Magyar Református Egyház

Archive for the ‘Ministry’ Category

At the link please find the Year End Report for the Ars Longa ministry in Hungary.

Ars Longa Year End 2011 final

Dear Friends:

“The Bethlen Home”, now known as “Bethlen Communities”, has been a joint mission of the HungarianReformed Churches, both of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America and the Calvin Synod, since its founding in 1931.

Today the “Bethlen Home” still depends on the support of our churches for its continued work.

This current year “Bethlen Communities” is projected to assist people in need with over $200,000 in “benevolent care”, continuing the tradition of care for individuals who are in need.

In the beginning, our mission was first to orphans, their widowed parents and grandparents, then the elderly. Today our mission is primarily to those who are approaching the end of their lives, are infirm and without adequate financial means to care for themselves in the sunset years of their lives.

Bethlen Communities has been accepted into a not-for-profit fundraising program which has a fantastic benefit: on Monday, October 3, every donated dollar designated to Bethlen Communities will be matched with an additional $ 0.50 (fifty cents) by the Westmoreland and Pittsburgh Foundations!

Please encourage your congregations, your friends, and I especially encourage YOU to make a donation to support this mission of ours. Every dollar YOU donate is worth one and one-half dollars to Bethlen Communities on Tuesday, October 4th.

I would also encourage you to be generous. Whatever you would normally contribute to a cause you know to be worthy, DOUBLE your donation on Monday, October 3; The net benefit will be TRIPLE what you originally planned to give to Bethlen Communities!

The attached flier explains how to donate over the internet. Please be generous!

Your fellow Servant in Christ,

Rt. Rev. Koloman K. Ludwig

Microfinance was considered the tool to lift millions out of poverty.

The Grameen Bank paved the way with microloans to allow people to start small businesses. Kiva.org was touted by celebrities like Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey as a way westerners could fund microfinance projects around the world.

Then the area of microlending became of interest to commercial lenders like Citi Bank with it’s microfinance department.  They saw a whole new class of people to lend to, but often without the education and social support used by other non profit lending groups, especially Christian ones. When a large number of microloan recipients experienced business failure, many actually took their own lives in despair.

The Chalmers Center – a Reformed Christian anti-poverty initiative – called on Christians to respond by emphasizing the earlier Christian model of “Microfinance with Education” to put microfinance back on track:

Over the past year, a microcredit controversy has been brewing in Andhra Pradesh, India, calling into question an intervention originally designed to alleviate poverty among the rural poor. In the minds of some, what was once a development intervention meant to empower the poor has become a predatory tool that exploits the poor for financial gain. This was sadly evident with the spat of suicides by microcredit clients last fall, which not only embarrassed the government of India, but more importantly called into question the practices of some microcredit lenders. The government has since intervened and set up strict regulatory practices over microlenders.

Andhra Pradesh, India

Considering the industry’s recent turmoil, microfinance may be losing its halo in Andhra Pradesh, India and across South Asia. But the church in India presses on with a real opportunity to show how the Chalmers Center’s Microfinance With Education (MWE) model can be a beacon amidst the current turmoil. In contrast to the microlending institutions that have become so controversial, the Chalmers Center’s approach to microfinance empowers poor people to form savings and credit associations owned and operated by the poor people themselves. In addition, the MWE model adds training in Business, Home, and Health from a biblical worldview perspective, thereby augmenting microfinance with additional training that is typically absent in microlending organizations.

This page contains a link to an Adobe Acrobat file (pdf) that helps Reformed Churches find the right psalm for either important days in the Church Year or to sing in conjuntion with the Lord’s Days of the Heidelberg Catechism: Click the 2nd link on the page for  Liturgical Helps.

Tomorrow for Ascension Day (Áldozócsütörtök)  the resource suggests up to 16 Psalms including, as you’d suspect, Psalms 8, 110, and many others.

While the writing is in Dutch, the necessary English has been penciled in!

Enough Psalms are suggested for each Lord’s Day that a congregation that knew it’s Psalter well could sing nothing but psalms for the morning and afternoon services if they wished!

