By Raphi Gold<\/b><\/p>\n
10\/16\/2025<\/p>\n
\u00a0GUMMERSBACH— I am now in Mike Bible\u2019s \u201ccircle of care.\u201d This man, <\/span>seated next to me on a plane five days ago by fate (he\u2019d say God), now wants to know when Miriam and I get back safe tonight. He also wants to be my pen pal.<\/span> \u201cI\u2019ve been getting into snail mail,\u201d he pauses his enthusiastic drilling to tell me, \u201cLet me write to you in New York.\u201d I find myself promising \u201csure!\u201d because saying \u201csure\u201d to Mike is what got me here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here, in this abandoned cinema soon-to-be church in Gummersbach, Germany, the scene won\u2019t synthesize. Everything is out of place: half-stripped walls, stray work gloves, faded mosaic tiles, a coffee machine in Ukrainian, a ticket box in disrepair. There\u2019s no trace of Germania Lichtspieltheater online, but we can guess the year it closed by the last movie it showed: <\/span>Indiana Jones 4<\/span><\/i>, tickets \u00a34.50.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The people don\u2019t quite match either, least of all ourselves. Pastor Nickolas Skopych was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was visiting a friend in Gummersbach just before the war broke out; his two-week trip has turned into a nearly four-year stay. Hundreds of his congregants followed. Gummersbach is now home to as many as 3000 Ukrainians, according to Skopych (German Census data is unavailable past 2022). His new congregation bears the same name as its counterpart in Ukraine: Almaz, meaning \u201cdiamond.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Americans who have come to help convert the theatre into a church for Almaz hail from the First Baptist Church, a megachurch in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The Ukrainians all speak at least three languages and have experienced traumatic upheaval. The Americans just speak English, and some have never left the country. Last night, the Americans walked five miles just for McDonalds. <\/span>German<\/span><\/i> McDonalds.. Still, they\u2019re all evangelical Baptists; their parallel stories of finding God in times of need align perfectly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Before we know it, they\u2019re inviting us to lunch. We\u2019re devouring scrumptious messy Ukrainian cream puffs, and I\u2019m chatting with Ukrainian refugees Liza and Viktoria about American television and evangelical Valentines day traditions. I venture upstairs with five Americans including Jeremy, the mission leader who is clearly fed up with the college kids on the trip. Their work ethic leaves something to be desired. We sweep for a bit, halfheartedly, then pause to explore the attic. We tear giant sheets of rubbery wallpaper into chunks. We lower an ancient control-panel from the window, then hold some rolls of film up to the light. The boys guffaw \u2014 one of them is a porn film.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s time for something else. Downstairs, people load bins with wooden planks. I glimpse Miriam hoisting a massive branch. Another chat with Mike leads me to a facetime interview with his Ukrainian \u201cdaughter,\u201d Tania, whom he sponsored via U4U. Suddenly realizing it\u2019s 5pm, I interrupt Miriam\u2019s conversation with trip-leader Jeremy. It turns out he has a secret he\u2019s not quite ready for the others to find out about: he\u2019s actually a Baptist who practices Jewish ritual and learns Torah. He wears <\/span>tzizit<\/span><\/i> in the Sephardi style and keeps kosher. I want to know everything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Alas. We board the train home, which of course gets cancelled, so we pile into an Uber with a Polish couple. I write this from what I pray is our last train of the evening. With Deutsche Bahn\u2019s fickleness, we were lucky to make it to Gummersbach in the first place. Or was it thanks to God? Either way, I know who I\u2019m texting when we get home safe tonight.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Raphi Gold 10\/16\/2025 \u00a0GUMMERSBACH— I am now in Mike Bible\u2019s \u201ccircle of care.\u201d This man, seated next to me on a plane five days ago by fate (he\u2019d say God), now wants to know when Miriam and I get back safe tonight. He also wants to be my pen pal. \u201cI\u2019ve been getting into<\/p>\n