Letter from Andy and Michi Evans in Germany

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Letter from Andy and Michi Evans

After nine years, my German is reasonably fluent but, after a few minutes talking with a new acquaintance, I still end up having a conversation like this:

“So, are you American?”

“No, I'm British.” “Oh, so... Is your wife German?” “No... she's Japanese.”

At this point the acquaintance has a slightly dubious look in his/her eyes, as if unsure whether to believe me.

“So... you're British and your wife is Japanese. Why do you live in Stuttgart?” “Er...”

It's a long story: it starts when I was fourteen. After eight happy years in Knutsford, while my dad was minister at KMC, we'd moved to a town near Wolverhampton. I hadn't been too happy about the move, but the school had one redeeming feature: If you were in the top French stream, you were given the option of taking German. I had no business being in the top French stream: after three successive years being taught the language I could barely count to ten, say 'Good morning' or recite the verb 'to go' in the present tense, but somehow I scraped in. Within six months I knew that the one thing I wanted to do was to learn German, and go to Germany. If I was using 'spiritual' language I'd probably say this was a 'call'. The problem: I was fourteen, not exactly rolling in money (poor pastor’s kid, etc., etc.), and no-one in the whole town, it seemed, was interested in an exchange trip or similar.

The other problem was what I would do. It seemed there were two ways to go: be a worship leader (i.e. musical) or study to be a pastor. I'm not a pastor, before anyone asks, and the less said about my fumbling attempts at music the better. I was told “You'll find your gift”, until God - with his usual sense of humour - gave me a new one. In the space of a week in August 1995, he gave me an ability and passion for theatre. Within a year I was directing, stage-managing and acting in a small Christian theatre company.

By this time we had moved to deepest Somerset, I'd scraped a German GCSE (don't ask about my French grade) and I was working through three 'A' Levels. I passed, not exactly with flying colours (but never mind), and did the most obvious thing - I worked as a bicycle mechanic for eight months!

Then, as the situation with my 'gifts' and other issues in the church threatened to come to a head, God pulled a rescue operation and landed me in the Lee Abbey community, 22 miles away in Devon. Here he got to work, gently showing me how he's a gracious, loving God, not an angry teacher, and that more than that, he's a loving father. Anyone who knows my earthly dad and his sermons will probably wonder how I missed this for so long, but there we are.

In the middle of this, God was putting a vision together in my mind. It was a bit rough, but the general idea was a community who ran an arts centre where people could grow and develop as people, and grow and develop in their gifts. I even had a doodle at a building that I thought it would be in, a place where worship would be full of different impulses as everyone brought their gift along and gave it to God. At the same time I was getting to know a beautiful Japanese girl.

You were wondering where Michi came in weren't you? She arrived in Devon a month before me and was having an equally-intense roller-coaster ride with God. It was some months before we could spare time for a relationship, but eventually we got around to it. One crucial moment came when Michi was describing what she'd like to be part of in her life - a community which worked in arts and circus skills, and lived together. On impulse I showed her the sketch I'd made a few months before. “That's it”, she said.

Finally I made it to Germany for ten days, and loved it. It was obvious that Germany would be home in future, and also obvious that I should ask Michi to marry me. So I did. It turned out that Michi had been praying that I'd make a move.

So we were engaged after dating for three months. For the next eighteen months we were not even on the same continent for more than a few weeks at a time: Michi went home and I went to Germany to Bible School. She then started Bible School in Switzerland at the same time as I was packed off to Nepal and Bombay on outreach. When I got back, Michi was already on her way to another outreach in Brazil. Eventually we got back together, and flew to Japan to marry in Tokyo, less for the romance of the place than because it was central for Michi's relatives.

We came back to Germany and served as staff in my former Bible School for just under four years before Michi and I, and now Stephan, went to Montana, USA, where I did a 9-months course in ‘Foundational Principles of Theatre Development’. This was a great opportunity to develop my skills in writing, story-telling and theatre-design, but I still found the same problem: in 'worship times' everyone had to fit into the same box- and I wasn't fitting…

While studying on the Foundational Principles in Theatre Development School in Montana, I came to believe that worship should include a whole range of different disciplines. I was concerned that by emphasising one area - music - we were giving people the option of fitting into a box, or otherwise being left out in the cold, which I saw as a fundamental problem. Things came to a head after we returned to Germany. The Bible School we were working for couldn't yet accommodate these ideas and we were asked to leave.

