It
all started on a bus ride to Bulgaria. I found myself seated next to a guy
named Mircea, who I barely knew. Three hour road trips have a way of making
friends out of acquaintances, and Mircea and I found ourselves lost in
conversation both down and back from the old castle our group was visiting.
Mircea reminisced about his family in the north of Romania and his post-college
adventures in the western cities of Timisoara and Arad. He told me that moving
to Bucharest for work was a huge gamble, but God provided time and again.
Mostly, though, Mircea talked about how stressed out he was at his advertising job.
True, he said, the profession calls for high levels of creativity and pizzazz.
But the long hours, demanding deadlines, and lack of truly understanding his
colleagues made Mircea wish the clock would tick a little bit faster.
I, on the other hand, am employed to
call people to consider God’s hand in their lives. I don’t work in the secular
arena; I teach theology at a seminary and encourage church planting efforts.
But when Mircea began talking about how he wished he could find joy in his job,
I knew God was calling me to ask about how Mircea’s faith relates to the work
he does. I’m glad I did.
The Landscape
My conversation with Mircea made me
curious to find out if other young evangelicals in Romania were asking similar
questions. Because I like to probe for questions and listen to people, I
somehow convinced Mircea and another missionary friend named Jeff to help me interview
several Romanian men and women about their experiences of how their churches are
equipping them to live out their faith. Do their churches provide tools for
sharing Christ? Do church members talk about the struggles of perhaps being the
only Christian in the secular workplace? How do they see their work as
glorifying to God? What we found was discouraging.[1]
Consider first the religious
landscape. Even though roughly 90% of Romania is Eastern Orthodox, Romania is
also sometimes referred to as the “Bible Belt of Europe.” With statistics
showing a Protestant-Evangelical population nearing 6% and well-developed
Baptist, Brethren, and Pentecostal Unions, it would be easy for some mission
advocates to remove Romania from lists of potential mission fields.[2]
Moreover, short-term mission teams from Canada, the US, and Western Europe
rotate regularly into the country, bringing gospel teaching and materials every
year since the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
So, if things are so good, what is
the problem? As we see it, the problem is threefold:
(1)
During
Romania’s long history dealing with atheistic Communism, many Romanian church
members did not share their faith openly for fear of persecution. Now a
generation removed from this reality, the mentality of stark separation between
church and “world” is still ingrained in many people’s minds.
(2)
While
the teaching materials Western missionaries bring into Romania are often quite
solid, the fact remains that such materials almost always originate outside of
Romania. Written by Western authors, and often intended for Western learners,
Romanian ministry leaders must learn to contextualize (not simply translate) these
resources. This is quite a long process that admittedly does not yield desired
results of cultural transformation.
(3)
Like
the rest of the world, Romania is rapidly urbanizing. What this means for
Romania’s churches varies according to each city. In Bucharest, for example,
young business professionals often work 10-12 hour days and fight crowded metro
and bus lines, leaving little extra time for midweek group meetings. Precious
free time may be hard to concede to material that appears irrelevant to their
lives.
The Vision
What we are after, then, is a
contextualized ministry to help Romanians bridge their Sunday worship with the
Monday grind. It is not enough to merely discuss the necessity of “bringing
Christ into the workplace.” Like Mircea, the men and women we’ve spoken with
want more.
So we decided to start
conversations. Our aim is community-building: to help Romanian evangelical
business people realize they are not alone. Partnering with several
out-of-the-box thinkers from both churches and parachurch groups, we began with
beta test seminars that include Romanian Christian business leaders as speakers
and small group leaders. That was a year ago, and the response has been
phenomenal. Romanians challenge Romanians. I (and any other non-Romanian in the
room) help with seminar organization and then watch God move.
We call our initiative Credință la Muncă (Faith at Work).
So far we’ve hosted biannual seminars in both Bucharest and Timisoara, with
more potential cities on the horizon. Our
vision is to create a disciple-making movement among the Romanian business
community for the glory of God.
Romanian
business people
Living
out their faith daily on the job
Making
disciples as they go
For
the glory of God.
Conclusion
The point of all this talk of
contextualized mission is reproducibility for kingdom impact. We want to see
lives changed that will ripple through Romania and spill into other contexts.
In many ways, I think everyone wants that – to be caught up in God’s mission of
making disciples of all peoples. That’s why I’m writing this sentence. That’s
why you, the reader, clicked on the Intersect link. What might it look like for
your friend Muhammed, Pablo, Maria, or Jane to view their workplace as a
mission field? Questions like this one started our journey in Romania. Perhaps
God is preparing a similar journey for you.
Cameron D. Armstrong
works in church planting and theological education with the International
Mission Board (IMB). He holds the MDiv and ThM degrees from Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary. Cameron lives in Bucharest with his wife,
Jessica, and daughter, Sara.
[1]Our findings were published in Cameron
D. Armstrong, Tara M., and Jeff Cardell, “Vocational Witness in the Romanian
Workplace: Realities and Responsibilities,” Global Missiology English 1,
no. 14 (August 1, 2016), accessed January 2, 2018,
http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/1922.0:00 AM.
[2]Included in the category of
“Protestant-Evangelical” are also groups which are doctrinally not identified
as such (Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons, for example). National Institute of Statistics Romania, What does the 2011 census tell us about
religion? (Bucharest, Romania: National Institute of Statistics Romania,
2013). Also, while some pockets of Romania depict a high evangelical
percentage, such as Arad in western Romania, other regions are miniscule.
Bucharest, the nation’s capital, is less than 1% evangelical.
This blog was originally published here at The Intersect Project, a ministry of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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