Christianity in Germany: An Interview with the Staff of EBTC

And welcome to The Dividing Line, early on a Wednesday morning here in Phoenix, Arizona, but it is not early on a

Wednesday morning. It is afternoon over in Deutschland, ja?

And today on the program, we are going to be talking with some good friends of mine from EBTC, the

Evangelical Biblical Training Center in, well, I understand, I think

I can already hear Christian there. Also, Martin is in Switzerland, I'm not sure how that works.

But anyways, as some of you know, we had the opportunity, I guess

I shouldn't use the plural there, I had the opportunity of going to Berlin twice now, and this past June had the opportunity of teaching a class on textual criticism there in Berlin, and at the time

I said, you know, we really need to get you guys on the program, we need to introduce folks to the work there.

We have more and more people who are listening in Europe, and so if there's anything

I can do to help get word out to the European audience that EBTC is there, and all the folks that are associated there with, then we need to do that.

So that's what we're doing today. It took us long enough, mainly because, oh,

I don't know, they have these things called holidays back there. And we kept trying to schedule things, and I dropped the ball.

So hopefully, the noise I hear in the background there is at least

Christian Anderson. Christian, are you with me? Hello, Christian.

Okay, we're trying to work this out, because he's telling me in chat here that he's not able to hear us, even though we can hear him.

Okay, so you're working on that. I'm working on that. Okay, they can hear me now. I'm hearing something coming back through. Yes. Yes.

Oh, I love technology. Yes, but I can't hear you on my Skype. Hmm. All right.

Well, I guess you're going to have to fill for a little bit while I work on this. You keep working on it, brother.

I'll be happy to fill as much as I possibly can here. Once you get an idea that we're actually talking,

I can give a little more information on the background story here.

I was connected with Christian through my good friend Doug McMasters, who at the time was pastoring in London, and Doug and I flew over to Berlin from London, which is a nice easy hop.

It's pretty easy to get everywhere in that way, and had the opportunity of giving a lecture on the subject.

Also, during that particular trip, had the opportunity of, and it's the first time I had been to Germany, of visiting

Sachsenhausen, which was sort of Adolf Hitler's concentration camp, a very sobering place to go, obviously, any of the

World War II concentration camps are, but to walk up to a gate that has the Arbeit macht frei right there in the gate, work makes freedom, which was really, obviously, a mockery for millions of people, was a very sobering thing.

But also, at that time, had the opportunity of visiting Wittenberg for the first time, and standing in front of the

Wittenberg door and visiting the Luther house and the place where Luther burned the people.

Got it there? We are there. Hello, Christian. Yes, hello. Ah, there we go. Excellent.

Wonderful. I'm here with Theo, Matthias, and Thomas. All right,

Theo, Matthias, and Thomas. Good to see you, gentlemen. I hope you all haven't gotten into too much trouble since I was there, because when

I'm there, I keep you all in line, but when I leave, I don't know what happens. Well, that's fun, yeah.

Well, no, we are doing fine. Now, I need to let you know, Christian, I don't know if you're aware that the

Dividing Line is on YouTube now, so I doubt you can see that, but if you go back and look,

I am in uniform today, I am wearing an EBTC sweater vest, so I just wanted to let you know that I'm keeping things up here in the

U .S. for you. That's cool. Did you get the new shirt, the gray one? No, no. Did you send one?

I think we sent one. I'm going to make sure. Oh, yeah, you can have it on. Come on.

Well, now I'm excited. I'm looking forward to that. You all said you're going to be doing some more, so that's exciting.

Now, gentlemen, feel free to each one of you to pop in. I don't want to just be aiming everything at Christian, but he's the boss, so I suppose we'll start with the boss man.

Now, I was just giving you some information about the first time I had a chance to go over to Berlin and some of the places that we've been able to see and things like that, but I want to focus first and foremost upon what you guys are doing and the ministry of EBTC there, and then later on,

I'd like to talk a little bit about basically living as a Christian in Europe.

I think that a lot of Americans, and of course, a number of you, I know Christian, you've studied over here in the

United States, so you sort of have a dual way of understanding both the

American and European way, and you can help us to understand, but I want to look at that a little bit later on in our time together.

But first, for the people, and we're getting more and more people who are listening to the dividing line in Europe, talk to us a little bit about what your mission is there, what you're trying to accomplish, what is the major goal of EBTC?