By this time we had contacts in Germany, and after a lot of travelling and talking to different people, we landed in a traditional church in a village called Kemnat, which is remarkably similar to Knutsford: wealthy, near a city, and in a constant battle with the local airport about new runways. We found an apartment just in time for Michi to have our second boy, Tobi, and then just over a year later Lucas made us a family of five.

That's how we got here - so what exactly do we do? It's a fair question as we're supported by the generosity of KMC and various individuals who believe we're doing something worthwhile. We're working towards the vision that I described above - a community who live together and create art in all forms as worship. This is about the same, although God has widened out horizons to include creation-care as part of the vision. I'll bore you with this another time. At the moment we're being prepared and serving in our current church.

Michi is involved with a number of areas. She's a gifted drummer and plays with the band, which is beginning to get invitations to play elsewhere, and she's recently played with a professional pianist at an event in the village. She also works with the local children's club where she helps to lead a small group. She's very capable as a leader and gains the trust of many of the so‑called 'difficult' children there.

My main job is running a story-telling team called Xpresso, which has developed into a gathering place for people with unusual ideas and gifts. On a good day we present cutting-edge and often controversial story-telling in the more modern services. Xpresso is designed to be a place where anyone can join and be creative however they feel they can. The group ranges from fourteen to about fifty, and uses photography, fine arts, theatre, video, and circus skills: we've had people climbing on towers of beer crates, strung water balloons over the congregation, and had a character make an entrance from the church roof. One Advent we used an entire forest, with the audience walking through and different characters appearing from behind the trees. At other times we've presented stories about Mary Magdalene, the apostle Peter after he denied Jesus, and a woman wrestling with scars from serial abuse as a child.

So what is the point of all this activity? Partly it's the beginning of the long-term vision of making a space for people to be themselves, do what they love and bring it as worship - and much of this happens in the 'modern' Service that takes place about once a month. But the main point of the exercise is building community, that mysterious messy place of relationships and mistakes that is the foundation of the Church. We try and lead by example in our artistic work, encouraging people and praying for them, and accepting them for who they are. We also have an 'open house' policy where we try whenever possible to be open to people coming into our home at different times, and integrate them into our family. This has often proven to be the most valuable part of what we do here: it's more flexible than a church programme, and more personal: people can come between exams and school activities, and stay as long as they need to. Of course, as people come in, they are pounced on immediately by the boys, but most accept that as a part of the experience.

Beyond that? - we have a few clues. It's clear that, for a number of reasons, Kemnat isn't going to be our permanent home, and at some point we'll be moving to a more rural area. We've mixed feelings about leaving Kemnat: I feel a strong pull back to rural ministry, but we've become a part of the village and the church, and it'll be very hard to leave. On the other hand, we know that sometimes, staying too long in a place would cause more problems than leaving - we could find ourselves holding back the very people we've invested in. Our work is to bring people closer to God, not make them depend on us. I wish God would tell us when all this will take place, but I guess being patient is one of the lessons.

We're starting a new venture right now of selling my Celtic artwork online: by the time you read this there should be several items on www.etsy.com/wildgoosedesign. Meanwhile we're getting plugged into the German Christian-arts network, building up contacts and developing relationships, slowly - and I've almost enough decent scripts for a book, and I'm assembling them and getting most of the bugs out. Michi is getting lots of requests to teach people to play the drums, which isn't something you can do in an apartment, so we're praying that, if it's the right idea, God will provide a place. A drum kit would be handy too.

That's the story so far, although I may have missed a few details. Next time, I'll look at the creation-care, and how this rather suddenly became the third part of the vision. In the meantime, if you want to know more about what we're doing now, or you have thoughts about what we're doing, you can find us under www.absolutestory.org,