Dear NT-NL Leaders:

This past two weeks my spouse and I have been leading a trip of NT-NL leaders and members to Germany. This group includes seven rostered leaders in NT-NL who have never had the opportunity to travel to the “Land of Luther.” I am grateful for the Disciplelife Alive Endowment and the Briarwood Legacy Endowment who provided significant scholarship to help those leader take part in this trip.

This trip, while encountering the Luther sites, also was not intended to be a “Luther Disneyland” experience. Our theme “Witnessing History” was intending to help us engage the 16th reformation as well as how that reformation heritage inspired individuals to be witnesses in their communities and contexts.

One of the places I wanted to be sure we visited was the St. Nicholaus Kirke in Leipzig and learning about the “Pray for Peace” movement. This is a story that far too few of us know, particularly us Lutherans, in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall. How the Rev. Christian Fuhrer began leading prayer meetings in the early 1980s highlighting the human rights abuses of communist oppression. These small prayer meetings grew until thousands were gathering each Monday despite violence and arrests of participants by the East German secret police. On October 9, 1989 tens of thousands of people gathered in the church and square, the possibility of violence were real, but nothing happened. The protest was peaceful and the police stood down. As a communist official later said “we were prepared for everything except the prayers and candles.” Word spread and a month later the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall occurred. This is part of our Lutheran reformation heritage and we should know and be inspired.

The reason I think this story is so important is that we often underestimate the power of gathering our communities for prayer. The power of what praying can and will do in and for us. Of witnessing to what God will do when we trust in that power of prayer.

Our reformation heritage encourages and invites us into witness. To proclaim the good news of God made real for you and for the world. Not caught up in structures of empire and oppression. But setting people free to love and serve boldly. This is what we are called to be as we do this work #JuntosEnMision/#TogetherInMission.

Bishop Gronberg