Sunday 29 January, 2012

The Darmstadtium

Today was a great Lord's Day!  We went to a worship service that was held at the Darmstadium, the concert hall in the downtown.  The Frei Evangelishe Alianz (Darmstadt Ministerial Association), held their second "International Gottesdienst."  It was a worship service sponsored by all the Protestant churches in the city.  We walked down to the hall, not really knowing what to expect.

View from the front...

 The place was packed!  We ended up in the top tier of seats, and had to stand for the first 10 minutes, then some ushers came and took us to another section where there were two places for us to sit.  The hall holds 1677 people, and there was hardly an empty seat in the house!  The Mayor of Darmstadt welcomed everyone with a very warm message.  There was great praise music (English and Germany), a Korean choir and a predominantly African choir.  The speaker was outstanding and was translated into English by a new friend that I met at the last Alianz meeting, Robert Thomason.  The message was very good, and very evangelical.

A view from the back of the house!

The crowd was very enthusiastic, and the  music was upbeat.  It was a great encouragement to us to know that there is a dynamic work of the Holy Spirit in the city - that we have many brothers and sisters in Christ who long to see this city reached with the Gospel. Our only regret of the day was that we arrived to late to participate in it!  But our hope is that they will do another one in the future and that we will be able to have an active role then.  The first of these services was held two years ago, and it is our hope that there will be another in a year or two.

After the service we had a chance to talk with some of the German pastors from the community whom I had met previously, and introduce them to Carol.  The reception was very warm and enthusiastic.  We look forward to working in the coming years with this group of Godly men and women.

Some of the Converge International
Fellowship  folks who attended.
(Bennie, Kevin, Carol & Bob)