Meet Jena

This is a picture of the church we are going to be working with in Jena, Germany. Right now, the church meets in the downstairs of the home of the missionary we will be working with. Rocco Panepinto, our field mentor and missionary to Germany, has lived and worked in Germany for over 30 years now. He first moved to southern Germany and planted several churches there, then moved to the East and has been living and working in Jena ever since. Here is a recent picture of Rocco and some of his family-

Jena has been titled, "The Scientific Capital" of Germany. It is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. With a population of 103,000 it is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt. In such an educated and eastern city, evangelism is seen as very difficult. Here is a quote from Rocco himself speaking about the spiritual state of eastern Germany,

"Recently I received an inquiry from a young German Bible college student asking me to explain, from my perspective, the differences in attitude between the population in the west of Germany and former communist east Germany. One big difference which came to mind-- in the west, where people are at least nominally Christian in name, we were often told: “It doesn't matter what you believe, just as long as you believe something". In contrast, here in the east I can't recall hearing that phrase used once. Here faith is viewed with suspicion and regarded as intellectual laziness, foolish and even dangerous. That's the legacy of 40 years of Marxism we have to deal with."

I hope this helps you understand this mission field a little better. Hopefully, through this blog, we can continue to keep sharing with you little pieces of insight into this city. Let us know if you have any questions or any other thoughts. Thanks so much everyone!

Blessings, Ryan and Elyse