Well, basically, we want to train men and women for the ministry, but obviously men for the preaching and leading ministry in the churches in Germany and German -speaking countries, but also all over Europe.

And we started in Berlin, in the east of Berlin in 2001, and then since then, the training center has grown into other areas of Germany as well as Switzerland, and now we see, we have now contacts, we started something, helping starting something in the

Czech Republic, we're working with the ministry in France, in Croatia, and also in Italy.

And there are other ministries on the way, and there are some thoughts to start something even in Austria. But our training is bi -vocational, and that's the goal, because it fits to the church situation we are in, in Germany, and in Europe, where most of the churches are smaller, and the pastors are not full -time, and so they would have to be working on the site, and then they would lead the church, and then training would be, to be in a full -time situation where they would go for a few years away for training, would really destroy to most parts the ministry and pull them out of the church, and then they end up not being that what they wanted to be, influential in the church and helping the church along.

So, all our ministry is bi -vocational, we start with one class,

Bible survey class, this is one year long, it's about once a month, for a day and a half about, 12 hours of teaching, the

Bible survey class, over one year, and then we build it up with a preacher's institute, biblical counseling classes, then now we're going to start a music ministry class, and then we have our master's classes, which will be on top of that, they will go another three years,

New Testament, Old Testament, Masters of Theology, and yeah, that's basically it.

It's a pretty broad program, and we have presently quite a few students,

I think we have in all the locations around 240 students. So, the classes, since obviously many of these men are bi -vocational, the vast majority are primarily over an intensive period of time, so they're, like when we did the

Textual Criticism class, it was many hours crammed into a short period of time, because they can't be gone for all that long a period of time.

Right, and they, we did a survey and asked what would they like, and if that would be better to extend it to two weeks, or do it in one week, and they all said intensive one week, so we don't have to be away for so long from our ministries, and then a lot is also done with their own studies, obviously, and online feedback through a website correction system, and so on.

Now, you mentioned that most of the churches there in Germany and elsewhere are smaller churches, obviously we're talking about a focused ministry to people who really have a high view of Scripture and a deep commitment to the

Word of God, the Bible as the Word of God, which is what tends to make churches smaller anywhere, actually.

So, obviously you're looking at a particular spectrum, you're not trying to water things down so as to have a super broad appeal outside of that realm, right?

Right. We are focused very much on the independent Bible churches that have grown up in the last 25 to 30 years in Germany, and you have about,

I assume about 1 ,000, anyway 1 ,100 churches that have grown up in the last 20 -25 years, which some of them have grown to be larger churches, but in general you're talking about a church around anywhere between 30 and 100.

Right, right. Well, my church here in Phoenix, we have somewhere over 50 members, maybe 100 people attending on a

Sunday morning, so that's certainly not an unusual size. Now, talk to me a little bit about the gentleman you have there with you, what range of teaching and classes do you all offer?

Maybe...oh, now, let me back up just a second. Now, when I taught, we had people from all over Europe there.

I mean, we had Poland and the Czech Republic, and had a whole group from Ukraine.

Yes. You're right. That's our master's classes. They come from all over Europe, and that's an exciting thing.

There are pastors and leaders already in their fields who come together for further studies, and that is so...it's

just a great time together. They grow close together. They have small groups, usually, and they, over the three years, they spend a lot of time together.

For instance, in 10 days, they're going to travel to Israel with 16 guys, and that will be an exciting time for them when they visit the

Holy Land, so to speak, for 10 days, intensively talking about Scripture, studying for it in the locations, and then seeing it on site, and then, you know, putting that back into the ministry as they preach and teach, where they have a better understanding of what the land looked like.

So, yes, you've seen all the European guys. They came together for this intensive class at the master's level.

That's true. They are from all over Europe. Yeah. Now, what's the relationship with the guys in Ukraine?

Well, I'm working...we are working together with the European Seminary, and we conduct classes together.

Some of them are in Ukraine. Some of them are here. We might even have some somewhere else, depending where the students are, because the teachers are coming from different sites, and we can model it that way.

And we have a very good relationship. We have actually two teachers who are coming, came till recently every month to teach a

Russian curriculum here in Berlin, since we have a few, three Russian -German churches, or four

Russian -German churches, and they trained those men for those churches, and that has gone on for the last four or five years, and has been very successful.

But at this time, we have trained our guys, so now we have on -site guys who know Russian enough so that they can teach the basic classes.

But otherwise, that's what our relation is. We help each other with the training centers, and that's another fairly large training center, as you know.

