Sometimes the only thing that helps is praying. Or swearing. Chris Berndt, 14, stares wide-eyed into the muddy descent. Running would be tough. But on a bike: "Holy shit!" But the scaredy-cat can trust in God's help. This weekend, he is one of the protégés of "Vossi" (30), the bike pastor. He stands below, strokes his wild mohawk mane and preaches: "Hey, don't be like a wet sack. Let go, you can do it!"
Jonas nervously adjusts his helmet. His fingers tremble a little. Then he pedals and kicks his inner bastard hard in the arse. At the bottom, he is almost bursting with pride. "Many teenagers think they can't do anything. That's rubbish. I want to help them push the boundaries. That somehow helps them in life," says Vossi.
The guy's real name is Christian Voss - thirty years old, married, dad to a cute daughter. "Jesus rules" is emblazoned in huge letters on his shirt. Because his blonde mohawk hair is almost down to his hips, he has placed the slogan at the very bottom of his back. This makes it easier to see. Vossi is a Christian. A bike freak. And for three years he has been a bike pastor with the official blessing of the church. The job is youth work at grassroots level: organising concerts, building dirt tracks, giving workshops. "I don't want to preach at people, I want to bring fun into their lives," says Vossi. He bought his first bike when he was fourteen. "A mill like that for 1000 marks. But I was hooked straight away". Later he rode trials. Then downhill racing. Once he even dared to compete in a cross-country World Cup. "I was on the front row next to John Tomac. It was an attempt, but it went down the drain. After that, I only rode at an appropriate level - in local races," celebrates Vossi.
In the meantime, he no longer has time for racing. His mission as a bike pastor demands his full commitment. The path to Christian faith was a painful one for Vossi. When he was sixteen, his little brother was run over by a train. Just like that. Vossi was unable to cope with the loss for a long time. He found the death sentence that his devout parents had chiselled on his gravestone particularly poignant: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away." The sentence comes from the Bible. "I thought: Why does something like this happen if there is supposed to be a God?" Vossi looked for the answer in the Bible, while his mates found their religion in Bravo. "The book is over a thousand years old. But in principle, it was written about the same problems that concern us today. We blame God for everything we do. God puts us naked in the world and takes us naked. What we do in between is in our own hands," says Vossi.
Vossi held his first sermon as a bike pastor at the age of 23. At the village race in Minden, he spontaneously sat on a lorry and preached a relaxed, fair competition. He made a pilgrimage from race to race. Soon the Jesus freak was known throughout the scene. Custom welder Florian Wiesmann included him in his sponsorship programme. "Jesus rules" became his trademark. Vossi once ran into a bike punk at a downhill race. "Say, you love Satan!" was written on his T-shirt, which means: "Admit it, you love Satan". Not at all. "Back home, I immediately had the "Jesus rules" shirts printed," laughs Vossi: "It can't be that Satan advertises and Jesus doesn't."
Three years ago, Vossi's path finally led him from his hometown of Hanover to Klieken, postcode 06869, a village in the centre of Saxony-Anhalt. Cobblestones, 1186 inhabitants, a church, a vicarage. Vossi had been allocated the three-room flat in it as his new home. The church had officially appointed him as a bike priest. The first and only one in the world. The financial reward for this is rather meagre, but Vossi is an idealist anyway. "I was supposed to set up a fun sports project with young people in Saxony-Anhalt. It was up to me what," Vossi recalls.
Vossi often has to fight against prejudice. But he would never conform. "My
I don't derive my value from other people. I think it's great to live with Jesus as my boss. He accepts me for who I am," says Vossi.
