke clearly to me ...", which was organised by two speakers from the Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony: Dr Joe Lüdemann, Consultant for Global Cultural Diversity / Ecumenical Cooperation with South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini and Kurt Herrera, Consultant for Church Development / Ecumenical Cooperation with Peru and Brazil. After two introductory impulses, the Zoom meeting provided an opportunity for dialogue between participants from South Africa, Ethiopia and Germany.

Thabisile Zulu is a member of the ELCSA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa) and completed a social volunteer service in Germany through the ELM in 2012. For her, one thing is certain: "There is definitely a God, a 'Master Mind'. And he is not silent. He speaks to us in different ways." According to Thabisile Zulu, God speaks firstly through the Bible, secondly in church services by listening to his word together and experiencing it together, but thirdly also in challenging situations. "These are usually the moments when we are in trouble. If we then sit down and listen within ourselves, we can hear God."

In his opening statement, Thomas Steinke, Head of Missionary Services at the House of Church Services of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, looked at the current crisis facing churches in Germany. Even before the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany) report on sexual abuse by church employees, the number of people leaving the Catholic and Protestant churches had recently risen dramatically - to almost 900,000 in 2022. "People are questioning the credibility of the church. At the same time, tradition and social convention have lost their binding power," says Thomas Steinke. Against this backdrop, he sees "personal witnessing" as a suitable form of communication in matters of faith. Especially as in a postmodern, pluralistic society, truth is mainly based on individual experience. "We need a contemporary general priesthood in which we interpret experiences religiously and share them publicly," he concluded.

In the ensuing debate, various aspects of this "speaking about faith" were formulated. "I find it easy to talk about my faith, but rather difficult in a public setting, for example in church services," said Almut Buhr from South Africa. For example, she had experienced a woman singing praises to God for the healing of her child in the presence of a man who had just lost a child.

Klaus Burckhardt, a former missionary, focussed on "false witness". Christian parties that reject refugees or even Donald Trump, who swears by the truth with the Bible in his hand, are part of this for him. Ernst-August Lüdemann, former director of the Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony, spoke about "bearing witness" in hopeless times. He cited the small circle that meets every Friday evening in the Peter and Paul Church in Hermannsburg to pray for peace as an example. "Doubt is a very deep part of it: God, why don't you stop the wars, the suffering? In the shared uncertainty of us Christians, we come together again and again in prayer. This is a path that we hope will bring us clarity."

Theology professor Erna Zone Gaetjens reminded us that "God also speaks through the power that comes into us through faith. When faith gives us wings where we were previously unmotivated and powerless." And of course God also speaks to others through our actions, as Ebise Ashana from Ethiopia noted.

But when it comes to really "bearing witness to faith" in words, the insight gained from the event could perhaps be best summarised in the words of Pastor Corinna Diestelkamp: "It is a great task to learn to speak about faith in a language that is understandable to others." And that, according to Thomas Steinke, is often also for pastors "as if they had to learn a foreign language".