Encouraging ministry news from Ars Longa’s ministry in Hungary! May 2011

Ars Longa May 2011

The BBC reports on the ministry of the Hungarian churches who have launched a new effort to serve the country’s struggling Roma population. All major Christian church groups will be allowed to apply for grants under the program:

Hungary’s new centre-right government has allied itself with the churches in a drive to create jobs and pull Roma (Gypsy) communities out of poverty.

The BBC’s Nick Thorpe reports that social work by the churches is already helping to improve the lives of Roma in eastern Hungary.

The entire article can be read at the  BBC

This is my contribution to a discussion on MissionShift:Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium

I’m a bivocational pastor. That means I relate to being a ”Missiologist” like a “beat cop” relates to being a “Supreme Court Justice”. Both function at different extremes of the same system. The beat cop lives in a universe that swings erratically between boredom and drama. There’s an occasional brush with success and gladness on the one hand or sorrow and failure on the other. The emphasis, though, is on daily survival. It’s the “Supreme Court Justice” who has time for pondering niceties from the relative safety and objectivity of a study. Like that cop on the beat, I signed up to do what’s right, but occasionally I’d like to see things work really well without selling my soul. That’s the perspective I bring to this discussion of Mission Shift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium. I’m hoping my time pondering these experts will help me find the golden mean between doing what’s right, doing something, and doing something right in my ministry. My focus is work in a small rural US town if you haven’t guessed!

My task today is to meditate on “Mission Defined and Described” by Charles Van Engen. I note that he arrives at his ponderous (yet tentative!) definition of “Mission” after a discussion of the word’s apparent “meaninglessness”. He then offers a brief and incomplete history of mission paradigms. In his narrative I am shocked there is no mention of the Church’s Pre-Constantinian mission, the mission of the Church of the East, and the Pre-Roman Celtic mission. The paradigms he does examine are presented in a negative way that emphasizes their failures by modern standards. Each phase of mission historically, though, represented an advance in the Church’s understanding of its aims and an increasing concern for faithful outreach. As a practitioner, however lowly, I see in this history the same “ready, fire, aim” methods that, in practice, we all use.

The Constantinian era and its mission paradigm moderns love to dismiss did not arise in a vacuum. It was, in a manner of speaking, a logical consequence of the work of the Pre-Constantinian Church. The impact of that Church and the spread of the Gospel was the backdrop for wholesale persecution at times before Constantine’s rule.  Constantine was not the only king of that age to convert and stop these persecutions. Tiridates III of Armenia had a conversion as well.  In each case the growing impact of the Church and its existence as a viable option to paganism predated the providences rulers like Tiridates and Constantine perceived as calling them to Christ. The steady growth of the Church frightened those in Rome’s hierarchy who wanted unthinking allegiance.

What paradigm of mission characterized the Church before Constantine? The late Dr. Robert Webber was responsible for reminding evangelicals of the ante-nicene approach to making disciples known as the Catechumenate (see his Journey to Jesus for a summary). Their method was what Webber would call “Liturgical Evangelism.” It lead seekers repenting from idolatry through a path of discipleship into full sacramental life of the Church. Instead of conforming the Church and its liturgy to the seeker, the seeker was conformed to Christ and the Church.

The mission work of the Church of the East was likewise overlooked. One of its remaining remnants of this ancient movement is the Mar Thoma church in India. To this day they consider the Apostle Thomas their direct founder. Historian Philip Jenkins’ Lost History of Christianity reminds us that this Church spread from its base in Syria to China itself along the Silk Road. It was so vast and beautiful that, by comparison, the Western Church of that day appeared as little more than a barbarous podunk. This church spread without the “coercion” and “colonization” Van Engen considers such significant engines of Western missions. The Church of the East was overtaken by repression and murderous persecution and its memory almost lost to us. Nevertheless, it should have been considered as a mission paradigm in my opinion.

