Berlin 2026
Christ Church NYC LGBTQIA+ Ministry Trip • July 2026
Berlin 2026
The LGBTQIA+ Ministry Trip to Berlin, Germany, starts next weekend. A team of 8 from our church community will be traveling from July 19-26 to spend a week exploring Berlin, learning about Christian anti-fascism in early 20th century German history, and celebrating Pride with Berlin area churches. Led by Rev. Tyler Heston Wolf and Hillary Bylund, who is a part of Christ Church and a scholar of Christian ethics, this unique trip will be a formative opportunity for the team to learn more about what our faith looks like lived out in tangible and transformative ways.
Stay tuned for updates from our Berlin trip on this webpage and on our Instagram at @ccnyc.pride!
Tuesday, July 21: We spent the morning brunching with Dr. Bertold Höcker, the former Superintendent of the Evangelical Church District of Berlin City Center, learning about his ministry over the decades and his experience as and advocating for LGBTQIA+ clergy and inclusion across the church and interfaith circles. After a hope-making morning of connecting, Hillary led us on a walking tour of Berlin. We saw some important sites of German history, thinking about the complex layers—the good, the horrific, the mundane—and about what it means to faithfully tell our own collective stories.
Saturday, July 25: We closed out the trip with a sweet last day watching the Christopher Street Day parade for a few hours in the afternoon, joining the city in celebrating and standing up for queer folk in and across Berlin. We wrapped up the trip with a closing dinner before headed home to rest before early flights this morning. We were heartbroken to learn about the attack later in the evening at the Berlin CSD festival. Our prayers go out to the loved ones of the victims and those who are healing from injury and the trauma of the attack and that our collective responses may be to build a world beyond violence and hate.
Thursday, July 23: We took a deep dive into the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a look at the myriad of ways in which people resisted Naziism in the early 20th century. We finished the day with a lecture & learning about modern Christian nationalism in the USA with scholar Dr. Marcia Pally. We considered what it meant to take risks in an unstable world in order to resist the systems that tear us apart and to live into the new ways of being together as people across the world.
Monday, July 20: After storms in NYC grounded half of our team, we had our first official day in Berlin on Monday. We visited the Berliner Dom (the city’s cathedral) and enjoyed an opening dinner at the oldest bier garten in the Berlin. Not even sleepless flights could keep us from being present to the city, to each other, and to the questions and curiosities we’re bringing as we begin learning about Berlin through the life and work of activist and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Our closing circle at the end of the night unlocked just how much we have to learn about what faith looks like lived out in queer ways in our contemporary world.
Wednesday, July 22: In a rich morning workshop, Hillary taught us about different ways in which we relate to the past: What do we do with the past? What does the past do for us? What does the past do to us? These questions helped us frame our afternoon visit to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum outside of Berlin, one of the first concentration camps built in the 1930s. We prayerfully walked the grounds, learning about the site’s horrific history before a debriefing dinner together.
Friday, July 24: For our penultimate day, we shared a beautiful brunch in which we talked about the things we’ll apply from our learning and how we’ve grown and changed from our week together. Then, after visiting The Schwules Museum—the world’s oldest LGBTQIA+ museum—we got to celebrate Christopher Street Day (Berlin Pride) with the city’s interfaith Pride service at St. Mary’s Church, being a part of a group of hundreds from different (and no) faith traditions standing up for the way in which Liebe braucht Community—Love Needs Community.
Friday, July 24: For our penultimate day, we shared a beautiful brunch in which we talked about the things we’ll apply from our learning and how we’ve grown and changed from our week together. Then, after visiting The Schwules Museum—the world’s oldest LGBTQIA+ museum—we got to celebrate Christopher Street Day (Berlin Pride) with the city’s interfaith Pride service at St. Mary’s Church, being a part of a group of hundreds from different (and no) faith traditions standing up for the way in which Liebe braucht Community—Love Needs Community.
