Serbia Bible SchoolFinally, I was invited to teach at an 8 day Bible school near Belgrade Serbia (Opovo) by a mentoring ministry based in Germany that especially encourages leaders in eastern Europe to grow and serve the Lord in ministry. This was the first time a summer Bible school has been organized there so it was kind of an experiment. The goal was to invite people from various protestant churches (especially leaders in ministry) to study deeper God’s Word and aspects of ministry so they would be better equipped.
We ended up with 23 students from at least three different churches. The ages went from 16 to 65 and Serbs coming from Slovak, Hungarian, and Gypsy backgrounds. You couldn’t ask for a bigger mix with such a small group. But the Lord really blessed the time as we met from 7:30 am to 9 pm every day for 8 days studying the Word, worshiping, praying, and sharing testimony. Joachim Pomrehn and Siegfried Scherrer who lead the mentoring ministry shared most of the practical and pastoral classes and I taught the Old Testament Bible classes. Two or three others were invited to teach special sessions.
Through my time there my eyes were opened to many new things. One was discovering the sweltering head in the upper 90’s. But more importantly, I saw that Serbia is definitely a spiritually needy place. Most of the people came from small congregations in which there were just handfuls of worshipers on a Sunday. Pastors survive by being paid by the state and also tentmaking (e.g. farming). But there are places where God’s light is bringing renewal.On the first night, I stayed in the village of Jabuko with the Methodist pastor’s family. In the evening we were invited for the Friday night prayer meeting. Travelling through the poor village, we didn’t expect much. The church looked like a one-story house and its sanctuary could only hold around 50 but we were surprised to see 30 people attend the prayer meeting, mostly Gypsies, who praised the Lord with all their hearts and the time of prayer was powerful. In the last 10 years the pastor had evangelized most of those in attendance (3 of them were in our Bible school) and one of the young men, Daniel Naskovski, is now a pastor and was actually the local organizer of our Bible school! Being a Gypsy usually carries quite a stigma but that hasn’t stopped him from going to seminary in Austria and then taking a call as full-time pastor in Vrbas Serbia. Pray for Daniel and Lila (pastor in Jabuko) and others like them. For God is doing a mighty work there! Most of the country is traditional Orthodox and the church actually discourages people from sudying the Scriptures. In fact, most priests know less about the Bible than our students.
On Sunday I preached in another small Methodist church in Panina. This one was quite different, traditional with about 20 elderly women and men and no youth. Pastor Sjanta has been there only one year and is trying to revive a ministry that has been allowed to vegetate for decades. It is a very discouraging situation but he and his family are praying for open doors into the community and are hoping that our Bible school event might be one way to encourage people to be involved in the ministry to the community.
Those participating in our school were involved in ministry to children (Zuzana), to the congregation as preachers (Goran & Zhelko),to women (Katarina), to alcoholics (Ondrej), to youth (Dejan), and others. May God use them in a mighty way in his church!
Please Pray…
- Soon we will be starting the Bible school year again. We would appreciate your prayers as the last few students make final decisions for Bible school.
- We will be heading to the prayer conference in NE Poland (Mrągowo) once again in the middle of September where we will be leading some of the sessions.
- Other events will soon be starting: preaching in our church, youth meetings in Ustroń, English Worship in Cieszyn, and Bible hour in Ustroń. We pray for God’s strength and leading as we continue to serve him here and the months ahead are pretty full.
- Please also pray for our financial support. We are not quite meeting the needs of our spending every month. The dollar has been losing strength in Poland and prices are going up. All of this means we are slowly dipping into reserves which are shrinking quickly (the lowest they’ve ever been). Please pray for the Lord’s provision in these month to month needs.
Tim, Renata, and Peter Hinrichs
