Christian Andresen Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and this show is known for lots of things. One of the things it's known for is to get you to think biblically, at least that's my hope, that's my prayer.

I want you to turn on the radio and say to yourself, how do I look at the world from a biblical perspective, through the lens of Scripture?

And so today, I'm really excited, I have a guest, not over the phone, not through Morris Code, not through the telegraph system, but sitting right next to me, one meter away, is my friend

Christian Andreessen. Christian, welcome to the studio here at No Compromise Radio ministry. Great to be here.

Now, I want you to talk a little bit, and I want our listeners to try to figure out, where are you from?

Tell me about your wife and kids. Well, my wife is

Cheryl, she's actually from Fresno, so you don't know where I'm from. But I have four children, and they are with me in Berlin, actually.

All right. Well, Christian is a missionary in Berlin, originally from Germany, and I've been there and ministered with him, and I wanted to have him in the studio today so you could get to know the ministry over there, what evangelicalism is like over there, and learn about how

God is building His Church through great means, through small means, and everything in between.

So Christian, maybe we could start off this way. Tell us what you do in Berlin, and I think that'll be a good start.

Well, we are involved in a Russian -German church, and I'm involved with a training center where we train men for the work of the ministry, but not only for Berlin, but from all over German -speaking countries, including

Switzerland. Well, in Berlin, in the Russian -German church, which is an interesting concept, why

Russian -German? Well, in the last 20 years, a lot of German -speaking Russians or Germans who went to Russia have returned, and it's in the hundred thousands already, and they have started churches, and one of them has been started, and that was probably in 2002, in East Berlin, and since then, four churches have been planted, and we have one of this, part of the second church planned, where we have service on Sunday in German and in Russian, actually.

I'm not teaching Russian, but it's just exciting to see how it's growing, and it's a unique thing because it's a whole different cultural group, and yet they have planted in the last 20 years anywhere between 500 to 1 ,000 churches in Germany already.

Well, I love that concept, Christian. For the listening audience who do not know, they don't know

Christian, we support him as a missionary, Bethlehem Bible Church supports him, and what we like to do with our missionary philosophy is what we do in the states, we like to do overseas as well.

We have the same philosophy of ministry, and that is training up men of God, of course, if they're married, that's great, and their families, but training up men of God to proclaim the

Word of God with a high view of Christ and preaching verse by verse, preaching expositionally, and that's exactly what

Christian does overseas. Christian, tell me the state of the church in Germany now.

Maybe give me the main line first and then evangelical. Well, usually when we say anything about the church, we divide them between Catholics and the

Protestant church. The Catholics, I don't need to say much about it, it's that 24 million part of the church, 20 or 25 million in the same, 22 to 23 million

Protestant in Germany, but that's not where we work with. We work with the other groups, smaller groups, which add up probably to, anyway, around a million, a million and a half,

I imagine, of individual denominations or independent churches, but it's not really big when you think about a country like Germany with 80 million people, that's anywhere between 1 % to 1 .5%,

2 % of born -again Christians, and we work with the small groups, and as I mentioned, mainly

Russian Germans, but also other groups, Baptists, just independent churches. So the state of the church really is not very strong.

It's weak. A lot of the churches which have been planted in the last 20, 25 years don't have trained leadership really.

They just started, and later on they realized, we need more training. We just can't deal with the

Word of God in a proper way. So that's what we try to offer them, is a training center and with our training at the church itself.

Well, Christian, I think it's probably true in Germany. They have a slogan in Africa, and the slogan is, the pew is higher than the pulpit.

That is to say, the people in the pew have been trained, maybe university -trained, but those in the pulpit, maybe sixth grade, seventh grade, middle school, high school, they're not trained very well.

So do you think that's common in Germany as well, where the people are just not trained for pulpit ministry?

They are not trained for pulpit ministry, you're right about that, but they are trained in other fields. I mean, they might have another profession and they're highly trained, but when it comes to the ministry and the

Word of God, it's the training. It's just, I would say in some ways, it's a joke.

I mean, there they expect it's the highest calling and the lowest investment they put into that.

Christian, tell me about, and tell the listeners about the taxes, and do you declare, if you live in Germany, what you are, and then some of the money of your taxes goes to the particular church, the mainline churches?

I found that fascinating. Yeah, that's actually why they call them a state church, because the state collects the tax for the church, like kind of a church tax.

