Study finds new immigrants in about half of hospitable congregations.
The apartment buildings were built for workers in the waning days of the East German Republic—formidable buildings assembled from prefabricated concrete slabs. But today, the Plattenbauen, as they are often called, are home to migrant families from Ukraine and Eritrea, Afghanistan and Romania, Nigeria and Syria.
“Each apartment block has its own community, its own dynamics, its own culture,” said Ute Paul, a German Christian, as she walked through the Gotha, Germany, suburb.
As she reached Coburger Place, a central square with shops and a small casino that serves as the neighborhood’s main hangout spot, Paul pointed out another sign of change and new life.
There was a small storefront with words written across the window: “From dark to light.”
The shop is the principal gathering place for the Mustard Seed District Mission. There, for the past seven years, Michael Weinmann and his wife, Christiane, have been “experimenting with new forms of community in Gotha-West,” Paul said. She and her husband, Frank, joined the Weinmanns last year.
Since the Mustard Seed team started trying to minister to new arrivals in Gotha, they’ve had to relinquish a lot of what is assumed about mission and adapt to the everyday realities of those God has given them to serve. Now, they focus less on events and more on “relationships, ‘accidental’ encounters, and natural life in the district,” she said.
The result, Paul said, has been the creation of “a vibrant network of relationships between people of different backgrounds and origins from across the world.”
Mustard Seed is just one example of how the movement of asylum seekers, economic migrants, and internally displaced …
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