The Evangelical Church in Ukraine is one of the biggest, besides Romania, and they have,

I think, about 350 students alone in that facility. So we work well together.

It's a great partnership. Well, I'll be finding out in a matter of weeks. I'll be teaching Church History in Kiev, starting, what,

I think the 22nd, 23rd, something like that, of February. So, and that's all your fault, because you had all those great guys, and it still, to me, is one of the most amazing experiences, was to be teaching a class.

Now, textual criticism is not an easy class to teach and keep people's attention and things like that, but to have the whole front row populated by brothers from Ukraine who, the majority, the vast majority of them do not speak

English. And so I'm speaking English. We're in a German context. And then you've got that amazing young man in the other room who, for hours and hours on end, is live translating me for those guys who are wearing whatever you call the translational headgear, whatever it is.

I'm tired by the end of the day. As you may recall, it was a little bit warm that week.

In fact, it was downright hot that week. And I could not imagine what it would be like to try to listen to someone speaking, translating them into another language for the number of hours on end.

And that poor young man's going to be having to do that for me again in just a matter of weeks. So I'm not sure if he's just going to all of a sudden turn up missing or what.

If I were him, I would think about it. But he's actually looking forward to it, from what I've heard.

So that was an amazing experience. It really was. Yeah, it was. Well, let me tell you something about the men who are next to me.

Theo Friesen is my right -hand man here in Berlin. He's basically administrating the whole training center here in Berlin.

He's also teaching, expository preaching, as well as homiletics.

And he's a key guy. He's also pastor, preacher here at the church. So that's exciting.

And all of our guys are in ministry, very much involved. And that's one of the requirements. Well, wait a minute.

You actually let him out of that little office down there? Yeah, we just gave him the key.

We made another key now. Because every time

I'm there, I thought he was just chained there. And you just brought him food every once in a while. And that's his job.

Yeah, you're trying to make me look bad. No, no. They have freedom here. Oh, OK.

They can go home and sleep. Well, actually, yeah, that's true.

It's a small office. But anyway, that's Theo. Matthias next to me, he is overseeing theology here in Berlin.

And also teaches homiletics. Also is very involved in preaching here in the church.

And overseeing the extension in the Rhineland near Cologne. And administratively does all that, which is really exciting.

And that's growing, too. I think we have now 60 students there or something, or even more. We will have more.

But it's really an exciting thing. Then next to me also is Thomas Hochstetter.

He is overseeing right now doing hermeneutics. And is setting up a whole website online program for the

New Testament survey class. And he will oversee the whole music ministry, which we start this fall.

And that's a lot of work. And he has done a lot of work on that, too. And is leading the music ministry here at the church.

Plus many other things I can't even talk about. Which I appreciated while I was there.

It really is enjoyable for me to get to sing praise choruses in German when

I'm there. It really does sort of expand your horizons a bit. However, when I preached for the

Russian church, I was completely lost. I was just sort of staying there, humming and smiling.

Because I was trying to figure out a few of the Russian words up there.

But it wasn't going anywhere very well. Of course, some of you might have wished I wasn't trying to sing the

German words as well. But you all were kind enough not to say anything about that to me. If that's what you were thinking.

Matthias, let me drag you in here. Just simply because I've actually mentioned you on the air before.

You normally have the unfortunate duties of doing live translation.

And there's two different kinds. We did live translation into Russian. But that was somebody in the other room.

So it was sort of like the UN, the headphones thing. And I don't have to stop and start. But when we do the

German translation in the service. Or that first lecture we did or whatever else.

The seminar. I'm sorry? The seminar. And the seminar, exactly. We did

Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and all sorts of stuff like that. You have been the one primarily.

Now, who spelled you last time? Was that Tomas? Yes, I think

Tomas translated. Yeah, I think so too. So all of you guys have had to put up with me along those lines.

But for people who have never experienced that kind of work.

I'm going to tell you right now. It's tough on the translator and it's tough on the one speaking. It completely interrupts your normal cadence of speech.

You just feel so discombobulated. It's amazing how you get into a flow.

Especially as a preacher. You get into a flow. You have a certain cadence. You have a certain rhythm. And to have to stop and start.

The older you get, I think, the faster you forget what you were going to say anyways. So it really becomes extremely frustrating.

So you really need to have a good translator. And of course, that's always been the case. But I told people recently that it was a lot easier for me to speak at the

Russian church there. Because I had no earthly idea what the Russian translator was saying.

