Berlin Church Plant Embraces All That Jazz

It’s Saturday night, and you’re looking for jazz in Germany’s capital. You could catch an after-midnight jam session at A-Trane in Charlottenburg, get cozy in the stylish, intimate ambience of the Zig Zag Club in Friedenau, or catch a solo saxophonist serenading the crowd at Berlin’s oldest jazz club, Quasimodo.

And there’s one more option: You could wait until morning and go to church in the Wedding district.

One part church plant, one part jazz project, Kiez Church (Neighborhood Church), in the multiethnic district of Wedding is led by Ali and Rich Maegraith, Australian missionaries who say they want to bring the gospel to the cosmopolitan city’s art scene. 

Berlin is a magnet for musicians—a place to connect and prove your chops. The German capital is a hub for many different European music scenes, from electronic dance to Afropop, classical to klezmer, and attracts creative people from all over.

The Maegraiths, who moved to Berlin in 2015, say that’s their in. The city’s music scene provides them with evangelistic opportunities. Rich, a professional jazz musician, and Ali, a vocalist and songwriter, moved to the city to serve with the European Christian Mission agency. 

“We’ve met many people through jam sessions, performances, or just busking on the streets,” Ali told CT.

When they first arrived, Rich would go to jam sessions every night, all over the city. 

“In Berlin, the jazz scene is already a community, where people will play and hang out together until the early hours of the morning,” he said. “They even call it ‘jazz church.’”

Berlin’s nightlife is more readily associated with techno and punk, but it also has a long historical relationship with jazz. The improvisational, syncopated music first came to the German capital at the end of World War I, when it was warmly received by the post-war population of the Weimar Republic. 

When the American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925, she found the city dazzling with a vibrant jazz scene. Her performances were received with warm adulation. And popular performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took the city by storm at a time when it was the third largest metropolitan area in the world by population.

Nazis put an end to jazz when they took control, but it came back with the Allied victory in World War II. Soldiers stationed in the city brought the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Miles Davis with them. This time, jazz stuck. 

Today, Berlin is one of the best places in Europe to hear a live jazz show. And one of the places you can do that is at Kiez Church Wedding. 

The Sunday morning set-up is laid back, with a homey feel: There’s a Turkish rug on the floor, a map of Berlin’s neighborhoods on the wall, a smattering of musical equipment on stage, and a bunch of house plants. The music is a mix of contemporary Christian worship songs and a worship-themed jazz jam session with Ali, Rich, and other musicians they have met along the way. 

The Maegraiths call it “dual thing.” They want to offer a biblically grounded community for young people living in Wedding and use their musical gifts to create improvisational forms of church music. 

Celebrating its fourth anniversary in September 2024, the church offers bilingual German and English worship. Leadership is shared between Germans and Australians, and the staff includes international interns, students, and immigrants.

About 30 people regularly attend Kiez Church. A lot of them are artists, musicians, and students, or young professions.

Rich, who preaches most Sundays, shared his own experience of being a professional musician. 

“Anyone coming to visit can hear how their pastor knows what it’s like to be living in the world,” he said. “He’s not in some Christian bubble, doing churchy stuff, he’s part of the city’s day-to-day experience.” 

The church plant has been pretty successful—which is hard to do in Europe. Rich and Ali, however, said they didn’t start with much of a plan. They are, by their account, “accidental church planters.” 

“We weren’t well-versed with the models when we started; it just kind of happened,” said Ali. 

Ever the jazz musicians, they have improvised their way through church planting. At their fourth anniversary service, for example, Ali and Rich put together the set list the night before, without the chance to rehearse before going “live” in worship the next day. It worked. 

“We are just doing our thing,” Ali said. “We pray, wait on the lord, see what happens, what he does.

“I still have moments wondering, ‘Is this really a church?’” Ali said. 

Now, after four years, the “dual thing” jazz church has turned into an LP to share with the city and others who are interested in a record of jazz grounded in the life of a church. 

The album the Berlin Psalm Project released with a special concert in March 2024 is a collection of psalms set to modern jazz, written and performed by Ali and a group of international, Berlin-based performers. Ali said the album reflects the way the Psalms “speak to the deepest inner longings of all human beings” and give “a modern voice to ancient conversations with the Creator.”

Some songs emphasize lament and others joy and adoration, including renditions of Psalm 8 (“Oh Lord our God”), Psalm 46 (“Gott ist unsere Zuflucht und Stärke”), and Psalm 27 (“Der Herr ist mein Licht”), preformed on trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, bass, piano, and drums, with Rich on tenor sax and bass clarinet. 

Above all else, Ali believes, Berliners just want you to be honest.

“They want to hear authentic expressions, to know what you really feel and where you’re coming from,” she said, “and that’s what the Psalms are all about—they are some of the most honest parts of the Bible.”

And jazz, Ali has found, shares that deep commitment to authenticity, pairing well with biblical texts. Improvisation captures the emotion and essence of a moment and provides “the perfect setting to explore deeply into what it means to pour out our hearts in vulnerability before God,” she said. 

Katya Sourikova, a pianist and composer who has worked with the Maegraiths on other recordings, said the project impressed her with its breadth of bold, dramatic, and theatrical musical expressions. The spectrum of modern jazz on the album is “not what one would immediately associate with the setting of religious texts,” she said, but it “sets this project apart from many others working in this genre.” 

The project has also impressed church leaders who appreciate the crossover between the arts and faith. In a rave review, Mark Lau, director of worship arts at Redeemer Downtown in New York City, called the project “a sublime work of art, vision, and energy.” 

Lau said the Berlin Psalm Project is “a beautifully nuanced combination of uplifting lyrics, majestic ensemble writing, telepathic improvisation, bubbling textures and infectious groove. Instantly accessible yet driven by a subtle complexity that keeps the listener engaged throughout.”

Franz Weidauer, a mathematician and electric guitarist in Leipzig, a city in Germany’s east known for its connection to Johann Sebastian Bach, also loves the album. He said it’s a fresh expression of art and faith in Europe. 

“People might see the Psalms as ‘old-fashioned,’” Weidauer said, “but they are, in many ways, a modern songbook, a voice for what we are feeling today.”

Weidauer works with Crescendo, a network of Christian artists and musicians founded in Basel, Switzerland, which now has locations across Europe. He has played in various praise bands, jazz combos, and indie groups over the years. When he listens to the Maegraiths’ album, he said he is reminded of how jazz music has the power to speak to people on a deep level. 

“There’s a sense of transcendence through jazz,” Weidauer said, “the power to connect us to a creative force—even those who are hesitant to talk about ‘God.’” 

That’s the kind of innovation and improvisation that creates evangelical opportunities in urban centers like Berlin. Weidauer said he hopes others embrace the idea of jazz in church. Kiez Church could be a model for other “accidental” church planters to follow.

“What the Maegraiths have done is provide people a broader perspective on what ‘church music’ can be,” Weidauer said. “Urban people, who might not otherwise be interested in classical church settings, are open to spiritual connection. … Jazz music can open that connection.”

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