Finally the Celtic Church’s mission was also expunged from the historical record in Van Engen’s narrative. We know it through the labors of Patrick, the missionary to Ireland, and his kindred and offspring. The Celtic Church was characterized by its love for Scripture (especially the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Law of Moses), it’s devotion to worship, it’s penchant for pilgrimage and mission, and it’s pastoral skill.  While moderns have gone to the opposite extreme of Van Engen by romanticizing the Celts, fairly dispassionate scholars like Ian Bradley amply demonstrate the value of the Celts for informing our own mission paradigm today.

Why were these models not considered in the discussion? Is it our simplistic Protestant approach to church history? Perhaps they were too positive? Perhaps they could not be easily castigated as a form of Christian cultural imperialism in a “politically correct” narrative? Perhaps it is our modern historical snobbery C.S. Lewis warns against? Whatever the case, these missing mission histories are instructive for a Church like ours that has come full circle and resides in a culture with paganism on the rise.

I can’t help thinking the omission betrays our age’s uncertainty about who we are and what we are to do in Christ’s Name. St. Boniface, missionary to the Germanic tribes, walked up to a tree dedicated to Thor only to chop it down and so prove that Thor was a false god. Today we’d nervously debate the rightness of tree idolatry as a form of “creational theology”. Boniface’s act would strike us as arrogant (Constantinian!) and be as loathesome to we moderns as singing an imprecatory Psalm in church. Sadly, we have lost any sense that Jesus Christ is transforming the world through His Church!

Of the responses, I suppose I best resonate with Hesselgrave. He notes the impossibility of defining “Mission” without first defining the “Gospel”. In th process of coordinating the two, we must define how our understanding of the Gospel relates to the demands of cultures who would be “Lord”. That relationship between Gospel and Culture will shape our missionary endeavors for good or ill.

Even from my own seat in the ecclesiastical bleachers, I note that failures in contextualization can and have become catastrophic. Witness the Crystal Cathedral built on attempting a Gospel “contextualization” to a people seeking “self-esteem”. Critics note that the Cathedral’s recent economic bankruptcy was foreshadowed by a theological one long ago. Still – for a time – it seemed to “work”. In the end, Rev. Schuller’s “Gospel” was contextualized on the back of the larval stage of a larger spiritual malady. Full grown, the larval stage of “self-esteem” becomes the full grown beast called “Narcissism” which seeks no reference point outside itself on which to feed.

Another contextualization gone awry in our generation is Willow Creek’s attempt to woo the unchurched via the Gospel contextualized for the “sit back and be entertained” TV generation. That approach has not produced disciples by their own admission. Even with their mid course correction (see “Willow Creek Repents“), one wonders if there time to salvage the enterprise and start making hardened disciples instead of more and more jaded spectators? Danger abounds in our attempts at “relevance”, even when we are just crossing the street, let alone crossing cultures.

Here is my question: If the people with time, brains, entrepreneurship, energy, vision and money have squandered so much of each on these projects, what is the solo (and often bivocational ) pastor to do?  He is the man with few resources to spare. Knowing his weakness, he is the pastor for whom 1 Corinthians 3 weighs heavily because the task of building already seems so difficult.

Here is a “tentative”  answer:

Perhaps the failure of projects like the Crystal Cathedral and Willow Creek with time, brains, money and those related resources justify an attempt at a spartan missional simplicity like Jesus and the Pre-Constantinian Church?

In studying the Book of Acts, we find an indentifiable apostolic “kerygma” – the apostles’ core proclamation of the message of Jesus presented to Jews and Gentiles. It presented the significance of our Lord’s coming and summoned all to repentance and a lifestyle commensurate with such repentance.

