September 11th – 25th, 2024
September 11th – 25th, 2024
by Richard Bergmann
It is 9:45 am and the church bells of the Grossmunster are loudly ringing before the 10am service. It’s an all-German service and we are recognized by the minister and welcomed as brothers and sisters from America. I think to myself, we’ve double the attendance with our presence, so he has no choice but to mention that in the welcome address.
In May 2025, the Mennonite World Conference is hosting the event in this same building – I’m visualizing what it will look like to see this ancient church being filled up like it once was. We, TourMagination, will have 4 “open” tours and 2 custom tours that are all convening at the same time so my mind wanders to what that will look like to ensure our clients have a meaningful experience.
The Minister’s sermon is promptly over after 20 minutes, and the last song is Amazing Grace in English so I’m thinking this should be an easy one for our group to join in on. However, it’s a struggle as the organist added quite the additional and flowery timing which lost most of the congregation with no congregation leader to guide us. My inside voice: the organist is definitely not using a “click” track that many churches in North American with modern worship teams have gravitated to and makes a difference to keep the timing tight!
With the service over, the congregation shuffles toward the door where they are taking the collection, and the minister stands to shake hands with everyone leaving. I fumble for some coins to drop in the collection bag and wonder how they can keep the lights on to maintain the costs of such a facility.
After we are done at the Grossmunster, Ayold takes us on a short walking tour, and we see Felix Mantz’s early childhood home as well as where Conrad Grebel grew up a few blocks away. It was at Felix Mantz’s mother’s home where Mantz, Grebel and Blaurock famously “re-baptized” each other in defiance of the Reform church and they were deemed radical Anabaptists from that moment on (a name they didn’t like to be referred to as they didn’t view this as a rebaptism but rather the only true baptism as believers). Our last stop on the walking tour is along the Limmat river for it is here where we stand that Felix Mantz was the first Anabaptist sentenced to death by drowning was martyr for the “radicals”. His last words before he was drowned “Into thy hands my God I commend my spirit.”
We have some free time before our next stop and I’m wandering toward the lake to see what all the crowds and noise are about. Low and behold, I find myself at the finish line of the World Cycling Championships that are in Zurich this weekend. Cycling is big in Europe, and I envy those quiet country roads and what it would be like to ride them (another to-do on the list one day).
It's 2pm and we’re back on the bus headed north into the countryside toward the town of Schleitheim. Our meddachschlop time is interrupted when Ayold plays us a hymn written by Felix Mantz and is still in the Ausbund (Amish hymn book) “I sing with exaltation”. Fortunately we are allowed a little more quiet time before our next stop at the Schleitheim museum where we are hosted and shown the Schleitheim confession that was signed by Anabaptist leaders coming together with 7 rules that dealt with topics such as baptism, excommunication, communion, separation of church and state, taking up the sword, etc.
We then head into a more difficult spot to find, and we walk for about a good 20 minutes to the Täuferstein or Baptist stone which is a memorial marker remembering the Anabaptists who fled the persecution in Switzerland along this trail. Ayold suggests a song and after forgetting the words to all the verses of Gott ist die Liebe we finish with on Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, very fitting as we view this memorial. It was a spectacular day for a walk as the weather was slightly overcast and a nice way to stretch our legs.
We wrap up the day having crossed back into Germany for night in Geisingen. We have a bit of time before our dinner, so I go for a short run through the village that has dairy barns and farms right in town – something you don’t see unless you get off the beaten path which is a treat for me. It feels like life in these rural areas are quiet and simpler – I don’t know if that’s the case or just my perception. It’s hard to gauge that only being in many places for one night at a time. Perhaps one day, I’ll get the chance to spend more time in some of these rural areas to gain a broader perspective of their life.
