Shipwrecked: Germany Update #2

So far in Germany, I've mostly shared about my experience as an expat in a foreign country, but I haven't been very good about giving regular updates about what we're actually doing here. For those of you who don't know, Dustin and I work as music and youth pastors at a growing church here in the southwest of Germany. We are in our third year (currently 2 years and 8 months). It's been a challenge full of both difficulties and blessings.

Heidelberg, where our church is located

We moved to a new country during a pandemic, started a new job, adjusted to a new culture, learned a new language (still learning), slowly gathered furniture for our home, learned how to drive manual, and are slowly but surely establishing ourselves in a community. *whew*

First, I should say, I love my job. We are able to work with people making music, worshiping together, teaching about worship, leadership, and the gospel, and we help navigate the challenges of a thriving, growing community. And because we are from the US, they give us a long leash--more vacation time to visit our family and our friends abroad. The job itself is flexible, we can work partially from home. And we've somehow managed to help develop their worship and youth programs despite a massive language barrier. We also live well because of the support and love from the community. When I need a tool, I call my neighbor. When I need a ride, I can call a friend. When I need help on a project, I can gather a group. And on the flip side, when they need me, I'm much more happy and willing to be there for them. This form of interdependence was hard to adjust to, since I grew up so used to being an island. It broke my pride a lot, not being able to do everything myself (and having so many people do things for us), but now this interdependence is probably the thing I love the most about this new culture.

The back of our sanctuary on a Sunday afternoon last January.

It's impossible to talk about our experience without discussing the challenges we faced during the pandemic.

Corona regulations of masking and distancing, quarantining and curfews--these were all things which discouraged and damaged community life. These things also had psychological effects. Our church decided at the start to try to meet as often as possible as much as the regulations would allow. And not many were against their decisions (to my surprise, having been in an American context where lately people are split down the middle on almost everything). And Germans really follow the rules. Some allowed themselves to become so isolated, they started to have mental breakdowns and even suicidal thoughts. Despite all that, we still somehow saw spiritual growth. We continued to have slow growth in numbers. Young families were still joining the church. Even now, God is doing the work of growth, and we are simply helping to manage it.

It feels like it's only been a few months since we finally reached a normal level of physical touch and interaction. Sometimes it's still awkward with people, and I still have to ask if hugs are okay (we are huggers at church, if you didn't know).

Part of our job ended up being to help people deal with psychological damage from prolonged absence of physical touch, and in some cases--human contact. And most of the damage happened to our teens. When we started the teen group, we could sense the intense anxiety and so we intentionally bent the rules for their sake. I've worked with youth for over a decade, and one thing I know, young teens need physical and verbal affection. I won't go into detail about how we specifically bent the rules, but I will say that for three years, our teens spent their entire weeks either at home in front of a screen, or with barriers between them and others. They learned to be hesitant to be around people, and scared of contact. Their anxiety levels were through the roof. They were struggling to cope, and some even struggling with suicidal thoughts, directly because of the lack of contact. All this during their formative years.

So we bent the rules and didn't keep it a secret. The parents knew we were bending the rules and never complained, despite their strict adherence to those rules themselves... They let us keep on doing it for the young people, and kept sending their kids to us, because they knew their kids needed it. We were a small oasis of *some* normalcy for them and the parents continued to express their appreciation for us being there.

It's a tradition for the preteens in a German church to go through a confirmation class. It's a year-long class where they learn about the basic tenets of their faith. Almost everyone goes through a confirmation class, even if they don't consider themselves believers. They usually have one retreat and one graduation ceremony at the end of the year. Our church also has them host one Sunday service to experience the duties of the church. The first year, Dustin and I sat in for some of these classes to get to know the kids, and learn how it's done.

Our teens in their confirmation class during semi-lockdowns 2021

Luckily the pandemic regulations started to relax, and we were able to take our youth on their retreat that first year. During that retreat, we had to take a corona test every morning as a precautionary measure, just to be allowed to be together. One morning at the breakfast table, a boy tested positive. I watched him crumble in horror and humiliation as his friends began scooting their chairs away from him. This was a special trip which every German kids expects to experience in their preteen life, and his had come to an abrupt end. His mom was there within 2 hours to pick him up (no one else got sick). I had never seen any moment like that in my life, where someone became a pariah to their group in a matter of seconds. I will never forget it. I know that was a trauma for him. I know it was extremely difficult for our leaders to enforce. And I know the pandemic caused our teens to experience a lot of other small traumas like this one. That can add up across two, three years.

Outside of this, we made the best of it and had a great time.

some of our preteens playing games at the retreat 2022

I also attempted a project choir for Christmas our first year. It was a big challenge to learn a whole new set of Christmas songs in a new language, and then to find decent and simple sheet music for a choir, and then to teach them in a language I was just learning. Most of what I found was in this extreme classical form. Poor Dustin ended up spending a lot of hours helping me arrange parts and make the sheet music. So a lot of blood, sweat, and tears--and so many more hours than I expected--went into preparing for the choir.

