The applause reached its peak for Farmer, who had come from his congregation in Berlin to speak at John Hancock Hall.

Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, Farmer detailed the bloody torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Romans slashed his back until "you [could] see the intestines," he bellowed. "It was excruciating pain.... But Jesus did not fall. Satan attacked with fury, but he never fell."

Yet at other times, Farmer's voice fell almost to a whisper. "The heart of God is love," he said quietly.

A charismatic speaker, Farmer was repeatedly interrupted in his sermon by the applause of the 1,000-member audience.

Farmer talked about the high rates of divorce and illegitimate children and the dearth of religion in Berlin, where he and his wife head the city's Church of Christ.

He testified to God's grace in the lives of Germans who had turned to the church: an alcoholic who kicked his habit, a prostitute and drug addict who reformed her ways and was baptized six weeks later, a 60-year-old woman who had taught the official atheism of East Germany but has now converted to the Christian faith.

Farmer noted that 15 of his 150 disciples attended the first meeting of the church's chemical dependency group.

During the service, one churchgoer mentioned to a reporter that she had gotten over an eating disorder with the church's help.

Another speaker blasted American society for its blame-shifting. "We live in a no-fault, no-guilt society. The trial of the century was O.J., but the trial of eternity is Jesus Christ.... We are sinners, we are murderers."

Fighting the Sinful Life

One week after the service at John Hancock Hall, about 200 people gathered at Winchester High School for another sermon.

"Government cannot produce peace; only God can produce peace," minister Roy Larson intoned.

Larson, a 15-year BCC member and the individual who brought Farmer to the faith, discounted the power of the government or other worldly institutions to help people. But his sermon was not about rightwing militancy.

"The way of Jesus is not to retaliate," said Larson, who is the minister for a BCC sector which includes Winchester, Medford, Cambridge and Somerville.

Instead, Larson urged Christians to "temper justice with mercy" and denounced a rigid legalistic view of Christ's teachings. "It's not a license for immorality," Larson was quick to add. "A Christian is not weak-willed."

When members of the BCC use the word "Christian," they usually mean devotees of the Boston Church of Christ.