Our Curacy: Introducing the Wensyels! (Part 2)
This is a post introducing Redeemer’s new curate as of summer 2021, Jared Wensyel, and his wonderful wife Abbi. To learn more about Redeemer’s curacy program, check out this post from the Rev. Canon Dr. Dan Alger here.
During Christmas of 2019, Jared and Abbi had been living in Frankfurt, Germany and ministering at a church plant there for nearly 5 and a half years. They loved the friends which they’d made, being just a hop, skip, and a jump from the next beautiful country, and traditionally German things like 4 p.m. coffee and cake time. But they both began sensing the need for something to change. Just a few months later, around Easter 2020, Abbi was sitting in front of the TV in their Frankfurt apartment scrolling through the website of a church located more than 4300 miles away in Greensboro, North Carolina. “I turned to Jared and said, ‘All the things that we’ve been imagining for church--how cool it could be, how sustainable it could be--there’s a church already doing it. They seem like really solid people, and I would love to be a part of that.” That church was Church of the Redeemer.
Jared and Abbi both grew up in Ohio. Jared lived in Cleveland until 6th grade (and is thus a die-hard Browns fan) when he moved to the Dayton area, where Abbi was born and raised. As a child, Jared had dreams of being a military officer and then transitioning into a career in politics--from the age of 5 his family began telling him he’d either be a politician or a preacher. His main experience with preachers and churches came when visiting his grandmother’s church where he learned the Gloria Patri and the Our Father. Although he didn’t attend church frequently growing up, his interest in the liturgy which he experienced while visiting with his grandmother stuck. On the other hand, Abbi grew up going to church consistently with her parents and sister. After a difficult stretch, during Easter in her eighth grade year she suddenly recognized that she needed more than a casual relationship with Jesus. “I realized, ‘Oh, I don't want Jesus to just be the Lord of my family, but the Lord of my life too.’”
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
-Ezekiel 36:26-27
Abbi remembers the first time she heard Jared’s name it was because he’d made the same decision. Abbi’s parents were involved in Young Life, mentoring the ministry’s leaders and often hosting them at their house. One night one of the leaders arrived, excited to share about what had just happened at his Bible study meeting: one of his high school students accepted Jesus. One of Jared’s friends had been inviting him to come to the Bible study for three years--finally one night when he didn’t have his driver’s license, he agreed to go. “The whole time I was wondering, ‘Why am I even here?’” But as the Young Life leader began reading from Ezekiel 36 about God taking our hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh, Jared felt a sort of burning sensation which he knew was the Lord working in his heart. “Then the leader asked, ‘How is your relationship with Jesus?’ We went around the circle, and I was the last one to go. And I said, ‘I don't have a relationship with Jesus. But I'd like to start one.’” Soon after that, Abbi and Jared met at an ultimate frisbee tournament and began getting to know each other at school. By that Christmas they started dating.
It was during Jared’s first year of university and Abbi’s senior year of high school—when they had shortly broken up for a while—that Abbi’s father passed away suddenly, leaving her family devastated. “It was of course very tragic, but a cool piece that God wove into it was that Jared was able to reenter my life more as a brother and less as a boyfriend of whom I would have had a lot of expectations in such a difficult time. It allowed me to lean on Jesus and say to Jared, ‘Hey, my whole world is flipped upside down and it's up to you discerning with the Holy Spirit how you want to reenter.’ It was really cool to see him come in, really serve my family, and still show up every day to do the dishes, take the trash out, and hold my grandma's hand.’” At this point they decided to begin dating again, and that it would be for the long run.
An engagement photo before their adventures began
Jared had begun his first year at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, but by this time he knew he really wanted to move to Germany to be involved in church planting. Because of his family’s German heritage, he had begun studying the language intensely in high school and grew to a level of fluency over the course of 5 years. He had also begun gravitating towards what his family had seen in him since the age of 5--being a preacher, or at least working in some position at a church. During that first year of college, Jared met a missionary who told him about the German model of seminary--a 3 year B.A. program with a subsequent 2 year M.A. program during which you start defining your research speciality. And the whole program would cost approximately $10,000 less than just one year at his university in the U.S.--everything about the program sounded perfect to Jared. Several months later, he and Abbi helped chaperone a trip which the high school which they’d graduated from was taking to Germany. “We went over for three weeks and Abbi really fell in love with Germany as well and said, ‘I can see this is where I want to be.’”