So he could have been coming up with stuff that had nothing to do with what I was saying. I wouldn't have known.

And Russian audiences are extremely difficult to read too. They just sort of look at you.

There's not much in the way of response to what you're saying. So it's difficult to gauge them.

But when you're translating for me, it's extremely distracting. Because I understand most of what you're saying.

And last time I even caught you sort of fixing something

I had said. And I stopped right in the middle. I said, that's not what I said. And you just sort of laughed.

I'm a translator. Yeah, you're translating into something that actually made sense, probably. You're probably cleaning things up for me.

But you didn't just come out of high school and go into theology.

You took quite an interesting route to get where you are, didn't you? Yes, I did.

Well, actually, I was pretty bad in English. I almost failed classes. But, well, that's where I come from.

So my interest grew because we didn't have good resources in German.

And I tried to study theology. And I bought all these English books.

And so my interest grew more and more. And that's how I learned English. But you're training.

You have training in some widely diverse fields, don't you? Oh, yeah.

Well, you mean my background as a nurse? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Actually, I come from this background. I studied being a nurse for five years in total.

I worked in the hospital in the emergency room mainly. Yeah. So were you interested in theology during that time?

Yes, I was. I was serving in a church in a youth group. And I worked as a nurse in a hospital and did youth ministry in our church.

So that's how I learned English and my interest grew. I see. Okay. All right.

I wonder what the connection was there. Because you've done a lot. And yet you're not exactly advanced in age yet.

So you've been a busy man. There's no two ways about it. Now, Thomas, you are the musical man over there.

Does the German church sort of develop its own music?

Or is a lot of that taking what's produced in the U .S. and things like that and making it fit over there?

Or is it a mixture? Or what? Because I recognized a lot of the music. It was just simply translated into German.

Is that predominant? Or is there a lot of specifically German material as well? Well, at our church you find a lot of English hymns translated into German because of the lack of any good material that's come out in the last number of years.

There are some churches that have created some songs, but they're to a large degree unsatisfactory when you compare them with the rich English hymns.

So we try and take over the best that we can find on the English side.

And recently there has been a lot of effort also put into translating Sovereign Grace music stuff.

There's a big church in Hamburg who does that. But apart from that, there isn't really much going on in that field.

And part of the hope of what we're doing is that we will get this kind of drive going in as well, that churches will write theologically correct and deep songs for the church.

That's obviously an important aspect, is to have the solid music. I mean, at my church we have the

Trinity Hymnal, and I don't think there's anything in there past about 1910, but obviously the content is the important issue, and it's extremely rich.

Of course, now I don't think, and I'm a little disappointed by this, we're going to have to fix this next time

I'm over there, which is right now, Lord willing, going to be in 2015. But I've not had the opportunity.

Well, let me take this back. You all did. Christian will probably remind me of this. We did play with the idea of singing

Ein Feste Berg in the back of the church when we were in Wittenberg.

They even had hymnals there. So I guess I would have had my opportunity. But there's some rich older hymnology from the days of Luther onward.

Is that sort of not brought into the modern context because of an association with state churchism, or just what?

Yeah, there is very little brought over from that age. Some of the more famous ones, like Ein Feste Berg, that would be one, but even that is largely forgotten.

I think the people who are most busy at this point in time in the German section creating new music is

Charismatics, as they would be in probably many other places, too. And they just don't fall back to that kind of material.

Right, right, I see. Now, Theo, you're doing theology, a lot of teaching in that area.

All of you, I'd like to have your comment on this. Look, looking from over here, over that direction, the heritage of German theology in our minds is extremely liberal and extremely destructive.

We think of Tübingen, we think of the whole school there, and just what has come out of Germany over the past 150 years has very rarely been conservative.

So you guys are going against the flow, shall we say. What does that mean as far as, when you're teaching, are the people coming in deeply impacted by that kind of liberal background, or because of the churches they're in, have they already sort of been separated from that anyways, or is it a mixture?

What are you facing there theologically in Germany? I answer for Theo, because I teach theology,

James. Okay. Well, the problem is, in most of the churches they are pretty conservative, and historical criticism is mainly taught at the university.

It's not taught in churches. So most students who come normally, the problem is they have no clue about all this bad theology, about historical criticism, and all the stuff which is going on.

And my main goal in teaching this is that they have a clue what is going on, and that they understand why it is wrong, why it is a false hermeneutical method, and how to give an answer to that.

