Churches and ministries in Austria's easternmost province have begun a media campaign inviting residents to watch video testimonies of personal faith, part of a series of regional efforts that organizers say have drawn millions of online views.
The campaign in Burgenland is promoted through more than 2,000 posters and advertising on YouTube and social media. A coalition of free churches is running it with regional parishes and ministries, led by Hons Hofer of Campus für Christus Österreich, the Austrian branch of the international Cru movement, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
At the center of the effort are short videos in which residents of Burgenland describe how, in their telling, God became part of their lives. The campaign carries the slogan "Gott is ma untakemma," a phrase in the local dialect that roughly means "God came into my life." Its website, gottkennen.at (English translation: "knowing God"), hosts the videos and offers a live chat for visitors with questions.
Organizers describe the campaign as the newest in a sequence that began in Salzburg in 2021 and continued in Tyrol in 2022, Upper Austria in 2024 and Vorarlberg in 2025. Across those editions, the testimonies drew 3.1 million views, according to organizers' figures cited by Livenet. Each provincial version adapts the slogan to the regional dialect.
The Burgenland participants include a recent secondary-school graduate, a nurse, a stay-at-home mother and a university student. They speak about difficult and hopeful periods in their lives and describe, in their own words, how faith reached them in ways they did not expect.
Hofer said he was moved to act by the strain he saw among young people. Many of those around him were under psychological pressure and searching for meaning and stability, he said, which prompted him to share a Christian message of hope.
Matthias Langhans initiated the campaign in 2021, and Hofer now leads it with a team from Campus für Christus, an interdenominational association. Local parishes, churches and ministries across Burgenland are taking part.
Volunteers have put up posters, and more than 70 people the organizers call "hope intercessors" are joining a four-day prayer chain held in four churches of different denominations across the province.
