Steve & David shared some feedback / stories from their weekend serving the church plant in Chemnitz for their Prayer Weekend
Steve shared:
Thank you very much. David and I were part of a group of four of us from the UK, there were two others from Grace Church in Stoke that went out to the prayer weekend two weekends ago for the ChristCentral (Newfrontiers) church plant, in Chemnitz with Markus and Leah. It was just really great because there was people, as well as us from the UK, there were people from various parts of Germany, one family from the German-speaking part of Switzerland and we're all praying together. We pray together simultaneously, as well as in tongues, in English and German. We worshiped, you know, and praised God, together simultaneously in those languages as well. So, it's a bit of a foretaste of heaven!

The prayer weekend was really good because we prayed into things to do with the education, the youth church and young people. There's the whole political situation there, refugees and migrants, economy and start-ups, and then working together across the churches.

One thing that was, well, it wasn't arranged or organised by the church, Erlebt Kerche Chemnitz or Markus and Leah, but I think it was arranged by God, because when we got to pray in the marketplace, there was this guy, a busker, from Belarus who was playing the instrumentals on his guitar of Christian choruses. So, we all got gathered around him and we worshipped around him together.

So please pray for those aspects I've just shared, particularly in your own prayer times. We will also post details if you want to sign up for a newsletter to join in with monthly other prayer meetings for more details. We can share those, put those details out on joined.

But finally, because it affects somebody from Derby, Ruth, who felt called to go out there and be part of the church. We really need to pray, an urgent prayer request came through yesterday as well. We were praying when we were there, and I know many of you have been praying for her anyway. But she needs a job to be able to stay there. So it's now quite an urgent prayer, so if I could aks you to really pray. Could you pray for that if you want to pray for anything specific for the church, then pray for that.

David continued:
Thank you, Steve. It was wonderful to go and see Markus and Leah in the place that they've been talking about for so long. We've been friends of theirs for a long time and seeing how God has taken them from being people that felt called to be in Germany to being in their flat was quite fun!

The city is an interesting place, it's a real mix of architecture from sort of Communist era, Brutalist, concrete structures to some very beautiful old German buildings in the city centre too. Much of Chemnitz was obliterated by bombs in the war, so a lot of people live in flats rather than houses, and hence the architecture that you see.

We spent Sunday morning with the church, and the church name means “He lives”, which we think is a wonderful name. They meet in a small community centre, on the east side of the city, close to where Markus and Leah live, actually on a tram stop, which is handy from where we were staying but great also if you want to visit as well!

The worship was wonderful, it was a real mixture of German and English and nobody seemed to mind that we were belting out in English while they were singing in German. I hope I wasn't too distracting!

Dave Keeping from Grace Church in Stoke shared about what it should look like when we meet together as the people of God and being temples of the Holy Spirit, a people filled with the Spirit. Which was fantastic, he did a really great job of talking about what that means and what it means to be a temple. He showed us pictures of the temple in the Old Testament and it kind of explained some of the historical context of what that meant, which seemed to be really well received as well. I was able to share some prophetic words at the end and had people come and ask for prayer for most of the afternoon before we left, which was wonderful and tiring!

So, I think key takeaways, one of the things that I really was amazed by was the way that they'd planned their prayer time in particular spots across the city, which took the whole day. We were praying for various subjects there, they’d clearly spent a long time planning it. The power of praying as a group of people together across the city for specific things was really great!

Also the unity that we could see, different people, different cultures, not just German and English, but lots of different cultures together, loving one another, caring for one another, being community was really great as well.

There was also just an expectation of God meeting with them, that's their desire and that was really exciting to see.

The team that they're building around them with lots of different people, but also people with similar life experience and similar challenges, which is great because there's that camaraderie, that being together and understanding one another better because of what people are going through, which is really exciting as well to see. So thank you. You can watch this update below: