Church in a Hamburg Hip Hop Night Club
Jesus Freaks - Jesus Freaks
Jesus Freaks (Germany) got started in 1992 when two or three people met in a small living room in Hamburg. There was one uniting thing: They were enthusiastic about Jesus. Their belief: He did not just die 2000 years ago, but he resurrected from the dead and is still alive today and that he is strongly interested in mankind.
We were eager to experience this living Jesus, and wanted to see his actions. Those who joined our meetings usually came, because they believed in Jesus, but were not accepted in other churches, just because of what they were.
In many Christian churches you can only find neat people. But there was no place for freaks to meet. A place to meet without being criticized for earrings, tattoos or torn jeans. These churches kept giving us the impression: If you want to be a real Christian, you have to look like we do, wear clothes like we do, like the music we like ... But the Jesus that you can find in the Bible seemed to be different. He minced no words, criticized everything he did not accept, but first of all, everyone was accepted the way he was.
In this living room many of us started to pray free of any shyness. Before God we were what we were and just wanted to receive everything he wanted to give us. We asked Him: Can we be the way we are and still live a radical life with You? What could a church look like that is full of freaks? How could services, sermons, worship, things that gathered dust for centuries, look like for freaks?
The first answer was an answer that we had not expected: The presence of God that we experienced knocked us out. I know, this sounds strange for someone who never experienced this, but Jesus was so real and near that you thought you just had to reach out with your hand to touch Him. In this time real miracles happened. Almost all our prayers were answered. Many abruptly stopped taking drugs, because they were so filled up by the presence of Jesus. I think, Jesus did all this to make one thing clear, to say: I like this idea, I have given it to you and I will bless you.
We tried a lot of things to find out, how to celebrate a service without organ and without a liturgy. This news spread quickly: there are freaks who believe in Jesus, and so a lot of people visited us: Christians, atheists, Buddhists, nihilists, punks, hippies, normalos, junkies... Some said: What a bullshit and never came back again.
But most of those who came could feel that something was happening in our meetings that they could not explain rationally, and they came back. One of those who had declared firmly that he did not believe in God, told us after his fist visit: ... I am not a Christian yet, but after this experience I will never be able to say again that there is no God. It took him two more years until he made his mind up to believe in Jesus.
The meeting that we had, was named Jesus-Abhaumlng-Abend (hang out in Jesus) grew quickly. When neighbors threatened to throw us out of our flat if we continue to pray the Lord's prayer with 25 people at 1 o'clock in the night, we moved to a cafe; in the Schanzenviertel in Hamburg.
There this small group became a group of 200 by 1994 coming regularly to our Friday evening meetings. Many freaks decided to start a new life with Jesus. We celebrated the Lord supper with beer and bread, baptized those who wanted to in the Alster river, had marriage celebrations, and even had to bury some of those who belonged to the group.
After a totally unexpected wave of press visits and reports on a lot of channels and in a lot of papers like Spiegel, Focus, Stern, RTL, NDR, ARD and even international reports in BBC and The European we decided to become a church officially.
The church founding service took place in a Hip-Hop club in Hamburg St. Pauli, with more than 800 people attending. Later we regularly celebrated our Friday evening there.
We have a great fear of becoming as intolerant and getting stuck like many other churches did. Especially when you need structures and leadership this can become incalculable and unbearable. We have to live with this danger and have to fight against it, hoping that the One all our church is about, will help us.
Of course there is a permanent accusation to us being a sect. This thought is very common in narrow-minded Germany. When you say you believe in Jesus and do not belong to the Catholic church, many people immediately think about animal sacrifices, group sex or mass hypnosis. NO YOU ARE WRONG!!!
In the next years the whole thing grew to an extent that was beyond the borders of Hamburg. All of a sudden we got mail from freaks all around Germany who had the same idea but had never dared to make it happen. In a very short period of time Jesus Freak groups sprang up like mushrooms. We decided that although we came from and worked in different cities, we had to be close to one another.
We realised that we could only pull through our vision, a Jesus movement in Europe, when we worked together. So, Jesus Freaks International was founded as the official union of all churches and groups.
Once a year Freakstock takes place where we all meet and party together with Jesus. Since the Jesus Freaks have existed many people have come to know the resurrected Jesus. We ourselves went through ups and downs.
To walk with Jesus as a church, a group and a movement is not always easy and it involves changing one's mind and continual development. But as long as we are willing to be guided by the Holy Spirit, it will always continue and we will come to the destiny that God has for us.