Mission to postwar Germany

The gospel amid the ruins

In 1945 Germany was in ruins. Whether they had supported Hitler or not, the people of Germany were now paying a high price for their country’s attempt to dominate Europe.

Twenty million German soldiers were dead, wounded or held prisoner in foreign lands. Allied bombing had killed half a million civilians and wiped out half the country’s housing. More than 7 million Germans were homeless, soon to be joined by 12 million ethnic German refugees driven out of eastern Europe.

Starvation and disease were rampant as the four victorious Allied powers each took over administration of part of Germany.

Less visible was the spiritual and cultural devastation of a society that had once been the heart of Christian Europe, but now stared into the abyss left behind by the pagan delusion of Nazism. A few in the German churches had provided a courageous witness against Hitler. Some had compromised. Many were discouraged.

In his 2017 book Saving Germany, Alberta historian James C. Enns uncovers the little-known story of how Canadian and American Protestants responded to the ruin of Germany. Protestants in both countries were quick to help this country that had so recently been their enemy.

Anabaptist and evangelical churches in North America played a major role in this effort.

One of the first organizations to get involved was Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), an umbrella group co-ordinating the efforts of several Mennonite denominations in the U.S. and Canada. In 1947 MCC provided over 3,850 tons of food to Germany – two-fifths of all food aid shipped by nongovernmental aid suppliers that year, surpassing much larger denominational groups.

MCC also helped rebuild churches and set up community service centres. In Heilbronn, where the centre of the city had been wiped out by Allied firebombing, MCC helped build a church for the large local Mennonite congregation, a building also used for distributing relief and spiritual help to the wider community.

The Baptist World Alliance engaged in similar activities on a smaller scale, with a special focus on rebuilding churches for the small Baptist minority that had been left without many of their buildings at the same time as a wave of refugees swelled their numbers.

Nondenominational evangelical ministries like Youth for Christ also played an important role in postwar Germany, focusing especially on evangelism.

The largest such mission in Germany in the postwar years was Janz Team Ministries (JTM), a group founded and run by Canadians. JTM began as a gospel music quartet from the Canadian Prairies made up of brothers Leo, Hildor and Adolph Janz, together with Adolph’s brother-in-law Corrie Enns and accompanist Harding Braaten.

The young men shared a Mennonite Brethren faith and rural background, and had all attended Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta. Their performances combined singing with an evangelistic call to personal conversion.

Their initial foray into Germany in 1951 led to a permanent move to Europe in 1956. JTM quickly grew into a major ministry that ran a popular radio broadcast reaching much of Europe, and held successful mass evangelistic meetings throughout Germany. The Janz brothers and their coworkers in the gospel looked for strong support from the local churches before they would hold an evangelistic rally, and insisted on ending every meeting and broadcast with a call to receive Christ.

German pastors were initially skeptical that such an “American” technique would work in Germany, but many became enthusiastic supporters when thousands of people accepted Christ.

The work of Evangelicals in postwar Germany did not bring about a massive spiritual revival of the whole nation, as some had hoped. But Enns credits JTM with making mass evangelism widely acceptable in Germany, and helping create a warm reception for Billy Graham’s work in the country.

And the efforts of MCC and the Baptist World Alliance helped give the Freikirchen – the small Protestant free churches which were not part of the main Lutheran/Reformed established Church – a new legitimacy as a religious option in the eyes of postwar German society.

The small but vital evangelical presence in today’s Germany owes much to the North Americans who had compassion for their former enemies in 1945. /FT

Janz Team Ministries began as a gospel music quartet from the Canadian Prairies.