So whatever income you have, you pay so much percent of it towards the church. So you don't do any

Sunday offerings or something like this, but you pay automatically from your paycheck, and that's in the major denomination, the

Catholic and the Protestant church, not from the independent churches, of course. And so what happens, at least in my experience being over there a few times, then you have a church that's a real church, an evangelical church, a church that you're at, and the churches that you're trying to plant, the people that attend, they aren't really trained in how to give sacrificially, are they?

They're not. And that's a total new concept that they really, the church is built on donation from themselves, because they have never done it, not physically, they never think about it, it's just deducted from their paycheck.

And then it's a minimal amount, and it's not from the heart, as we learned from 1

Corinthians or 2 Corinthians 9, you know, the cheerful giver is the one God wants to bless.

But that doesn't happen here at all, and therefore we really have to retrain the people in Germany to pay, let's say, to support their own church, the home church, the pastors and all the leaders in the church.

Well, we have Christian Andresen online, no, he's right here in the studio, and he is a missionary in Germany, in Berlin, and I love

Christian because it is his desire to proclaim the Gospel, but also train up men who are adequately equipped to preach the

Gospel to other folks. And so, Christian, tell me why you're in the United States right now. Well, I'm here to get further training, actually, in biblical counseling, because there's a great need.

And people, you know, even if they're pastors and men in the ministry, they know the

Word of God, but they have not really learned how to apply it in practical ways and help people deal with their problem in a biblical way.

And so that's, we want to start a whole new program in the fall and September of biblical counseling, a one -year program where we lead them through this whole process of, you know, coming from the

Word of God to really apply it to problem situation and leading the people through it, and hopefully to such a place where they can themselves deal with a problem biblically.

Christian, you graduated from Master's Seminary about the same time I was there, and you regularly take a group of men to the

Shepherds Conference. Tell us about that, and then tell us about the Shepherds Conference that you have in Germany now.

Well, this year, for instance, we had about 10, 12 men from Germany and Switzerland at the

Shepherds Conference. It was an excitement for us because some of them are pastors, some of them are young men just becoming the leaders they're supposed to be, and for them to see thousands of men who are excited about the

Word of God to listen to expository preaching and to be involved in the ministry is something else.

It's something which I don't experience in Germany as much. And so it was just the next step of a vision where they see, well,

God is doing something not only in our small area in Germany but around the world.

Well, we do something similar since 2001. We have a small

Shepherds Conference which started probably with 60, 70 people, and the last Shepherds Conference was 10 times the size of 700 in Bonn.

And we try to do the same thing, to bring leaders together from German -speaking countries and all of Europe.

I mean, by now, we had 14 countries represented, and just to encourage them in the ministry by giving them good biblical expository preaching, teaching, and give them materials they need and just build a kind of fellowship that helps them in the coming years as they minister in very difficult places sometimes.

And you've had excellent speakers throughout the years that people might have probably heard of. Mark Dever has been there to speak.

Right, yeah. John MacArthur, I don't know if he was there live, but he was over video, of course. Yeah, he was. He's nearly every time we have him via video conferencing, we had him live a couple times.

Do you guys have good technology there in Germany to make sure John's broadcasting? We do, we do.

But it's kind of funny because we started first with this satellite idea, and then it's so expensive, we could as well bring whole staff from Grace Churchill.

But now you can really do it over the internet, and the costs are minimal.

Tell us about your relationship with John MacArthur, and John's been over there in the ministry, and give us the link so people—I guess here's what

I want, Christian. I want you to tell me about the website and how people could partner with your ministry, but I want them to hear first the tie -in with John MacArthur, because I don't trust missionaries that I don't know.

I mean, I'm glad for their work, but I like to know the tie -in. I like to know that they have a high view of Scripture, a high view of Christ's exclusive work on Calvary.

They have a high view of preaching. So if people know that you're tied in with MacArthur, they probably can trust you.

Well, it was interesting. I went to Grace Church in 84, 85, went to Logos Bible Institute.

Actually John MacArthur was one of my teachers at that time. His own daughter was in our class with my wife, who

I'm married to now. We met her there. You met Cheryl in a Logos Bible Institute class where John MacArthur was the teacher?

That was right. Wow. Did he say, you two, you know, it's God's will for you two to get married or something? No, he was not that close, but we had him in class.

Actually he graded some of my papers. Not always so good, but yes, we had—it was an incredible time.

So we were under the ministry since 1984. I was right away involved in international ministry and missions, and it's never stopped.

I was trained by the man at the church, by John himself in many ways, and I had to preach my sermon for ordination in front of him and all the elders, which was really humbling.

But at the end, he at least said, I'm ready to go. So that was exciting. John said of himself he's ready to go, or he said of you, you're ready to go?