Soon after that, Jared and Abbi got married--both at 19 years old. After spending a year together of marriage and work life in Ohio, they signed up for a 3 month unpaid internship at a church plant in Frankfurt. While working there, Jared was also able to visit his seminary and Abbi was able to take German classes up to the point of moderate fluency. This cemented their decision to officially make the move--they returned to the U.S. for the summer, saved up as much money as possible, and then gathered themselves and 10 suitcases to move to Frankfurt in August 2014. Although it was bittersweet to leave family, Jared and Abbi were thrilled about their adventure. “I just remember talking about it and being so excited,” Abbi recalls. “I was working as a barista. People would say, ‘Oh, you're moving to Germany. How long?’ And we'd always say, ‘Five to fifty years. However long the Lord has for us!’”
Wedding send off in Ohio, April 6th 2013
The journey itself was not without its difficulties--including a car accident on the way to the airport, a late night at the hospital recovering from whiplash, and a hand wound which probably should have had stitches all before getting on the plane. Once they arrived in Germany, Jared and Abbi temporarily lived with a friend for their first 3 months while sorting through mounds of paperwork and bureaucracy.
After that process was finalized, Jared and Abbi settled into their new apartment and lives in Frankfurt. Jared began classes at his seminary, Giessen School of Theology, which was an hour train ride away. Abbi spent much of her time starting up and running her photography business--when she was younger she discovered her passion for art, which her love of photography flowed out of. Abbi got involved with Social Impact Lab, a business incubator in Frankfurt, which helped her find her niche. It connected her with lots of local start-up businesses and non-profits looking to bolster their brands with fresh photography.
A rooftop view of downtown Frankfurt
While they weren’t busy studying or snapping pictures, Jared and Abbi spent much of their time involved in the church plant where Jared served as an intern during his seminary years and as an interim pastor for their final year. Nordstern (or “North Star” in English) is an evangelism-minded Baptist church plant which also had a liturgical mindset. Jared served on their liturgy team training liturgen (“liturgists”) to help lead the service and selecting different liturgical elements to include different weeks. “We took elements of liturgy from church history and packed them in with a typical free church service--a heavy focus on worship songs and preaching, but with a few liturgical elements, like the creed one week or the Our Father another week.”
Eastern Germany is one of the most atheistic regions in the entire world. Western Germany, where Jared and Abbi’s church was located, is less atheistic—many people who live there are vaguely interested in spirituality, but still largely ambivalent towards Christianity. “The average German church is made up of a couple of old people,” Jared explained. “Your average pastor in the state church pastors four or five churches, because they can't afford their own pastor.” The last contact with the church most younger people have is their grandparents, and just around 1% of Germans would say they have a relationship with Jesus. “The German church is very liberal. So you have to imagine your average Protestant minister may not actually believe Jesus rose from the dead, or doesn't actually believe in mainstream Christian theology.”
Because this is the landscape where Jared and Abbi were ministering, they describe a heart of evangelism as truly driving their church’s mission. “At the beginning of our time, people didn't even know who Jesus was,” Abbi explained. “One of our friends was like, ‘How come your church always talks about this guy? Jesus.’ And so a lot of our work was just building relationships with people and being a first contact to Christianity or to church for them.” These relationships were formed at different events like concerts which Jared and Abbi helped their church organize with local artists. They were also able to marry their love of ministry with their love of starting projects as they spearheaded different outreaches to the community. One of these was a ministry to the women in Frankfurt’s red light district. This started with Abbi and several other church friends handing out roses with Bible verses attached to the women on Valentine’s Day. After networking with similar ministries across Europe, this outreach grew to a team of 30 people who would pass out gifts, Bible verses, and offer to pray for the women.
Jared and Abbi in front of a fellow seminary classmate's family castle after their wedding.
Relational ministry was common and highly encouraged at Jared and Abbi’s church. One of the ways they engaged in this type of ministry was through weekly meetings or small groups which they held for anyone who wanted to come and discuss general spiritual questions. “It was super hard to grasp because I was used to Alpha courses,” Jared explained. “But what my pastor kept trying to tell me was, ‘We need something before the Alpha Course. We need a pre-step to that.’” At first Jared wasn’t sure about leading this sort of group. “So we're bringing in a quote from Gandhi and just talking about it. I was wondering, ‘Are we selling out?’” But then he grew to love this kind of ministry. “I understood after a while, because we would have people join that class, and then they would come to our service and say, ‘Oh, you guys are actually kind of cool.’ Or we'd have people like that say, ‘I'd like to learn more about Christianity because you guys seem interesting.’ And so it worked out in a more natural way.”
