By Caleb Campos —
To Martin Luther’s Christian Germany, it’s been one secularizing smackdown after another: Higher Criticism, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hitler, communist East Germany and then the hardest slam of all — prosperity.
Germany became desolate wilderness uninhabitable by faith.
But don’t count Germany out. Just when you thought church closures, declining membership, retiring clerics augured an irreversible slide, Jesus moved, bringing the beginnings of renewal out of the ashes of atheism.
That’s why Chris Goldswain, pastor of Every Nation Church Berlin, can tell of a youth who went on a weekend retreat, got saved and then baptized a week later.
“Germany is one of the key leading nations in Europe,” Goldswain says i a 2023 video. “Things are happening in Berlin. Since planting Every Nation Kirche Berlin in 2008, we’ve seen over 280 people make first-time decisions for Jesus. We’ve seen over 120 people get water baptized. We’ve seen people come from atheistic contexts with basically zero knowledge of God and become passionate followers of him.”
Since 2020, the Fire Festival stages large-scale events with revivalist preaching that reaches nominal Christians and those who have no background whatsoever in God. Evangelist David Rotärmel, a successor to Reinhard Bonnke, preached at Porsche Arena in Stuttgart to thousands in 2023.
“After a short preaching of the ABC of The Gospel by (Rotärmel). hundreds upon hundreds of young people came at the altar to give their lives to Jesus,” shared international evangelist Jean-Luc Trachsel. “Truly it’s harvest time in Europe like here in Stuttgart, Germany. I’ve seen with my own eyes thousands of people getting saved and today it’s water baptisms in a glorious and joyful atmosphere.”
Night of Hope is another movement taking the Gospel message to the streets of Hamburg, Bremen, Munchen, and many other German cities.
Germany’s Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches (Bund Freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden) reported a membership increase of more than 22% over the past two years, adding more than 15,000 members across its network of congregations, and 6,389 were baptized in 2025.
Matthias Lohmann, lead pastor of the Free Evangelical Church in downtown Munich, got saved at age 26, thanks to a family that attended one of Germany’s “free” churches — that is, not part of the state church system.
“I realized how spiritually dead my home country truly is,” says Lohmann, who trained for ordination. “Christ is at work in Germany now. We see God’s Spirit working, especially among the younger generation. Today, we see solid and growing churches proclaiming the gospel in more German cities than just a few years ago. While the numbers are still unimpressive, the clear ring of the gospel is provoking a fresh stirring for true Christianity in post-Christian Germany.”
Raised with no background in faith, Ben Kelber was a violent criminal who hated everyone, including himself. On a beach in Ireland on a backpacking trip one day Jesus stood before him.
“He had an aura. His feet were in the sea and his head was in the clouds,” he says, per translation. “I was blown away. Then we somehow talked, and I don’t remember what we said. But I was a different person afterward.
“Before that I was annoyed and stressed seven days a week. I saw humans as a virus on the planet,” the Nuremberg man adds. “After this experience, my pessimism was completely changed. I was fulfilled and full of peace. It was categorically different than a drug experience.”
Today, Kelber leads a worship ministry.
Jerome Wolf wanted expensive cars, luxury watches, lobster-and-champagne brunches with silky ladies at his side — and he wanted it with the least amount of work possible. Consequently, while he was still a youth, he peddled counterfeit electronics.
The scheme succeeded wildly, and every success with the inflow of cash made he crave more and adapt more and more ambitious schemes of fraud. After swindling his way to six figures, the police caught him and the justice system jailed him — twice.
“I saw myself a bit like Robin Hood. I said I’ll take from the rich,” he says, per translation. “On the outside, I was wearing €500 suits. On the inside, I was absolutely broken.”
At his second jail sentencing in Nuremberg, he escaped from police and ran. Moving quickly, he eluded police and went in to a tanning salon, where he called a friend and waited to be picked up and whisked away.
God spoke: What are your running away from? What are you afraid of? I am with you.
He thought time stood still. He thought he was going crazy.
God spoke again: You can’t get away from here, but everything will be alright. I am with you.
“At that moment, I realized that Jesus was in my presence,” he says. “Everything shifted. The hopelessness was gone. Fear was gone. I was filled with a sense of peace.”
Jesus was with him so strongly that when the police walked in, Wolf felt that it was Jesus who was arrested. Back in his cell, he started reading the Bible and came to Luke 5, where Jesus ate with sinners.
He came out of jail talking about Jesus.
Related content: Revival ignites in Scotland, France and the United Kingdom. Sources: ERF Mensch Gott translated by AI, CBN, Christian Daily, Instagram, Every Nation, Matthias Lohmann, others.