Because normally if students, well, if younger guys from the youth group, if they go out and study for being a teacher, or even teaching religion at the school, they become confronted with liberal theology, with both mine and historical theology, and so on.

And there is a big danger, because normally pastors are not involved in this.

They don't know how to refuse it, they don't know what's the danger, they don't know how to answer all these questions.

That is obviously something that is heavy upon my heart, would be the interface of the

Christian faith with the culture, and of course the apologetic issues that come up as a result.

Now, the first thing that I remember sitting down at a little cafe with Christian and Doug McMasters, whom we've managed to rescue from Europe and drag back here to the

United States, by the way, was a discussion on the secular nature of the society that you live in there, and the pressures that that places upon the

Church. And interestingly enough, as we were driving even there, there was comments about, well, now we're passing through into what was

East Berlin, and so the years of communism. And Christian took me to the

Stasi prison the last time I was there. You know, Christian, when you think about it, other than Wittenberg, you keep taking me to very depressing places.

I just thought I'd mention that in passing. I'm sorry, but this is real life.

This is real life. I know, the Stasi prison in Sachsenhausen. What's next? But obviously that harkens back to a time when

Christianity was very, very difficult times indeed.

And so, talk a little bit about what it's like to be a

Christian and a Christian leader in an extremely secular society.

What are the challenges? Well, the challenge at first is people can't even understand that we would have any interest in anything that has to do with the

Bible. I mean, for them it's just totally foreign except you're in your church circle.

They understand it, but if you go outside of the church circle, Germany, East Germany in particular, and where we live, and going to the

Polish border, that is the most secular society, according to some research done, where there are more atheists than anywhere else, and more than 50 % do not believe that there is a

God. So when we talk about the God, they basically think, you don't mean that, really.

Are you crazy? I mean, no clear -thinking person believes in a

God. You just try to find something that helps you along because you have difficulties, you have problems in your life.

I mean, that's basically how they probably view ourselves. And we had some of the situations where we had recently a wedding a year ago actually with a missionary daughter who has married a young man who comes out of his family who are totally atheist.

And on the wedding it was such an extreme situation where you saw both parties and you thought, well, they didn't want to fit together.

They couldn't believe that we even... I mean, they saw it was all a show what we do.

They couldn't imagine that somebody believes that. So being in that situation you really have to explain what the

Bible is. Some people have never heard about Genesis, about Noah's Ark, about the floods, about Adam and Eve.

I mean, they don't know. It's amazing. You start with basically from the beginning everything new and you try to explain them and they will admit that they have never heard about it and they didn't even think that somebody even believes in it.

They would absolutely go along with evolution and science and that's it. Right.

And so how do you... I mean, obviously that worldview impacts everything.

It impacts education, it impacts morality, ethics. We hear, for example

I just heard recently that there is an ongoing court action in Germany relating to two brothers who want to marry.

I mean, so obviously bringing the whole counsel of God to bear upon the entirety of one's life for someone who comes from a secular background, it must seem rather radical.

I mean, are you looked at as being pretty radical people? Yes, we are seen as radical, not obviously in everybody's eyes.

People who know us personally wouldn't say that, obviously. They say, well, we're just normal. We are nice, hopefully, and we are loving people and caring for each other.

But when they come down to our beliefs they would put us in the same group with radicals, with Islamists and others, which is interesting.

Even politicians have started to do that now because they would call us definitely fundamentalists, because we believe the

Bible is true and we want to live by it. Right. Well, what does that mean as far as the plans you have for the future?

I mean, what kind of challenges does that raise? I mean, here in the United States, we still have freedom of speech

It's eroding quickly and the people in charge aren't overly concerned about the

Christian freedom to speak. But you're farther down the road. In other words, a lot of us over here are looking at you guys and going is that where we're going to be in just a matter of years?

What can we learn from you as to how we can find the line of remaining faithful and functional all at the same time?

Because that's what you're doing. You're trying to get as wide an audience as you can as far as training men for ministry and things like that, but the wider you cast the net, the more you're exposing yourself to those people who would wish to suppress the proclamation of the

Gospel. That's true. I mean, we can just thank God that He has protected us so far.

Of course, we were attacked and we will be always attacked, and there are always people who question us and talk behind our backs, but the greatest problems are usually not from the world, interestingly.

It's usually other Christian groups. That's something which you probably have experienced too.

But the world is really, they don't, you know, they laugh about us. As long as we don't get too big and too influential, then probably that's going to happen.

