Finding true freedom behind the Iron Curtain

German evangelist, author to speak at Southern Wesleyan University

Imagine being the pastor of a small, dying congregation where the youth are virtually gone.

You feel God’s hand leading you to develop a contemporary worship service and to build a team of young people. The services, marked by contemporary music, uncompromising preaching of the gospel message and calls to discipleship in Christ, draw hundreds of young people. Soon the number in attendance grows into thousands.

This would be a remarkable achievement for any youth minister in the United States. However, this happened for Dr. Theo Lehmann in 1971 in East Germany, amidst constant surveillance of the communist government by secret informers and threats by secret police.

On April 23, Lehmann will be speaking at Southern Wesleyan University’s Newton Hobson Chapel on the university’s campus in Central. He will address a student chapel in the morning and also give a lecture at 7:30 p.m. The evening lecture is free and the public is invited.

The evening presentation is a reflection on the book “Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation, The Extraordinary Life of A Courageous East German Pastor,” translated by former Clemson professor Ed Arnold. Arnold and Dr. Lehmann will autograph copies of the book. For each book sold, $5 will be donated to the relief fund for Christians in Orissa, India.

Lehmann was born in 1934 in Dresden, Germany, where he lived through both the Nazi era and the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic. He was also the best-known scholar of jazz and blues music in the GDR. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Negro Spirituals: History and Theology.” Lehmann authored another notable book, “Blues and Trouble,” with a foreword by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966. Lehman’s fascination with these musical forms expressed so well his own longing for freedom.  

Lehmann was ordained in the Lutheran Church of Saxony. He was called to the urban parish of Chemnitz, where he introduced a youth worship service which grew dramatically despite an atmosphere of persecution.