JANE HOLSLAG
An abridged extract from the author’s 2013 Protestant Theological University doctoral dissertation with the above title.
The Church’s witness is manifest in all that it does and in all dimensions of its life service. Importantly for this discussion, that missional witness is even within, among, and to the Christian community itself. Here I use the word “missional” and not “missionary,” for in American English the term “missionary” can have a very distinct, dated, and limited usage. Traditionally, it is implicit that missionaries are sent out by a mission agency or a denomination to bring the Gospel to those who have not heard it. Being missional, on the other hand, is witnessing to and participating in God’s redemptive and transforming mission already operative in the world. At the outset of the 21st century, the newer English word “missional” has come to identify the Church’s nature and activity under the larger contextual umbrella of the “mission of God” (missio Dei). As South African theologian David Bosch writes in Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (1991): “In the new image mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. …Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world, and the church is viewed as the instrument for that mission.” The missional body is realizing its identity when assembled for worship or witnessing through proclamation and service, when ministering to any in need or gathered and united in fellowship. Most North American Christians sitting in the pew would understand and use the more familiar word “fellowship” in reference to what they do. The word usage then ranges from Bible study groups to coffee hour after worship. Though varied in biblical usage, I use “fellowship” [Greek: koinonia] in my research to refer to the community in Christ given through the Holy Spirit, Who shares in and actively engages in a common life or in a shared encounter, however short or long. Yet, however the term is understood, fellowship is unlikely to be labeled mission, or a missional activity where “missional” is used as a descriptor of what Christians do while “being church.”
The German and U.S. founders of Berlin Fellowship recognized that this program, a Christian-to-Christian “fellowship/koinonia” experience, was considerably more than a chat over coffee. As a visitation across borders, it was an activity of the church being the church in an ecumenical sense, the gathered body of believers participating in and sharing in their common faith. My research asks: Was this shared experience of fellowship a place, a happening, an encounter of a missional nature for the East Germans?
How a cross-cultural or intercultural encounter is experienced and interpreted by either partner reflects differences. Each partner brings their own culture and context to the encounter. Both experience boundaries because of these differences. In the case of Berlin Fellowship, the boundaries were clear, for the political and historical reality and divisions of the Cold War world were not invisible. In fact, it was the building of the Berlin Wall and the change in travel restrictions, a physical and political assault on the city of Berlin in particular on 13 August 1961, which contributed to the first group of American Presbyterians being urged by German hosts to attend a pastors’ conference in East Berlin that same autumn.
Yet Berlin Fellowship participants were not only bound to and in a very real way defined by their own contexts, for their encounters propelled them into being intercontextual (newly related to a situation and to others beyond their borders because of their Christian faith). The very reason for their meetings and ongoing visits had its origins and was centered in that which they shared, the Christian faith. While participants were certainly bound to and defined by their background cultures, in so far as they bumped up against each other and were “together” because of their Christian faith, they experienced a form of interculturality, even in a momentary sense.
Looking back, my East German interviewees articulate the undeniable factor of the Berlin Wall and amazement at the fact that people from the other side crossed over it to visit them. The interviewees all refer repeatedly to the border’s existence and its power to create a ghetto-like life, to wall in, to lock up, to isolate, to insulate, and to cut off news from the outside. Of course, the East Germans knew they were meeting sister and brother Christians, but the dividing line between these two peoples was not simply crossed because of a shared tenet of faith. The border was not only a physical boundary and reality, but a spiritual one as well. However, the border’s effect was not only negative, for it is quite often noted by the Easterners that being cut off from the outside somehow made “something” unique happen in a Berlin Fellowship encounter.
The essence of Berlin Fellowship was described in various ways, but the interviewees focus first on the “coming” of the American visitors. One person makes it very clear what happened, at least for him—Berlin Fellowship communicated to him that he and his congregation counted, were worth visiting: “We are interesting for them.” The coming was more than tourists crossing borders, for it is labeled a Zuwendung, an act of care and attention, or, as one bishop put it, an example of diaconal power and solidarity. The “place” of solidarity and ecumenical being together was achieved rather rapidly, often happening quickly in the first hours of meeting between East Germans and Americans. That is noted by almost all those interviewed and marveled at, even years after the events; a rapport and a unique kind of intimacy or trust, a kind of closeness seemed to happen.
The experience was new and different: “It was always fascinating to hear from the opposite side… I think they were out of the ordinary in two ways… for the Americans who had the opportunity to see how we live, what the reality of the Iron Curtain was… and [we could meet] the reality of the evil capitalists, as Americans were labeled. Yes, this picture of the enemy was softened by human encounter, by a person-toperson meeting.” In one interview, the speaker refers to the fact that the “walls had fallen” because of or through Berlin Fellowship, and he concludes with reference to a time and a place. “The wall in Berlin stood as before. The border was as always. But through this [meeting], I believe that the walls in peoples’ heads were considerably reduced in size. And that one can even have contact over deep trenches and high borders [in a place and point in time] where people find one another.”
Is this a new place the visitors bring with them, or is it rather a new place created and experienced by both conversation partners, a place in between? This unique place of meeting and engaged communication is pondered by a few interviewees, who name its center Jesus and call it a mystery. “There was a line [of communication or connection] that made this ministry then and now unexplainable. Simply, I’d say an encounter that was somehow mysterious.” This place of trust is not necessarily comfortable and is indeed a liminal setting, a place “in between” that is fascinating and alarming at the same time. However, what makes it fascinating and alarming yet also safe is what one person identifies as the work of God in the midst of the fellowship experience, there on the spot. “It has an effect not just because it was nice for him or for me, but because it was God’s doing, because the Holy Spirit found a place in the midst of our lives and in this fellowship.”
One stranger met another stranger and in that encounter they found themselves on neither’s territory, for they met in a kind of Sperrgebiet [German: prohibited area], a border-land, a land in-between. However, it was that border-land which became the place of genuine engagement and meeting. It was there “in the gap,” in a place between strangers who had never met before and would probably never meet again, that Berlin Fellowship was at home. This place of between-ness or in-betweenness became a place of missional encounter and coming together, of listening and being listened to, of nurture and encouragement, of solidarity and dialogue of fellowship. In the midst of differences and in spite of everything that worked against it at the time, this “place” became oikos (Greek: home) in the oikumene (Greek: the inhabited world), not as an abstract universality, but as a lived experience and encounter.
Koinonia is a missional reality not to be underestimated, for fellowship can and does act in a parabolic sense to point beyond itself. As an incarnational encounter for all participants, this place of meeting becomes a place of liberation and freedom while at the same time a place of belonging and of home, a “dwelling place for God.” Fellowship is, I believe, a yet-to-be-understood treasure of wisdom and witness, hope and learning for those seeking to “do” something in mission. Just being with and for the other as host or as guest is integral to “doing” mission or missional endeavors.
Jane Holslag is a retired Presbyterian minister and mission coworker. An alumna of Princeton Theological Seminary, she has taught at LCC International University (formerly Lithuania Christian College), Klaipėda. She completed her doctorate at the Protestant Theological University in The Netherlands.