And so our, really, hope is we are not making big propaganda how big and whatever we are.

We really want to reach the individuals and train the individual people that they again strengthen the churches and reach out.

Of course, the Gospel has always a positive and a negative side. The negative side obviously shows the sin of other people's life and their fallacy and all that, but the positive side is that they see that they see that the people live a life that is caring, loving, and how they treat each other, if we are seen by the love of one another, which we should.

And that's what we hope for, and that's what we are striving for, to not only talk, but also to live it.

And it's a challenge and we will, I mean, I'm waiting for the time when they're going to push on us not only laws,

I mean the laws exist already now the question is when they reinforce the laws that you have to be so open with all different other social groups and bring them into the church and into the training ministries that we basically have to close it down.

That's happening here and we hear about it happening there as well in fact our friend who audited the class from Dresden sent me some links to some proposed

EU ordinances just a couple days ago that looked very, very troubling and we obviously need to pray for all the faithful there in Europe because clearly that is where the pressure is and here in the

United States we're just sort of following along like a puppy dog, unfortunately with those things.

But as far as that's one thing as far as the ministry goes, as far as teaching and things like that, what about just basic evangelism?

I mean, I just got a note, I just saw on Twitter that Tony Maiano was arrested in Dundee, Scotland for street preaching is that pretty much the way it is all across Europe or what kind of where is the level of freedom?

How much resistance do you feel in openly proclaiming to someone in a public context the

Gospel in these days? That's an interesting part as we are still allowed to do that here but as long as nobody complains as soon as there is a complaint from anybody, we are always going to have to basically leave or shut down or they will find something.

We had recently something with the people in Berlin, maybe Thomas you can explain that. We have a number of sources you can go to and basically to the police we are going to spread some things about the church and that's what they did and they were allowed to do that by the government and then some people started complaining about it and so badly so that police came and said, yeah, you know although we did say that it's ok that you should better not do that because people started complaining about it.

So it's a lot in that direction. They are fine with it until it causes a stir and then you are out.

Keep as many people as possible happy and even if it's a small minority that complains then you shut down everyone at that point and just go on from there.

I guess most people realize that Christians are going to be less likely to whine and complain about things and hence they'll go that direction but it's a sad thing to observe.

Now what about educationally? What about we've been told anyways there's a very strong statism as far as what you're taught in the schools that obviously

I've used the illustration I may have used it over there it would be nice if we could install some type of device around the door of the church that would automatically electronically remove the influence of a non -Christian worldview from the people who are walking into our churches that would make preaching and teaching so much easier and of course we'd need to run the pastor through it about 30 times especially before preaching but no such devices exist though if anyone comes up with it it'll probably be a

German anyways but since no such device exists that's one of the biggest challenges we have is that the message of the

Bible is going to produce a Christian worldview which is going to clash rather strongly with a secular worldview which is what your people are surrounded by 24 -7 in the culture so I would imagine that there has to be a very strong emphasis in your education over there amongst the

Christians of building a Christian worldview and then having to repair that Christian worldview on a daily basis in light of what we're spiritually experiencing from the society around us as a grandfather now we experience with our children they go to public school and that's the norm you can't, there are some

Christian private schools but generally everybody goes to public school and then the kids come home you basically re -teach what they just heard from a biblical view our young men here their fathers and their children they go now to school

I think that's exactly what you experience they come home the kids with some influence they had from a non -Christian background and very strong influence and you basically have to give them the perspective of what we know from the

Bible so the kids our children are in the war zone much more sometimes than we are

I just have to admit that I remember that with my oldest daughter that she was supposed to write an article about some diverse situation and it was on homosexuality interestingly and she presented it from a biblical view which was she was supposed to do that but when she did it basically the teachers, even the teachers were so strong against it even so she explained it well and she was like totally pushed aside in a school of a thousand people and it was interesting but they asked her even to do that so it's just they just don't have tolerance for Christian view anymore.

No, no the intolerance of the tolerant is obviously something we all have seen from the left for a long long time so some of the other gentlemen there have younger children right now

I would imagine isn't that something let me put it this way, it would seem to be such a challenge to do that on a daily basis when you're working so hard you have so many things going on that the temptation would be to allow a synthesis to take place where you basically

Christianize a secular world view so that you don't have to really have all the problems that you would have otherwise that would seem to be, to me anyways to be a real danger to the

German church is to become comfortable with that secular world view and minimize the conflict that has to exist between a person who says

Caesar is Lord versus someone who says Jesus is Lord am

I correct in identifying that as a real danger? Yes, my son is in first grade now and I realized that one of the things that I have to do more and more now as he is 7 years old

I have to teach him not right or wrong but I have to teach him the principles so that he himself is equipped to start to decide what is good and what is wrong and I think the dangers that you just described is definitely front and center but I would even go further on and say that this problem of how did you call it again?

