This afternoon we went downtown in Bern for ‘Up To Faith” which is a global dance movement that got sparked by Second Baptist’s “Dance your Shoes Off”. It was a celebration of the resurrection of Christ and a call to rise up. I had seen the original video back when it went viral and it was very powerful. I don’t know if Second ever knew it would go global but apparently it has.  A friend told us about it and we decided to go one down to see.

I don’t think I have ever gone into detail about the religious climate here in Bern here on the blog but we have found Bern to be a very spiritually dark place. We sometimes find it very hard to be Christians here. In general I feel that most people are very anti-God and religion, or maybe if they do have a relationship with God it is very private. When we arrived at the big square in front of the parliament building and saw the crowd of people lined up waiting for the music to begin I literally got chills. It was like there was a light in the middle of  darkness. That’s really the only way to describe it.  It was like we were in a place that had never heard the name of Jesus and it was heard. I know it sounds dramatic but it really felt that way. I looked around at one point and the bystanders appeared to be mostly straight-faced and just staring.   At one side of the square there were people holding flags representing the regions of Switzerland. There is evidently an organization that  assigns groups of people to pray specifically for each area. What was also crazy to me is that this crowd was comprised of Christians from all over Switzerland whereas the Second baptist group was likely just from one single city (Houston!!!, sorry, just a quick shout out for our dear Texas!). In American we take our communities of faith so for granted. And if you don’t think you do, let me tell you as someone who has now spent 4 years away. What you have is amazing!

here is the video I got! Sorry if you get dizzy. If you missed the original video we attached that as well.

“He’s alive He’s alive within us and we will rise up”