GARDEN GROVE : E. German Pastor Seeks Inspiration

Standing in the lobby of the Crystal Cathedral, Lutheran Pastor Jenz Heil of East Germany marveled at the Rev. Robert H. Schuller’s achievement.

Heil, who heads a modest church of 100 active members in the town of Helma, dreams of building his own “mega-church” now that communist barriers to religious freedom have started to come down.

With assistance from Crystal Cathedral members, Heil traveled to Southern California to be among the 2,700 ministers and church leaders Wednesday attending a four-day conference to learn how to attract new members and raise money for their ministries.

Heil said that he hopes to gain “ideas, inspiration and blessing” from the conference, which includes seminars on staffing, fund raising and training, as well as music and worship services.

The East German pastor said he already has attracted about 98 new members to his church in the last two years by applying the philosophy of Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale, both advocates of the power of positive thinking. When Heil arrived in Helma two years ago, 1,500 people were registered as members of its state-controlled church, but only two were active participants.

Schuller’s conference comes at a time of great opportunity for growth in his church, Heil said. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and more freedom for East Germans, Heil said there is a change of feeling toward religion.

“Now, with the wall, there is a very positive attitude,” he said. “Before, it was a negative theology.”

Heil wasn’t the only participant at the conference with Soviet and East bloc notions of glasnost on his mind. Schuller, in his keynote address, spoke of his appearance on Soviet television Dec. 25.

Schuller traveled to Moscow with industrialist Armand Hammer in December to negotiate a possible Christmas Eve broadcast of his weekly “Hour of Power” program. Instead, a Soviet television official told him that he should tape a 15-minute sermon while in the country and arrangements would be made to air it. The tape was broadcast Christmas Day on state-owned television.

In the video, which was shown during the keynote address, much of his sermon addressed improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and his hopes for a “decade of peace” in the world.

“When so much good is happening, you prove to me that there is no God,” he told Soviet viewers, questioning skeptics in what has been an officially atheistic nation.

His only reference to Scripture in the video, to be aired on the “Hour of Power” in February, came when he quoted Jeremiah 29:11: “I have a plan for life, says the Lord. It is a plan for good and not evil. It is a plan to give you a future with hope.”