June, 2010
Dear Church Family,
We went to Dachau this week. As a result, I have a question for Dr. Mike Wittmer who is preaching to the Bricks. Hopefully, he will give an answer however brief from the pulpit.
Dachau was, of course, the infamous Nazi concentration camp where people were imprisoned and subjected to awful atrocities. Most of you are familiar with those accounts. I won’t detail them further in a Sunday morning letter. (In the included picture I am listening to a English recording detailing how a camp intended for 10,000 prisoners housed 30,000 tortured image bearers by the end of the war).
What struck me about the trip to Dachau was that we rode a train through the land of the Reformation to get there. At one point we traveled from Berne to Strasbourg tracing a route that Calvin and Bucer traveled by horse. From there, we crossed the Rhine and ventured into Germany and the land of Luther and Melanchthon.
And, as many villages as there are across Germany, there are churches in the center. Churches all across the land. So, Dr. Wittmer, how could the geographical center of the Reformation give way to the Holocaust?
Keep in mind that in terms of church history, it wasn’t that long from the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries until the Holocaust in the 20th century. If church history thus far is a week long, then the Reformation was on Thursday afternoon and the Holocaust was on Saturday.
Again, how do we go from Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon and Bucer on Thursday to Hitler on Saturday morning?
I’ll let the guy preaching speak to the question. But, as your pastor, I will send this message from the land of the Reformation, “Don’t stop believing.” If we build our church on the sandy land, then we can expect it to collapse during the first hard rain. There’s a lot for us to think about. While, I was proud to see the plaque remembering the United States troops that liberated the camp, I quickly reminded myself of the “Abortion Holocaust.”
You’re in good hands. But, we miss you. We are praying for you. Christ is all.
On for the King,
Pastor Chris Brauns