I'm ready to go. No, it was funny. And you know, the way to learn it, and I was under the gun because I just finished a seminary and I wanted to go out to the field to Germany as soon as I could.

A few months later, I went to the jail every week just to walk on the facilities where nobody can disturb me and I can't get calls.

It was kind of funny. And one of the chaplains coached me, so it was great. But to John, he has been so involved in our ministry.

He actually made it possible that we start the European Bible Training Center by just helping us in any way he can with providing material needs as well as just supporting it with his preaching, teaching books we were able to translate and the royalties he gave to the training center.

It's just an excitement to see that. Well, you're actually sent out by Grace Church in a sense, right? We don't maybe call it, you know,

GMI is not called Grace Church, but maybe it is. So Grace Church has sent you out? Correct. Yeah, I'm a missionary from Grace Church and I'm with them since 1997.

But since already 20 years, we are in full -time ministries through Grace Church. One of the things I like about the ministry over there, we call it

EBTC for European Bible Training Center, I like it that Christian is not about numbers.

Of course, we like it when people get saved, you know, the more the better. We like it when there's many people in the class.

But what we're not going to do, and I say we because I've had the privilege of teaching there before on several occasions and hopefully more, we're not going to lower the standards and compromise our theology and bring in psychology, bring in church growth, bring in whatever is hot at the time to train the men.

We'd rather train 20 men faithfully, biblically, with good fidelity of scriptures, than somehow have 200 people there in classes, right?

Tell me why you believe that. Well, I think it comes down to that we want to model it, and it's not only the teaching the content, of course that's the main focus, but you have to have the changed man who teaches the content.

And so I have all the teachers are pastors in some way, so the teaching ministry is on the side, even so that's kind of the tip of the iceberg, the best of the best, because that's what they learn in the ministry, that's what

I practice, they apply that to the students. And an average of five students are to one teacher in our training center and to a class, which is obviously when you think about financially it's impossible, but the thing is the outcome of it is unbelievable.

I mean those guys who are coming out of our training center at this time, they have already multiplied our ministry in such a way we never expected.

Five of them have started own Bible or church -based Bible training centers, and there are over 250 people in those classes, which is, it's not about numbers, but this is just to see the multiplication happens because you invest into few people a lot and don't cut away from it.

Christian, when it comes to preaching, by the way, I should introduce a Christian again, we have Christian Andresen here in America, he's working on his master's degree in counseling at Master's College, and he is here with his wife to preach this weekend at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Christian, tell me a little bit about the state of America coming from Europe, that is to say, how do you see

America and evangelicalism since you've been over there for a long time? What's your diagnosis, what's your prognosis as well?

Well, you have the very good side, obviously, when I'm thinking about the ministry, expository preaching ministry from America, I'm excited.

That's why we have our conference speakers coming from America, and not only the big names we know,

I mean I have a lot of good friends who were with me in seminary who are excellent expository preachers and men who disciple the men in the church.

But you have also the other side of America with the seeker -friendly, for us, ministry which is not gospel -focused, really, and driven and Bible -driven, but it's more result -driven and pragmatic, and that has been very difficult for us because our church, since it's weak, they buy into that until they realize, well, we get numbers but we don't get depth, and we lose people into sinful lifestyles because they can't deal with it biblically.

Christian, do you think it'd be fair to say as German chocolate is to Hershey's chocolate, so too—I was going to say, the state of evangelicalism in America is like a

Hershey's chocolate bar. No, I wouldn't say that. You have also the Godiva chocolate here, you know.

Oh, that's right, that's right. Christian, if someone wants to get onto your website and look at the EBTC, you actually have an

English website as well. What's your website? It's www .ebtc

-online .org. So for those of you that couldn't hear that German accent, it's ebtc -online .org.

And what if somebody said, we'd like to really investigate this a little bit more, we're looking for a missionary to support, how would they go about supporting you?

Well, the information—the best thing is obviously to send us an email through the EBTC, but also just—that's probably—you will find all the links.

Send us an email, we get in contact with you. There's also possible to support the

EBTC and that you can do it right online. Well, you could also email us at info at nocompromiseradio .com,

and we could help out Christian in that regard. When I was there last time, the ministry is expanding wonderfully into Switzerland, and just great things are happening.

We want to preach Christ crucified verse by verse, of course resurrected, but we are here in the studio with Christian Andresen.

He gave me a tour to Lutherstadt, or whatever it's called, in Wittenberg. If you were going to describe to our listeners in the radio audience what a tour to Wittenberg would be like, what would that be like for them?

Well, you probably would fly to Germany, but then we travel usually by train from Berlin to Wittenberg.

