When my pastor asks me to help out by teaching Sunday school or singing in the choir, I've always had the convenient excuse: "I'll be in Europe." Then I was asked by our church headquarters to help shoot a video in eastern Germany about Martin Luther and the Reformation. I had nowhere to hide.

After a busy week filming along "the Luther trail" followed by lots of post-production work, our video is in the mail to all 11,000 Lutheran churches (ELCA) in America.

My wife Anne is Roman Catholic. Writing this script was a treacherous challenge. To make sure the video was not just a Lutheran rant, I asked her brother — a priest at Notre Dame — to review the script. While I tried to be balanced, it became clear: it's tough to tell the story of Luther in a way that staunch Catholics will enjoy.

By any assessment, Martin Luther was important. On the "most influential people of the millennium" lists, he came in at number three, hot on the heels of Newton and Gutenberg.

In the early 1500s, there was no separation of church and state — bishops were princes and sins were crimes. It was a time of great change. Imagine Europe's "class of 1500" — Michelangelo, Columbus, Machiavelli, Leonardo, Gutenberg, and others — all working to break society out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world.

Born in German Saxony in 1483, Martin Luther challenged the medieval practices of the Roman Church. When confronted by the Holy Roman Emperor and ordered to recant, Luther the monk stood defiant before the grandest assembly Europe could muster and refused, saying simply, "Here I stand. I can do no other." He led a movement that broke Rome's monopoly on power in the Christian church, and changed the course of European history.

Our challenge: to tell the story of the Reformation — conveying the broad context, Luther's ideas, and his personality — in 30 minutes. Our script needed to be simple but not sloppy, fun but not flip.

When filming for TV, my biggest frustration is the weather. Our director, Tim Frakes, who claims God is on his crew, delegates that problem to Him. For an entire October week in northeast Germany we had brilliant sunshine every day.

Luther is big news in eastern Germany. But the actual Reformation sights — while numerous — are meager. The best of the Luther sights can be seen in three stops:

The town of Erfurt — where Luther became a monk and first preached in 1505 — is a delight even without its Reformation ties. A playful stream babbles through town while lively, irreverent shops breathe modern life into an otherwise petrified jumble of half-timbered buildings. A stern cathedral towers over the main square, taking the mellow and merry out of this medieval scene.

Wittenberg is the university town where Luther taught, nailed the famous 95 theses onto the church door in 1517, directed the Reformation, ran his "protestant" think tank, and was buried in 1546. Packed with sights, it's a great side-trip from Berlin — only an hour away by train. Like Erfurt, Wittenberg is a newly vibrant east German town.
 
A trek up to the Wartburg Castle (about 100 miles northeast of Frankfurt), where Luther hid out for a year after being excommunicated, is a pilgrimage for Protestants and a real hit with pastors on tour. It was here in 1522 that Luther translated the New Testament from the elitist Latin to the language of the German people (the Old Testament would follow in 1535). He instructed his helpers to "use simple words, not those of the court, for this book should be famous for its simplicity." Five hundred years ago, this was a bold and dangerous action, angering the Roman Church.

Filming in eastern Germany, we saw a mix of breathtaking change amid the stubborn remnants of the old communist society. Thunderous autobahns zip past dreary sprawling apartment complexes.

The Iron Curtain is long gone, but today the people feel the pressure of a demanding new regime... capitalism. After ten years of freedom, East Germans are still adjusting.

Germany has gone deeply into debt turning this region into a vast construction zone. While stuck with the communist-era architecture, many buildings have been given facelifts, and have sprouted colorful new balconies.

Cities are changing faster than towns. The sleepy towns still feel eastern with bleary yellow signage, few and dreary eateries, and villagers in dusty blue overalls who still spend their days behind a horse and plow.

Kids continue to stare at western tourists as if we're extraterrestrials. One little boy couldn't keep his eyes off me. His mom explained: After eating a MacRoyal — metric Germany's name for our Quarter Pounder — her son asked why McDonald's bread is so soft. She joked that many Americans have no teeth. Now, every time the boy sees an American, he checks for teeth.

The East German heritage is still heavy on "nyet." Breakfast in my hotel was scheduled for 8:00. When I asked, "Can we eat at 7:45?" the immediate response was "Nein." Then, employing a mix of humor and polite persistence, I finessed the "no" into "Warum nicht?" (Why not?).

While restaurant service can be bleak, the food is cheap. It's hard to pay more then $10 for dinner.

Tourism is slow. Few locals speak English. Museums are humble and low-tech with German-only descriptions. But any history buff can snare some great sightseeing moments. My highlights: being in the tiny castle room where Luther translated the New Testament, and playing "A Mighty Fortress" — Luther's greatest hit — in an Erfurt church...on the same pipe organ that Bach's parents heard at their wedding.

My favorite souvenir? A pair of socks embroidered with: "Here I stand. I can do no other." I gave a pair to my pastor, who now pulls up his pant-legs for emphasis during his sermons.

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