DUISBURG, Germany – Poisoned land, government opposition, and even a police assault against the pastor haven’t stopped a unique German Church called Wera Forum from becoming the largest in the city of Duisburg.
Wera means belief.
Pastor Alexander Epp told CBN News, “We always say, come to our building, touch it and listen to the story of how it was built.Then you’ll believe.”
Epp, an ethnic German who returned from Soviet Russia, says he never faced this kind of persecution from the KGB.
Obstacles, Denials, and Answered Prayer
A German SWAT team raided the church last year and blew the door off his home, attacking him and breaking his nose.
Epp came to Duisburg as a truck mechanic in the 1980s, when God put it on his heart to begin an outreach to the city’s Russian-German community.
The congregation outgrew its old building and finally found land for a new one.
Except the city wouldn’t allow them to build a church. They also couldn’t secure a bank loan, and they learned the soil at the building site was contaminated.
Epp said, “We had the expert assessment done, and the assessment showed that we’d have to invest a lot of money to remove all this soil here.”
Instead of giving up, they decided to pray.
“We stood together with the whole congregation. We held each other’s hands. Prayed together, ‘God, heal the soil,’” Epp said. “and then we called in another company. They did an assessment and said the soil is clean. No toxins,nothing.”
Unable to build a church on the site, they became a non-profit.
