People ask me how a German woman ends up at a small church in Gainesville, Florida. The answer takes a while to tell. But it begins, as most things in my life do, with a crisis of faith — and a God who refused to let me go.

I grew up in Germany in a nominal Protestant household. Church was something that happened at Christmas and Easter. God was a polite idea, a cultural background, something you nodded at and then set aside. I did not disbelieve in God. I simply did not think he was relevant to my actual life.

That changed in my early twenties, when I found myself in a season of real darkness — a relationship that had fallen apart, a career that felt hollow, a growing sense that nothing I was building meant anything. I started reading the Bible almost by accident, picking up a copy that had been sitting on my shelf for years. I started in the Gospels.

What I found was not what I expected.

Jesus was not the mild, agreeable figure I had vaguely imagined — a kind teacher who said pleasant things about loving your neighbor. He was commanding. He was specific. He said things that made me deeply uncomfortable: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) That is not a statement you can nod politely at and set aside. It demands a response.

My response, eventually, was yes.

Finding the Congregation

I came to faith through a charismatic evangelical congregation in the early 2000s — a community that took Scripture seriously, that prayed with expectation, that believed God was still speaking and still acting in the world. For several years, that community was my home. I learned what it meant to worship with my whole self, to bring my questions to God and wait for answers, to stand on the Word even when circumstances said otherwise.

When that chapter ended — as chapters do — I found myself drawn across the Atlantic. I had heard about Dove World Outreach Center. I knew its reputation; everyone did by that point. But I also knew something that the headlines did not say: that this was a congregation of people who took the Gospel seriously enough to pay a price for it. That is not a small thing. Most Christians in the comfortable West have never had to pay a price for their faith. At DWOC, paying a price was simply part of the deal.

I came for a visit. I stayed.

What I Found Here

What I found at Dove World was not what the newspapers described. I found a community of ordinary, imperfect people who were genuinely trying to follow Christ — trying to read Scripture honestly, to pray faithfully, to stand for truth in a culture that increasingly punishes truth-telling.

I found Dr. Jones, who is a far more complicated and thoughtful man than his public image suggests. I found Sylvia Jones, whose pastoral warmth and steadiness I have come to deeply admire. I found fellow believers from different backgrounds and different countries who shared one conviction: that Jesus Christ is Lord, that his Word is true, and that his call on our lives is not optional.

Coming from Germany — from a country where state churches are declining, where Christianity is increasingly treated as an embarrassing historical artifact — I was struck by the unapologetic confidence of this congregation. They were not ashamed of the Gospel. They said so plainly. They wrote it on their signs and their T-shirts and their website. Whatever you think of their methods, the underlying conviction is sound: the Gospel is not something to be hidden.

Still Learning

I will not tell you that everything has been easy. I will not tell you that I have agreed with every decision or every statement made by this church. Faith is not simple, and no congregation is without its flaws. But I have found here something I was not finding elsewhere: a genuine commitment to the whole counsel of God, including the parts that are uncomfortable.

I am still learning. I expect I will be until I die. But I am grateful — deeply grateful — to be in a place where that learning is taken seriously, where questions are welcomed, and where the Word of God is treated as what it actually is: living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword.

From Cologne to Gainesville. It is not the journey I planned. It is exactly the one I needed.

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— Heike Boecken, March 2012