Two guitar players strummed and sang in Farsi as a stream of Afghans and Iranians knelt at the front of Trinity Lutheran Church, sipping wine from a shared Communion cup. Most of the congregants had arrived in Germany within the last two years, part of the refugee influx that’s brought more than a million asylum seekers to the country since 2015.

At the peak of the crisis two years ago, this Lutheran Church was holding mass baptisms of more than 200 people at a time, said the pastor, Gottfried Martens. “This church went from just a few hundred members to more than 1,300 Iranians and Afghans,” Martens said. “All converts.”

When Germany opened its doors to refugees in 2015, churches and church-affiliated organizations played a critical role in the response. Most of them took care to separate religion from humanitarian aid, especially those implementing state-funded relief projects. More than two years later, however, some churches are more actively defending refugees, even housing rejected asylum seekers in churches so German police cannot deport them, while submitting legal appeals for their cases. Many of these “church asylum” beneficiaries have also converted, a controversial act that’s drawn criticism from Islamic groups and scepticism from German authorities. There are 351 church asylum locations in Germany, according to Asyl in der Kirche, a network of German parishes offering safe houses. They host 551 people, including 127 children and 301 Dublin cases. Legally, German police can deport both Dublin cases and rejected asylum seekers, a phenomenon that has increased for Afghans in particular. Germany started deporting hundreds of Afghans in 2016, sending them on charter flights back to Afghanistan, despite the country’s growing instability. If refugees are living on church grounds, however, police won’t enter.