The“Kerygma” is usually summarized something like this:

1.The promises of God made in the OT have now been fulfilled with the coming of Jesus the Messiah (Book of Acts 2:30; 3:19, 24, 10:43; 26:6-7, 22; Epistle to the Romans 1:2-4; 1 Timothy 3:16; Epistle to the Hebrews 1:1-2; 1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:18-19).
2.Jesus was anointed by God at his baptism as Messiah (Acts 10:38).
3.Jesus began his ministry in Galilee after his baptism (Acts 10:37).
4.He conducted a beneficent ministry, doing good and performing mighty works by the power of God (Mk 10:45; Acts 2:22; 10:38).
5.The Messiah was crucified according to the purpose of God (Mk 10:45; Jn 3:16; Acts 2:23; 3:13-15, 18; 4:11; 10:39; 26:23; Ro 8:34; 1 Corinthians 1:17-18; 15:3; Galatians 1:4; Heb 1:3; 1Peter 1:2, 19; 3:18; 1 Jn 4:10).
6.He was raised from the dead and appeared to his disciples (Acts 2:24, 31-32; 3:15, 26; 10:40-41; 17:31; 26:23; Ro 8:34; 10:9; 1Co 15:4-7, 12ff.; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1Tim 3:16; 1Peter 1:2, 21; 3:18, 21).
7.Jesus was exalted by God and given the name “Lord” (Acts 2:25-29, 33-36; 3:13; 10:36; Rom 8:34; 10:9; 1Tim 3:16; Heb 1:3; 1Peter 3:22).
8.He gave the Holy Spirit to form the new community of God (Ac 1:8; 2:14-18, 33, 38-39; 10:44-47; 1Peter 1:12).
9.He will come again for judgment and the restoration of all things (Ac 3:20-21; 10:42; 17:31; 1Co 15:20-28; 1Th 1:10).
10.All who hear the message should repent and be baptized (Ac 2:21, 38; 3:19; 10:43, 47-48; 17:30; 26:20; Ro 1:17; 10:9; 1Pe 3:21).

The American Church Research Project has an excellent (free) powerpoint that summarizes these points even more simply as the fivefold Message and Mission of Jesus. And some might recognize these strands of thought in the Apostle’s and Nicene creeds.

I have concluded that with my limited time, resources, brains and energy it is perhaps safest for me to pursue those avenues of “Mission” that most closely align with Jesus’ own message and mission. I’m referring to the ones which require, in a sense, the least nuanced “contextualization”.

My “target audiences” in this model would be people in situations where they are most open to hearing about Jesus as proclaimed by the apostles and most ready to consider that their own plans for life without God have failed.

Instead of racking my brain to over-contextualize things, I (and my brothers and sisters in the pew) must first internalize the message and mission of Jesus. Then I have to ask “who knows they need a new life, a new king, a new community, and a new hope?” Despite my limitations, I can see some such groups almost everywhere:

1. To people and families in sickness and crisis, it might be a faithful ongoing diaconal or shepherding ministry (in “Southern Baptist Speak” that could be called the “Deacon Family Ministry Plan”)

2. To new parents wondering how to tame the child in the “terrible twos” it could be the pastor or other discipler modeling “Discipleship in the Home”.

3. To those whose life is a complete mess through addiction and/or victimization, the “12 Steps” sound remarkably like the “Kerygma” especially when seen in AA’s Earliest Christian Origins to people who need a “New King”, a “New Life”, and a “New Community”.

4. To widows and single mothers who sense their vulnerability, New Commandment Men’s Ministrymay be just the model that makes the abstract claims of a God seemingly far away amazingly concrete.

5. To those trying to move from a life of crime to permanent employment or otherwise looking for a God empowered way out of constant contact with the “justice system”, Christ centered “Rebuilding” curriculum may be a helpful tool.

(If you’re wondering why I don’t include more broad based charities, it’s because I, for one, don’t have the resources of time and money to conduct such a generic outreach, especially when I would often be competing with messianic state programs that are better funded and require no confrontation with the living God.)

For those people without obvious needs (“contact points”) and perhaps opposition to the Gospel, our task as a congregation is to enter personally into the worlds of those we meet in one way or another as a “community of witness”.  Fostering Christian Friendship is the best starting point and avenue for contextualization when people don’t have an obvious felt need that forces them to cry out for help (or when the cry is muted to us).

