With roughly twelve hours remaining in Romania, the sadness of leaving the relationships we’ve formed and the town we’ve grown to love is already setting in. The bonds we’ve created with the Romanians are even stronger because they are Gospel-centered. It has truly been a blessing to work alongside local missionaries who are committed to the Great Commission, which is, after all, our chief task in this season of redemptive history. I could literally write for hours about everything that God has shown me in Draganesti, but unfortunately there is something about touching, smelling, feeling, seeing, and tasting the experiences in real time that almost guarantees some of the meaning will be lost in translation.
Either way, I pray that I can distill the lessons I learned into universal truths that will be just as useful for ministry in an American context as they are overseas. Here is the story of our ministry contact, Raul, and the universal lessons that I think can be taken away from it…
1) All evangelistic progress is borne out of a deep anguish over lost souls. Before our missionary contact, Raul Costea, came to Draganesti, he spent years praying for the lost souls in Southern Romania. He would lay his hands on the map of Romania, and plead with God that He send missionaries there to preach the Gospel, echoing Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 9:37-38, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send workers into his harvest field.” One day, God answered his prayer for missionaries to be sent to Southern Romania—telling Raul, ironically, that Raul himself would be the one to go!
2) God uses humble beginnings for His glory. When Raul first arrived in Draganesti, there was only one believer in the entire town, and very few in the entire county. With no church building to meet in, and no relationships already formed, Raul started to make an impact on the town by simply serving. He would pick up trash on the streets and fix park benches. After a while, people began to notice and they begin to ask him what made him different from others. Through these conversations, he was able to talk about the divine love that prompted him to service and as he talked, new Christians began to be made.
3) Persecution is a regular part of the Christian life. Raul suffered intense persecution for his Christian faith. Soon after he arrived in Draganesti, townspeople organized a petition with the hopes of kicking him out of town. The police would wait outside of his apartment, as well, and prevent people from meeting inside of his house. At its worst, a man put a knife to Raul’s neck and told him he would slit his throat if he didn’t leave town. Despite all this, he did not leave Draganesti.
When we obey God’s calling and thirst for His purposes to be accomplished on earth, we will always face persecution. This persecution may take different forms in the United States than it will overseas, but it will be persecution nonetheless. I am convinced that in the United States, much of the persecution we will face will be “persecution of reputation”. It is not popular, nowadays, to publicly claim that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), and we must be willing to accept the myriad labels pertaining to intolerance and its synonyms that will surely come when we take a risky stand for Christ.
4) God acts when prayer is a priority. It was amazing how much we prayed this month—for anything and everything. At the beginning of each church service, the entire congregation would group up into groups of two or three and pray that the town would see ten new believers by the end of the year. Before we would do evangelism, we would pray intensely beforehand. There was no initiative that was not soaked in prayer.
Sometimes I am so slow to connect the dots spiritually! I read in the Bible, day after day, that new believers are made largely through prayer, I witness a church like the one in Draganesti (which is expanding rapidly), and I witness the amount of prayer that this church takes part in, and then I wonder how these ideas are all connected! It’s obvious! Prayer makes things happen, and this principle is universally applicable!
5) The Gospel is on the move! Take heart in the fact that the Christian faith is not dying around the world! To the contrary, it is exploding! At our last church service in Draganesti, it was thrilling to see a packed sanctuary (some people couldn’t even find a seat!). In just eight years since Raul came to Draganesti, there are now over 700 believers in the county—and this number is expanding exponentially!
Next month we will be in India, a country that has seen rapid Christian growth in the past few decades. The month after next, we will be in Nepal. In 1953, there were zero Christian churches in Nepal. In 1990, there were 110,000 believers. Just twenty years later, there are 880,000 believers in Nepal, and this number is increasing exponentially. In South Korea, the Christian population has increased from 1% to almost 40% of the total population in the past half-century. The growth rates in China, the world’s most populous country, are similar, though the growth didn’t start as recently. Africa and Latin America have seen incredible Christian growth as well. Though the toxic effects of secularism and worldliness are working hard to choke out Christian love in America, take heart in knowing that, as Christians, you are part of a global initiative that is expanding like wildfire.
6) Accept blessings when they come! As a Christian, I often get wrapped up in the idol of self-deprival. By doing this, I am taking a Biblical principle and twisting it way out of context. The Bible teaches that when we are pursuing the true Christian life, self-sacrifice and self-deprival will surely come—but not that we should pursue these things. When I think of all the work that we did for Raul this month—the evangelism, the children’s programs, the construction work— it was clear that he didn’t mind being blessed by us.
The “dirty work” we did freed him up to pursue more pressing ministry initiatives. When I think back on all the blessings I have turned down in the past out of a prideful desire to be a “self-made man”, I realize all the great resources I could currently be stewarding for ministry purposes but am currently not. Don’t be afraid to accept blessings when they come—more often than not, they are from the hand of God!
It has truly been an awesome month and now it’s off to India!