You spend a half a day to a day in Wittenberg, depending how interested you are in reading some of the documents from Luther.

But it's just exciting. You go to the Luther house where you see all the places where he himself lived, his kitchen, his rooms where he taught and trained the students.

Okay, I've got to stop you right there. Christian and I had a group of men, and Christian was giving them a tour in the museum there in the

Luther house, and Christian got a phone call because he's making all these connections with the Switzerland EBTC, and he's the big time, you know, big high roller and calling

Piper and MacArthur and Devere and all these guys. So then Christian looked at me and he said, I'll be right back.

You continue giving the men the tour in the Luther house. And I said, okay.

So I walked over and began to talk about this, that, or the other. I didn't have any idea what I was talking about.

Some kind of tetzel in the indulgences, a coin in the coffer rings, you know, a soul in Purgatory Springs, and thankfully

Christian came back pretty fast. Wow. Yeah, it was good. I mean, they were excited. I don't know what you told them, but it was great.

But yeah, you would see all these things, the details, I mean, about Luther, there's a lot of good, good information, exciting to see that.

And then we have a privilege to go into the library where original works from Luther on doing his times are, even works where he has written in comments on the side of the books and Bible.

So I have a good contact to the librarian there, and we were even able to hold some of the first printing of the

September edition, 1521, in our own hands.

So that's something what you don't get every day. When I was standing there holding that Bible, and I was glad to hold it because Christian said, oh, this is where I brought

MacArthur, and I'm going to bring you too. And so here I am holding that Bible. Then my son is there, and we asked the librarian, you know, could he hold it?

And I've got a picture of my son, Luke, holding that 1521 Luther Bible with Luther's little inscription there.

And so remember, Christian, we asked the librarian about how much did this cost, and he said something like two million euros.

Well, actually, I think five times the price. Oh, 10 million euros. And I thought, here we are holding this. And then while we're holding it, he goes back into another room.

We could have ran. Yeah, you could have ran, but not far. It's a small city. You would have to plan that really well.

But I hope nobody is planning to do that now. And tell us about the church where he preached.

You can walk up in the pulpit and see that. Yeah, there's a church, and he preached there for 21 years. And it's still there.

It's a great opportunity just to see what God has done. Actually, there's a place behind the pulpit where – what do they call it?

Yeah, some kind of like little area place behind the pulpit. It's behind it.

I know we're going to talk about those paintings. Inscriptions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of funny. It's portraying kind of the situation from hell.

Well, anyway, there's one – it's the side where it's paradise and the one is hell.

And if one of his students didn't make it, they inscribed the name on the hell.

And if they made it, they did inscribe the name on the – basically in paradise. It was kind of interesting.

Well, when we went there, Christian, and looked at those Karnak pictures and paintings rather, you gave me that one where we walked out of the museum, and it's right over there by my door.

It shows Luther in a pulpit preaching to a lot of peasants across the scene. But in the middle, there's a picture of Jesus on the cross.

And so it has nothing to do with Roman Catholicism. What is Luther trying to say in that picture, a Karnak? Well, he didn't want to portray himself or anybody else, but Christ crucified in the middle.

So that's things that if he preaches, he preaches him, and they see Christ, not him. That's exactly right.

So we have Christian Andreessen today in the studio. We've got about a minute left. If you'd like to know more about the ministry that God has given

Christian in Germany and Switzerland and beyond, ebtc -online .org,

ebtc -online .org, and he is the contact there for us in Germany and Switzerland.

I have the privilege of going to Greece this fall with you guys to teach Corinthians in Corinth.

Is that right? In Corinth and other places where we will travel, yeah. Looking forward. Yeah, that is a great opportunity.

The men are learning and growing. They'll fly down from Germany. I mean, how about that? Let's learn about Corinth, but we better be in Corinth when we learn about it.

And so that is one of the great benefits of being there in Europe. Christian, are you going to look at some other churches or visit some other churches in your trips, in your stay here?

Yes, I will. I will be up in Washington in Keyport. We'll be visiting a church there. And I've been already in Minnesota and some other churches in Central California.

Well, if you're looking for a missionary to support as a church or individually, this is going to be an excellent opportunity for you to proclaim the gospel through these men, including

Christian Andresen, in Europe. With the dollar and the euro, they need money to support the ministry there, and so I can't affirm the ministry too much.

Christian, 10 seconds left. Thank you for attending today. Thank you for having me here. I'm excited to hear what

God will do through the ministry here. Amen. NoCompromiseRadio .com. Info at No Compromise Radio.

God bless you. Right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.