Article | Missions magazine

The Hills Are Alive: Called to Serve in Austria

Feb 15, 2021
Potts

By Michael & Martina Potts

"The hills are alive with the sound of music.” For many of us, this sentence brings to mind the opening scene of the film The Sound of Music. With arms outstretched and spinning circles, Maria (Julie Andrews), the central character, sings amid a stunning alpine panorama perhaps the most famous first line of a movie. If you can imagine this scene, you will have an excellent picture of our magnificent local landscape in the Salzach Valley in Pinzgau, Salzburg.

Our region

The province of Salzburg connects east and west Austria, and our town, Mittersill, is located in Pinzgau, the largest district in Salzburg, at a significant European north-south crossing point. Because of this, historically, Mittersill has been a meeting place for tradespeople and travelers from around Europe. The Salzach valley has the highest mountains and the narrowest valleys in our province and a strong local dialect.

Pinzgau’s spiritual climate, as in much of Europe, is Christian and post-Christian. There is a widespread remnant of cultural Christianity. Although 61 percent of the population are members of the Roman Catholic Church, the majority live their lives with a post-Christian worldview, believing the Bible to be outdated and irrelevant.

A survey conducted a few years ago by the Salzburger Nachrichten, the most respected newspaper in the province, indicated that more than half of registered Catholics in Salzburg do not believe in God. This nominal Christianity has inoculated people against the Gospel; they think they have already tried Christianity, and it has failed them. Our valley is one of the three in Austria with the fewest Christians. Including Catholics, Christians evidencing a living faith comprise less than 0.01 percent of the population.

Winter Psalm (1)

It’s not yet time for reaping.
It’s not yet time for sowing.
It has been given to us, in a wintry time,
to gather closely around the fire
and tend the frozen earth in
patient faithfulness.
Others have sown before us;
others will reap after us.
It is our task, in the cold and dark,
to stay with one another and,
while it is snowing,
steadfastly to hold out hope.
This is what we have been given to do
in a wintry time.


A faith heritage

Pinzgau has enjoyed a rich Christian heritage. Initially reached with the Gospel through Roman soldiers between the second and third centuries, Pinzgau experienced a revival as a result of the Reformation from the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. As copies of the German Bible and Reformation literature made their way through trade routes into Pinzgau, people began embracing living faith.

When Rome’s influence was in decline, people in every town—in some, as many as 90 percent of the population—began meeting, often daily, to read the Bible, pray, and worship. As this practice was forbidden without the presence of a priest, they petitioned Rome for permission to do three things: read the Scriptures in German, share Communion without a priest, and drink wine as part of the Communion celebration.

The Great Emigration

What happened next is perhaps a key to understanding the present spiritual hardness of this area. Rome refused the petitioners’ requests, and as part of the Great Emigration between November 1731 and March 1732, 16,288 Christians who refused to recant were stripped of their farms and possessions and sent to Prussia for their “crimes.” Due to a harsh winter, more than half of them died while traveling.

Since then, upper Pinzgau has had virtually no living witness for Christ. To our knowledge, the district has only two established evangelical churches: ours in Mittersill and another in Uttendorf, a town about four miles east of us. Most are without “hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:12) This reality is evidenced by the fact that the suicide rate in Pinzgau is 70 percent higher than the national average.

Believing friends who grew up in Pinzgau and whose parents are from the area shared the following poem, written by a German priest, to describe how they have experienced life and ministry here:

A foundation of prayer

What does one do in such a “wintry time”? Besides waiting and holding on to hope, one learns to pray. Michael and the leaders of the two churches in upper Pinzgau meet every day to pray for it to “thaw.” We pray daily for conversions, for blessing on our valley, and for the Lord to send workers into the harvest and reveal how we should be working.

As one result of our prayers, the Lord sent us Raitis and Gita, from Lithuania. Raitis is a talented choir director, who led one of Lithuania’s top choirs, and a believer who wants to use his gifts for God’s glory. Raitis and Gita moved to Mittersill for a vocational change, but we didn’t meet them until more than a year later. However, we quickly decided to form a choir that would seek excellence and exclusively sing spiritual music to God’s glory.

Gospelchor Mittersill

What does this have to do with The Sound of Music? What we failed to realize is how compelling music and singing are to the Austrian soul. Out of all European countries, Austria ranks second in the number of choirs per capita after Lithuania. And, of course, Austria was the home of musical greats Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, and Schönberg, to name a few. The term “gospel choir” is well known and liked in Austria, so we decided to call ourselves Gospelchor Mittersill.

Until founding the choir six years ago, we had done everything one typically does in a rural pioneering mission setting: evangelistic Bible studies, friendship evangelism, local service, prayer, Sunday meetings, and believers’ Bible studies. What was missing was a platform to spread the seed widely in a way that would not alienate our friends and neighbors, for whom anything not intrinsic to their culture is highly suspect. The gospel choir is what we had been looking for.

The choir has performed more than 70 times in the past six years, mostly within a radius of 62 miles—the same area where so many believers had once been forced to leave their land. Gospelchor Mittersill performs full-length concerts but also in special church services, such as Easter and Thanksgiving. We sing American gospel music, contemporary worship songs, and original compositions and arrangements.

It is incredible how people will more willingly accept a message that is sung than if someone simply told them. A neighbor, who is not a believer, frequently tells me how much she loves the choir. She attends every concert she can, even though the words to our songs contradict her beliefs.

Usually, the choir has between 25 and 35 members. Since Raitis is an excellent choir director, gifted singers and musicians want to work with us. Fewer than half are believers, and we see this as a fantastic opportunity. They are our first line of ministry. We pray and read Scripture before every practice and regularly give testimony.

Our pianist, a young man from Mittersill, recently gave his life to Christ. Two years ago, a member asked me (Michael) to perform her mountaintop wedding. She had married in civil court a year earlier, but because of her newly found faith, she said a wedding before God was more important to her than her legally binding civil ceremony.

A year and a half ago, some members of the choir formed a worship band, and they meet regularly to practice and perform original songs that Michael and Raitis wrote. Two members of this group are not yet believers, but they are on their way. Our music is available on our YouTube channels, Chospelchor Mittersill and MyChoice.Worship. Michael is starting another YouTube channel, Sandbox Worship Piano, with videos that teach people how to improve their worship piano skills.

His song in our hearts

We are thankful that God is using the choir and music to encourage us and allow us to spread widely the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that people who desperately need it can understand. Pray that the seeds that have been planted will bear fruit and that our choir members who are not yet believers will come to faith in Christ and fellowship with us. Pray for revival in the Salzach Valley, that its people will know the Lord’s song in their hearts. ■


Michael and Martina Potts are commended from University Chapel in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

 

Notes:
(1) Lothar Zenetti, In Seiner Nähe: Texte des Vertrauens (Ostfildern, Germany: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 2012), 16. Translated from German by Michael Potts.

 
Originally published by Echoes International Mission Magazine, December 2020. Used with permission. Appeared in the February 2021 issue of Missions. For more content, sign up for a free subscription (US) to Missions at CMML.us/magazine/subscribe.