Birthe's Home

Recently I visited Birthe's (far right) home town about an hour from here.
We attended the church which had an influence on her coming to faith, & she shared a bit about her work on staff with Connexxion. Afterwards we took a stroll in the city, with 2 friends!There were some quaint "half- timbered" houses (called "fachwerk) as pictured above.
This church worship room below looks fairly good-sized ... I figured some of my friends might like to have an overview of one of the largest "free church" denominations in Germany, the Baptists and Brethren Churches together.

In Germany, this denomination has:

-- 950 congregations.

-- an average of 97 members per church.

-- 2,128 persons who were baptized in 2009.

A few interesting facts about religion in this nation:

-- The population of Germany is 81,471,000 persons.

-- So .11 % of the population is Baptistic-- not 11 % but less than 1/2 of 1 %.

-- Various charismatic & evangelical churches number 272,000 persons (not incl. Baptists).

-- Churches of Russian- German heritage: from 300,000 - to - 380,000 members.

-- Catholics number 25,400,000.

-- Protestant Church (state church) = 25,100,000 members.

-- Islam - 3 million adherents.

-- Acc. to a 2006 survey by Shell: 30% of German youths (ages 12-24) believe in a personal God. 19% believe in a spiritual power of some sort. 28% would call themselves atheists.