Synthesizing culture and Bible starts with myself in seeing and hearing what my son tells me and start to explain to him in a kind of gray scale instead of black and white

I find myself in the need of Yeah It does strike me as something that we will be having to deal with, are already dealing with in many situations here in the

United States not quite as advanced as you all are in that particular direction as yet but certainly that is something that I talk about all the time and it doesn't just impact our kids it impacts us the people who let's say you have the opportunity of evangelizing the spirit of God moves in someone's heart brings the conviction of sin and brings them into communion with Christ now they come into the church and they have all this baggage of the secular world view that has been all they've ever ever known that kind of intense discipleship that is now required to form a

Christian world view and to make it consistent, that takes a lot of time and I would imagine that becomes much more of an emphasis for you gentlemen than many people say in the

South here in the United States would even begin to understand because at least they still have a world view that has been deeply influenced by Christianity they don't have the years of communist rule and so on and so forth in the background so in the training that EBTC offers is that sort of an element in the classes that might be something that wouldn't be as strongly emphasized here but it must be emphasized there because of the context in which you're ministering?

When it comes down to practical theology and parenting and we have a lot of young parents who are studying with us as fathers you realize that very fast that theology in your mind and your head is not necessarily practiced in life and in upbringing of their children in their relationship with their wives in their work ethics and so yes we are working on that a lot right now and we're trying to help people who are unclear about it who are not coming from a

Christian background who became new believers and that's a huge challenge for them because they do not understand how to change

I mean how to even direct their lives I mean it's one thing to know what you should do it's another thing what you really then do because you usually fall back into what you have learned when you were young at your own home what you see your parents do and things are changing so drastically that even we as parents don't even understand anymore how much the school and the education tries to influence them towards a certain philosophy of life

I mean that is amazing sometimes when this whole thing's about the just tolerance about sexuality about lifestyles about culture and everything it seems like there are no more absolutes no more you know guiding lines that can say this is right or that's wrong as soon as you say somebody is wrong so to speak or say that that's according to the

Bible it's wrong they say well that's your view right so yes of course that's difficult what as we're wrapping up here what first of all what do you all want

Christians here in the United States to know about the church in Germany that we can pray for and not just Germany but you all work with people outside of even that context as well but in Europe broadly what can we pray for what can we do to be of assistance to the promulgation of the gospel there in Europe first it's obviously that the local church is strengthened that the leadership in the local church really understands the responsibility to train and to disciple that discipleship will be again the center of the ministry older women teaching younger women older men teaching younger men and that goes down to all the other areas besides that also that we are able really to build other church based training centers in the different European context

France is a needed place since Croatia something is already happening but Czech Republic, Poland Denmark, Sweden Finland all those places

Holland we do need more training people and men and women are trained for the work of the ministry in the church and through that then even become maybe even a mission force again but right now it's the churches are very very weak and the leadership is weak and sometimes because the leadership is weak the churches tend to also be moved by every wind of doctrine and we see them fall right and left and it's sad to see in Berlin we have seen many churches closed down in the last years and so that's sad but there is hope there is on the other hand we see church plants and we see new training centers develop and I mean that is a positive side to it too

So because of a lack of biblical training you do see a you just talked about being blown about by every wind of doctrine what is the situation as far as false teaching there in Germany and in Europe do false teachers have a

I would imagine they have just as much trouble getting through to secularists as anybody else does but they tend to steal sheep anyways and so they come into already established churches and sell their wares and so is there a lack of discernment then as well yeah well

I think one of the biggest issues you see it's a bad combination of untrained men, untrained churches and a society that upholds anything goes as a rule you put those two together you have a breeding ground for false doctrines coming into the church which we see a lot

I've been looking a little bit more into the whole new Calvinism thing and you're probably aware of that how that influences as well so there's a lot going on there inside the churches obviously in the world they do not have much standing because their ideas are just as whack to the world as they are, as ours are

I didn't quite follow the very last statement there in regards to I sort of lost what you were referring to the influence in the world of the false teachers is just as little as it is for us because it's as whack to the world as it is what we teach yeah

