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Bulgaria Update #2

Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 06:34PM by Registered CommenterSacred Saga Team | Comments15 Comments

Bulgaria Update #2

October 2008

It was a grueling time but I have now finished up teaching the class in Introduction to Theology. What follows are a few preliminary observations. This is the third trip to Bulgaria. It still is unnerving to be dropped into a culture where I cannot read the alphabet. (It takes me about five or six days to get my mind shifted enough to sound out the words.) My Bulgarian vocabulary is still extremely small, although I am told that my pronunciation of the handful of words that I know is good (you never can tell—they may just be being polite!).

In many ways this class was the most fun and interesting I have taught here over the past three years. With about 2/3 of the class being active pastors we engaged in much more give-and-take discussions getting in depth into theological issues that they face on a day to day basis. I mentioned in the last update that we had the question of predestination and free-will raised. This issue is as predictable as the day is long. Students always gravitate to this issue which has been a conundrum for theologians for centuries. Usually answers fall off the tightrope onto the side of free-will (understood in the sense of the ancient Pelagian heresy that says we are absolutely free to choose God and be saved accompanied by the assumption that we can change our mind and reject God and lose our salvation) or on the side of determinism (which is usually articulated in such a way as to reduce our status to that of marionettes on a string that do not choose at all). Both sides’ answers have to explain away biblical material that does not agree with their presuppositions, and neither does it well.

The next day as we were discussing Lutheranism, we got deeply involved in a discussion of the nature of sin and righteousness; the dangers of self-righteousness, and the issues of forgiveness and acceptance before God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, as opposed to being accepted because of our own righteousness. This issue is more subtle than the predestination-freewill controversy, but more directly related to how we live our lives as Christians—do we live in fear that God will reject us if we sin, that he will not hear our prayers until we confess? Or are we unconditionally accepted before God and admit freely our sins/imperfections because we are in Christ and don't have to hide.

The Bulgarian Protestant church comes from a history of an extremely conservative and legalistic perspective which breeds a lack of honesty about oneself and struggles in relationship to others. It is more important to look spiritual or holy than to be spiritual or holy. In other words, we live in dishonesty before man [and God?] (Hmm: Sounds familiar doesn't it?!).

We have been going to Bulgaria for three years now. In the past three years we have seen many changes. Some very positive, leaders are being trained. The Church in the Gypsy community continues to grow in spiritual maturity, in numbers and in world view. There are now a handful of Gypsy leaders that are college graduates and are pursuing graduate degrees. This was an unimaginable possibility a decade ago.

On the other hand the heady days of easy evangelism are over. There is a cultural hopelessness that has infected the culture and the church. While forty years of communism did not extinguish the deeply rooted Eastern Orthodoxy of the country, the culture as a whole has lost it sense of direction and its moral base. The void that existed at the fall of communism has turned become cynicism without hope. This cynicism is even infiltrating the church as the economic situation of the people has grown increasingly desperate over the past year with prices rising over 30% with no increase in wages.

One of my students this year Assen Mitkov is a pastor in a Turkish Gypsy community and is getting ready to move to Turkey to do church planting among the Turkish Gypsy people. This is an extremely dangerous ministry. Although Turkey is a constitutionally free nation, as one moves away from the area of Istanbul, Christians are under tremendous persecution by conservative Muslims and there have been numerous martyrs. He is leaving for his first trip on the November first. Please pray for his safety and for the Lord’s work in Turkey.

 

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