The act of directing the choir itself was also challenging because the corona cases went up as the weather got colder, so the severity of the rules also followed. We started in October, and decided to go as far as we could go. We started with 20 enthusiastic people, but with each new constraint people started dropping out. First we had to stand apart from each other, then we had to wear masks. Then we had to bring in the air purifier (which was loud), and then we had to test before each session. I had to direct people who could barely hear each other, and couldn't breath while singing with their masks on (it's impossible). And with the increasing amount of cases, people just didn't want to take the risk. If going to choir meant the possibility of getting corona and having to remove yourself from society for two weeks, while trying to somehow maintain a job and a family, it's just not worth it. That's way too invasive. For our actual Christmas Eve performance, our choir was down to five brave souls. And I was incredibly proud of them. We will probably attempt another choir this fall, if no corona regulations start to resurface.

Part of this experience has been learning about the German culture. Our process was a bit prolonged, with everyone being in lockdown half the year, for the first two years. So we continue to discover layers of cultural differences.

Germans are a concept-first culture, and Americans are a learn-by-doing culture. So there is quite a rub when we jump into a thing without explaining it first, which has happened... We didn't know what we didn't know, and others couldn't explain the problem, because they didn't know what we didn't know! We all assumed we understood the same things, but that was often not the case! It wasn't until we were in a feedback meeting later in our second year that I realized there was a huge misunderstanding between us and our department members. And I was so glad that it came to light, because then we were able to address it. And we did! We called our whole worship department into a meeting and talked about it: we shared our strategy, explained our cultural differences and how they played out, acknowledged the misunderstanding, acknowledged the consequences of our ignorance, dispelled any false narratives that resulted from it, and laid out our strategy to fix it. A lot of time and prayer went into this. I spent a whole week writing the presentation for that meeting, and working with a friend to translate it into German so that there were no misunderstandings. Already we had wonderful people who were super gracious with us, but after that, it felt like we had a clearer understanding and a deeper level of trust between us.

Dustin and I speaking on a Sunday 2021.

When you enter a new country, and you work with a community of people, you need to understand the flow of a year for people. Because this determines when you plan things so that the most people can attend. You need to know when most people are taking vacations, when they're the busiest, and what the expectations are for the holidays. And holidays are a very big part of the activity of church. So this has been an interesting process. Because of the pandemic, I haven't really started to learn the flow until this year, and now they have me planning the whole year in advance. Despite running an international ministry in the past, outside of special events and holiday celebrations, I've never been more than 6-months planned in advance. It can be overwhelming thinking through the whole year, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. Surely not without help. I've relied on specific people to help me navigate through this process.

Our pastor, Gregor, and his wife Kathrin, have been a huge support to us. Gregor has basically taught us how to do church in Germany, and Kathrin has personally helped me through some tough personal situations. Gregor has been super patient with us as we navigate the many challenges. Because of the language barrier, sometimes I missed meeting times, or confused days of the week, missed the whole gist of a topic of discussion (this still happens). Other times, I was responsible for something and didn't realize it (they thought I knew, and I didn't know I didn't know). Gregor has also fought for us in times of confusion, when people didn't understand us, and we literally couldn't explain ourselves in their language. Germans generally don't give a lot of affirmation (in my experience they struggle with giving it and even receiving it), and yet I have never felt so valued by a supervisor and a community.

Dustin has also been training a youth band. They started a year and a half ago, and some of them didn't even know how to play their instruments. But now they are a fully functioning music band and are almost ready to integrate into the main worship department. He has really done an excellent job, and we're about to start the next one.

In both our areas of ministry, music and youth, I am happy to see good things coming about. Our worship leaders are really catching what it means to flow in worship. They are growing and being challenged and becoming more free in their musical expression. This makes our work worth it. I also see that our teens have developed strong bonds and are genuinely good friends with each other. I've seen their anxiety and self-consciousness erode, and they are much more relaxed with each other. Having like-minded friends who support you--and with whom you can relax and be genuine--is the basis of a healthy community. Dustin and I are happy to have been able to facilitate that.

Our regular work schedule also allows us to get the rest we need. Germany (and I think most of Europe) has a different flow for employees than what we're used to. Every employee automatically gets one month of vacation days. If you include weekends, this adds up to roughly 6 weeks in a year. Because we are expats, our church gives us more vacation time to allow for visiting our family and friends across the globe. And the work expectations in ministry here are different. Our pastor expects us to have a sabbath day every week, and he expects us to draw boundaries and only attend events that we have the capacity for. He and the church elders check in with us to make sure we aren't over-working (in ministry, the tendency is always to do more, because the community always has needs). They've also given us a raise to help with expenses since the price of gas (and therefore heating) has risen due to the Ukraine war. The way they are able to care for us does a lot towards making me feel valued. And because of these things, Dustin and I are able to invest in our marriage and spend more time together. We have grown closer.

Despite the immense challenges of entering a new culture, I am able to see good coming out of our time here so far. I am very thankful for this season of life.

Here's a few more random things (I want to show more pictures of people, but they don't like to put their faces on social media.)

Tea time at a friend's house, with the view of Holy Spirit Church in Heidelberg 2022

A decked-out German breakfast table: candles, cake, fresh-baked bread rolls, and a selection of meats, cheeses, eggs, juices, tea, coffee, mineral water, and jams.