I just didn't know Benny Hinn was a real threat that type of thing

I did actually see a video of him in Kiev recently that I wanted to ask the guys about when

I get over there because I was pretty amazed at what I was watching in his appearances he does go over there doesn't he?

yeah, well he's also in Europe he's known here I mean this is the thing false teachers do come into the church because again there's no strong teaching the people are blown away with the wind of doctrine that comes in and so you see all the tendency and suddenly you go into a church where you thought oh this is a good church and stuff and then you see the people walking around with books from people you would say man, they should understand that that is not good theology and that is misleading right, right yeah, discernment is obviously exceptionally important now, folks can find out more about what y 'all are doing at ebtc -online .org

at ebtc -online .org at ebtc -online .org and if they get confused and they get there if they put a slash en then it'll be in English there is a little if you just go to ebtc -online .org

you'll see a little two little flags up in the upper left hand corner and see the problem is one is

German and one is British and you gotta understand Americans will go, well none of them are what

I speak you're right and in some ways that's true having been to England many times that is probably a true statement but if you click on the

British flag some of the words will have extra u's in them but you can get past that, it's okay you'll survive it you'll get the

English version and in fact, I've been sitting here while we've been talking, I had the mitarbeiter page up so that I could see pictures and associate voices with the familiar faces to me but if y 'all want to see the gentleman we've been talking with you can go to ebtc -online .org

and pray for their ministry there and I appreciate the fact that as you all mentioned you are individually involved in church ministry yourself, your facilities there are shared with a church that is both

German and Russian and very much involved in the life of the church,

I think that's vitally important too, you're not just out there doing your thing and not actually involved in church,

I think that's a very important element as well. So, finally any requests you would have for the listening audience outside of Europe, or even more so I guess what

I should say is in this last minute or so, to those who are listening in Europe, how could they get hold of you and if they contacted you, what kind of information could they get if they go, wow, this is something

I need, this is the exact kind of training I need, how can they get hold of you and things like that?

The best thing is to go to our website which you already mentioned ebtc -online .org

then you can reach us and we can send you any kind of information about all the courses and classes we have a good seminar a good place to meet us is really at the

Shepherds Conference which is in May next May in Wittenberg and there's one section, the first few days is in Russian only

Russian and then from Thursday to Saturday it's in German and English since it's translated, so that would be a great place to visit us and meet us but we are always happy to have guests and see what we are doing here in Berlin come to one of our weekends maybe also in Zurich or in the

Rhineland all of the opportunities are there and hopefully Lord willing, 2015 what are we going to do?

We're going to be in Switzerland and walking through the book of Hebrews Yes indeed, looking forward to that that's going to be it's going to come a lot faster than 2015 sounds like, that's for sure and one other thing

Christian, don't forget you've got a tall hill to climb we need to find a good

Roman Catholic to debate in 2017 in Wittenberg too, don't we?

We are working towards it it's a huge conference we plan for a whole week a conference in Wittenberg for the 500th anniversary of Luther's Reformation you can look at our website it will be posted soon we already reserved the whole all kinds of places to appear not only to debate

Catholics we also want to bring out the clear gospel and the Reformed theology so that's the main focus the problem is the folks in Wittenberg are the ones we need to let them know about what happened 500 years ago because other than all that Luther stuff around,

I'm not really sure they're all that wedded to it any longer that's the sad part hopefully we can bring that message to them that's right, that's exactly right well gentlemen, thank you very very much for joining me this afternoon for you and I hope that some of our

European listeners not only will contact you all, but that our American listeners and around the world will be praying for the ministry there of EBTC and I very much look forward to being with you all again in 2015 thanks for joining us today thank you

James alright, well thanks for joining us today on the program

I think it's important that we know what's going on around the world I think it's important for us to recognize the opposition that our brothers in Europe are facing and mainly because we can learn from them because it's coming our direction and some of them have been dealing with this for decades and so they've learned how to deal with these things and so I've just been really really encouraged by Christian Anderson and Matthias and Theo and Tomas and everyone that's involved there and it was good to talk with them again and it's also opened up the opportunity next month to go to Kiev, Ukraine and teach church history there so Ukraine in February this year,

September of 2015, teaching Hebrews in Zurich for EBTC and really excited about those opportunities, so pray for our brethren overseas and the challenges they have just as they pray for us as well thanks for listening to The Dividing Line we'll see you next time,