I look forward to subsequent discussions in this series. May God help us all refine our understanding of the Good News, and its necessary consequence of Mission.

Recently I posted an  ordination sermon entitled Seek Faithful People. As the New Year starts (it’s already started at Advent if you follow the historic Christian calendar) our thoughts turn towards the new year and, hopefully, how best to serve Christ.

In case you weren’t aware, American “Christians” often don’t have much of a clue about what Christianity is all about. Articles like The Greatest Story Never Told that chronicled biblical illiteracy in 1999 could be reprinted with little change today. On December 13th, 2010 George Barna highlighted six “megathemes” for the American church in 2010. His first observation? The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate. When you read 4 out of the other 5 “megathemes”, you’ll see they all fit together as part of one megaproblem. The “Church” is becoming less distinctively Christian, less convinced of the necessity of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and less confident of the superiority of the Christian faith over it’s rivals. As a result, profession of faith in Jesus Christ has less impact individually and corporately than it should. The only “megatheme” that seems positive is an increase in the desire to engage in positive community action. But even that is a testimony to the Church’s broader appearance of irrelevancy.

What’s a pastor to do?

I’ll suggest a pastor can do what ONLY a pastor can do… engage the whole congregation in effectivecatechesis.

He will, of course, engage others in the work as appropriate, but he must oversee and model the role of chief catechist and work to make sure that the basics of the Gospel and Christian Living are transferred to the next generation of Christians.

As Willow Creek’s own self-study shows, even 30 years of high quality ”programs” don’t replace deep disciplemaking. (See Out of Ur’s Willow Creek Repents? )

The pastoral catechesis I envision is not a “program” in terms of an “appendage” to the life of the church. It IS the way to the church, it continues through the life of the church, and it produces each crop of the church’s new leaders. Catechesis involves the preaching and teaching of the Scriptures on the Lord’s Day and at other times, but there must be a system in place that allows it to be ongoing and bind the whole life of the church together.

And so that catechesis does not become simply a mental chore or gnostic achievement, it is not complete until it results in lives “sold out” to Christ and engaged in fervent and intentional Witness, Service, and Life Together.

What I’m about to discuss assumes that you and your people have a Catechism. Our church uses theHeidelberg Catechism and so my discussion presumes it. If you use Luther’s Small Catechism, you can follow the paradigm of Pastor Peter Bender. Presbyterians can base their work on the Westminster Shorter Catechism and get some ideas from Starr Meade’s Training Hearts, Teaching Minds.

In particular, note the Heidelberg’s first question and answer: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

Once you and the people have that ingrained, it becomes as appropriate to use on a hospital visit as in a confirmation class. It serves to help us check ourselves in the midst of our daily frustration as we ponder what really is our source of comfort and assurance? It becomes a litmust test for aspiring church workers. What is their heart’s desire, really? At that point, pastoral catechesis is not only beginning to have some effect on the congregation, it’s beginning to have it’s proper effect on the pastor.

We are so overwhelmed with “products” and “strategies” and “books” promising stupendous results that we forget the confessions we swear ourselves to teach.

Instead, we should be doing something that makes our own lives simpler and increases the odds that, over a period of time, our congregations will become those who live in the fullness of Jesus Christ.

Here are some suggestions. Do them all.

1. Recite responsively a section of the catechism each Lord’s Day. The Heidelberg Catechism is designed to do just that. It only takes a few minutes before the service to read it together. Start there. It takes just a few minutes. While you may want to preach a series or even weekly catechism sermons as some do and have, even starting with this practice is sufficient for  a start.

2. Give each family in church a copy of the catechism with scripture proofs included so they can be encouraged to read the weekly Lord’s Day portions. Alternatively, you could print it weekly in the “bulletin” and perhaps make a study guide. You can see how one church accomplishes this here.

