Greeting from the Rev. Werner Phillip of Germany for East German Partnership
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Watch this video greeting from the Rev. Werner Phillip of Germany, co-chairperson for the East German-Western PA Conference Partnership.
“Today, on the 20th anniversary of darkness turned to light, we celebrate with you,” the Rev. Joe Stains, co-chair of the partnership for Western PA, wrote in a message to the Rev. Werner Phillip, his counterpart in the East German Conference of the UMC. “We pause to laugh and cry and rejoice together once more. We salute you today, and we celebrate beside you the hopeful times before us.”
The partnership between the United Methodist Church’s Western PA Conference and the East German Conference dates to 1988, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was formed by Bishops George Bashore and Reudiger Minor, both now retired, and has resulted in numerous exchange visits by musical groups, work teams, youth and local church members, as well as formation of joint Volunteers in Mission teams that have traveled to Russia and Latin America. In addition to the Conference to Conference Partnership, Mt. Lebanon UMC has a sister relationship with with the Evangelical United Methodist Church in Zwickau.
In his letter to the East German partners, Stains said when he was a young schoolboy, “we learned about a wall that divided Germany, east from west. We heard tragic stories of families separated from one another, of people in prison or killed because they wanted to see the other part of their own country, of people who lost their jobs or were punishedfor wanting to learn too much about the West. We could feel only an echo of the sadness that we knew the people of Germany felt in their desire to be an undivided country again. I dreamed that one day, maybe in my own lifetime, Germany could be one, united country again”
Stains also recalled reading with wonder about “the candle services in Leipzig, andthen in the many cities and towns across the country in the autumn of 1989, about the remarkable trips across the Czechen border....“And then I remember the miracle, the parties on the wall in Berlin, The many wholaughed and cried and danced at the Brandenburg gate, around a structureth at seemed like an old, clumsy relic of an abandoned building project. And here, six hours away by the clock, I laughed and cried a bit, too.”
Stains, pastor of Homer City United Methodist Church, noted that in the early years of the Partnership there were only a few letters between our church leaders as letters had to be sent across oceans and through security. “There was no e-mail, scarcely any chance to talk by phone,” he said. “Onlyprayers were instant in reaching their destinations. We did not know what God wanted to do with our fledgling partnership--intended at first to givemoral support and mission outreach to Christians living behind that wall. Now, suddenly, all the rules might be different, and we would have to waitfor God to teach us what the new ways were.
He noted how far the Partnership had come from groups of adventurous youth who made exchange visits in the early 1990's to the more recent music tours choirs of children and pastors, and brass bands; and the mission teams helping firs t Germans and inner city Pennsylvanians, then Baltic and Russian and Latin American Christians in their witness to neighbors. All these are the great cloud of witnesses that have bound our hearts as one in Christ!” Stains wrote. “God opened those gates 20 years ago; and courageous waves of believers among you made so much of it possible.”