Among the tasks assigned to the Religious Affairs staff was that of approving visits to the British Zone by church leaders. The branch was responsible for handling applications from anyone who had reasons for contacting one of the faith communities. There is no record of the number who applied to visit over the five years that the work was carried out. At the start, with resources limited and travel difficult, there was a strict policy on visits. Few were allowed. As restrictions eased the number of visitors increased. There are references throughout the life of the Control Commission to the monitoring and organising role played by the Religious Affairs Branch. It is, though, the early visits that were most significant as they provided both a picture of church life in Germany in the period after the end of the fighting and a sense of what British church leaders believed was their role in relation to German faith leaders. British church leaders were among the first non-military or governmental people of national importance to visit Germany. Similarly, German church leaders were among the first of their countrymen who made officially sponsored visits abroad. They too needed permission, which had to be obtained through the Branch.

The first person known to have arrived from outside Germany and who visited the churches came not from the United Kingdom but from Switzerland. His journey was made before the Control Commission had begun its work. Stewart Herman had been the Minister of the American Church in Berlin until it was closed in December 1941, following the declaration of war by Germany on the United States. After a time in the United States, working with the US Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, he returned to Europe to become Secretary of the Department of Reconstruction of the nascent World Council of Churches, working from their headquarters in Geneva. As a Lutheran, with experience of life in Germany, he possessed an understanding both of the German Evangelical churches and of some of the pressures that they had faced during the Nazi period. In his new post he was keen to see what had happened to the churches during the years that he had been absent from Germany. In the summer of 1945 Herman was able to visit much of Germany.