We’ve known for a long time that monastic retreats are good for the soul — and the head. Now Protestants are getting in on the act, and a new industry is beginning to boom in, of all places, Germany — where they’re offering retreats for harried business executives, in monastaries:

Bursfelde is one of 33 Protestant monasteries and seminaries in Germany that switched to the Lutheran denomination during the Reformation and — after being neglected and forgotten for a long time, in some cases — are now experiencing something of a renaissance. Frazzled business executives are not the only ones fueling the boom in retreats. Senior Lutheran Church leaders are also rediscovering the monasteries, eager to share in the spirituality and serenity they offer.

The Protestants are taking a page from the book of the Catholic Church, which long ago discovered the marketability of Catholic abbeys such as Maria Laach in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Andechs in Bavaria. Even the chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Bishop Wolfgang Huber, is touting his church’s new approach. Huber calls the monasteries a “treasure,” and says that the church should make the most of them. According to an EKD document, monastic communities are “gaining new significance.”

“Demand is booming at our monasteries,” says Margot Käßmann, the Lutheran bishop of Hanover. The church stands to gain financially from an unusual legal arrangement. The Hanover Chamber of Monasteries, the umbrella organization for these spiritual centers, is a state agency that uses the revenues from four public foundations to pay for the upkeep of the buildings. Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Science and Culture is charged with the legal supervision of the Chamber of Monasteries.

These servants of the church are reporting a demand for their spiritual retreats that stands in sharp contrast to the general societal trend away from organized religion. Last year the Hanover Chamber of Monasteries’ facilities in the state of Lower Saxony (of which Hanover is the capital) counted 200,000 single-day and seminar guests, with the number of those staying overnight on the rise. The Protestants are also emulating their Catholic brethren by creating new pilgrimages. They have even created the job of “pilgrimage pastor” at Loccum Abbey in Lower Saxony.

“Protestants, in particular, seem to be hungry for spirituality,” says Fulbert Steffensky, a retired theology professor and former Benedictine monk. Decades of “reason and somberness among the Protestants” initially spawned discontent, then a yearning for something different, he says.

Does this Benedictine spirituality work? Ask the folks at Volkswagen. After a Bursfelde seminar, the company added something new. Every Friday at noon, a group of employees gets together to spend an hour-and-a-half in meditation.