Whether they were engaging in intentional relational ministry or simply enjoying spending time with others, Jared and Abbi loved having get-togethers at their apartment. They held Superbowl parties where they would give their German friends a crash course in American football and eat KFC chicken together. They hosted Easter and Christmas feasts and birthday parties. One year Abbi even hosted a pumpkin-themed party—15 women who hadn’t yet experienced the American obsession with the PSL (Starbucks pumpkin-spiced latte) came over for everything from pumpkin cheese starters to pumpkin cocktails to pumpkin pie. “I was just thinking of creative ways to have people connect and get to know each other better. And then the fun thing was that I'd have my two or three other Christian friends come. The rest of the women would be non-Christians and I would relax knowing my Christian friends would be chill and authentic about their faith and how God plays a huge role in their life. Even just the women saying, ‘Oh, how do you know each other?’ And us saying, ‘Oh, through church,’ would be a big, bold statement to them.” Jared and Abbi loved getting to display the love of Jesus simply through getting to be friends with neighbors like these.
Jared and Abbi visiting fellow church planters in Berlin spring of 2020.
While Jared was still in seminary and serving as the interim pastor at their church, his love of liturgy continued to grow. He had been following the development of the ACNA and through one of his seminary professors became connected with a German church which was part of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). This church was associated with the REC in the U.S., which is a part of the ACNA. During this time, Jared also discovered the Always Forward Church Planting podcast hosted by the Rev. Canon Dr. Dan Alger and thus continued to be drawn towards the liturgical style of Anglicanism. He began the process of being ordained as a deacon in the REC while still pastoring at his church.
It was around this time when both Jared and Abbi were sensing that it was time for something to change and were considering moving back to the U.S. Since Abbi’s sister was living in Charlotte, she began researching churches in North Carolina. Meanwhile, Jared had reached out to Rev. Dan Alger as a part of Always Forward just to connect on all things related to Anglicanism and church planting. One week, Abbi happened upon Redeemer’s website and immediately fell in love with the concept of the Parish, Park, Farm, and Abbey. “It was that same week that Jared talked to Dan and Dan said, ‘You guys should come to Greensboro. I just moved here. I'm at Church of the Redeemer.’ And we were like, ‘No way.’” Jared and Abbi were amazed--they saw this as an answer from the Lord in the middle of their discerning process.
Several months later, Jared and Abbi said bittersweet goodbyes to their friends and their city in Germany and moved back to the U.S. in September 2020. During the process of moving, they found out that Abbi was pregnant with their first-born and would give birth in the spring of 2021. They’re excited to meet their little one, get to know themselves as parents, and experience things like beach trips and Christmas mornings as a family of three.
We’re so glad to welcome Jared, Abbi, and their little one into the Redeemer family!
Jared and Abbi settled in an apartment in Greensboro on December 28th, 2020, and have since then been getting to know the city and people at Redeemer. “We loved our city in Germany and getting to know her, so it’s been fun getting to know Greensboro slowly but surely because of COVID.” Abbi is spending her time finalizing the details of moving internationally and preparing to welcome their newborn. She loves being in the same time zone as and within driving distance of family, and hopes to marry all that she loves about being in the U.S. with what she misses about the European lifestyle. Jared is currently working at a job based in Charlotte before he’ll transition to working as Redeemer’s curate this summer. “I am generally an innovative guy who loves rethinking processes and structures. But I am also a guy who cares more about people than tasks. So in all of my serving my primary goal will be to serve the people of this church and shape it as a community where people can grow more and more into the image of Jesus while serving our surrounding community.” He hopes to continue discerning whether church planting is what their vocation as a couple will be.
Jared and Abbi are excited at the possibility of having people over for coffee and cake (they have an espresso machine!), to go on picnics, and just to spend time with their new church family and neighbors as things become safer following the pandemic. They have already loved being a part of Redeemer--Jared reading Scripture and helping to run the video systems on Sunday mornings and Abbi helping out at Umuganda Day. We are so thankful that they’re here with us!