3. Throw away your store bought “new member curriculum”. Expect all new aspiring church members to receive a catechism and teach through key questions and answers such as “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”, “What is True Faith?”, etc. Use the catechism to teach the great themes of sin, salvation, and grateful Christian living. Along the way teach the true meaning of the Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. And as the Heidelberg does, emphasize their practical application all the time. Prepare them in this way to renew their baptismal vows and remind them what those mean as well. Constantly bring them back to these basics as the foundation of the Christian life of Grace.

While you’re at it, teach them to sing the Psalms and begin learning them so that they will be people with a deep faith. Psalm singing, along with becoming people of the catechism, will give your people a unique spiritual identity that is qualitatively and quantitatively different than the average American “moral therapeutic deism” that passes for Christianity in most congregations. Couple that with a bias for action – see part 6 below.

4. Require aspiring leaders to go through the catechism weekly with you as you work through it’s great themes together.

5. When visiting, remember Richard Baxter. He and his assistant transformed a small community through catechizing from house to house. Certainly you can remind your people of the precious answers found within the Catechism that renew our faith in times of struggle and hardship!

6. The first question of the Heidelberg Catechism can even be used in evangelism. Where DO we find our comfort? What idols have we erected in the place of Christ and His salvation? By understanding the catechism, we don’t need to “learn” a new presentation of the Gospel. The catechism includes your “presentation”.

7. In every setting, follow a simple procedure: C.A.P.S. These stand for Catechism, Accountability, Prayer, and Service. Never divorce the study of catechism (or the study of scripture for the catechism expounds scripture) from it’s application (accountability), from asking God to transform us and those God sends us to (prayer), or from putting faith into action (service). For the last, be sure to have your people go with you to serve the Lord. Let them see you model how to serve before you send them out with their own spiritual apprentice in tow. This is how our Lord taught: input, application, prayer and putting truth into practice.

7. Refer to the catechism in sermons as appropriate. This comes easier as you understand it better yourself. Because the catechism addresses God, man, sin, salvation, prayer, the Gospel, sacraments, good works, the commandments, the providence of God, our duty and delights – there is much that can be used as we apply the scriptures in our preaching.

8. Drill the children in memory drills related to the scriptures and the catechism so that they will not be people who are ignorant of the basics of the faith.

10. You must use your preaching to expose your congregation to the whole of scripture. Remember that preaching too is catechesis. So is the Liturgy. So is the observance of the Church Year. But all of these things communicate to us the truths of scripture.  Your preaching must expand upon and round out the fixed body of knowledge of the catechism. Sermons should, of course, be biblical. Your preaching should be based on the text of scripture and – over a period of time at least – cover the great themes of scripture. Whether you do this through the use of a lectionary or “lectio continua”, demonstrating allegiance to and dependence up the Word is more important than anything else. Any preaching that doesn’t let self-help psychology overtake the word of the Lord is the place to start.

11. Use of the catechism should always be joined with the reading of the entire Bible on a regular basis. As you lead people to read the catechism, also be encouraging them to read the Bible daily.

These levels of catechesis are overlapping. When used, your congregation will be catechized weekly, individually, at their entrance into the congregation, and as a tool to use with their families and those they reach out to. Sooner or later, by God’s grace, the truth of the Gospel will saturate the people and the congregation will be blessed as God is glorified.

Ars Longa North America (ALNA) exists to promote the formation of historical Christian values among young people in East Central Europe to further the development of strong Christian communities. It works primarily with the Ars Longa Foundation in its efforts to offer consultation, fundraising, and encouragement to youth programs associated with the Reformed church in Hungary, the Ukraine, and Croatia. ALNA has chosen to focus its efforts on two facets of Ars Longa’s work: the Reformed high schools in Transcarpathia, Ukraine, and the Ars Longa community development effort in Baranya County, Hungary.-

You can view or download their Fall Newsletter below…

Szia_Fall_2010

Dr. Istvan Komjathy presented the Central Classis of the Calvin Synod meeting October 2nd, 2010 with  BEFORE and AFTER pictures of the conditions at the Beregszasz Pediatric Clinic:  from rundown unusable building with holes in the roof and falling down plaster – to a repaired building with freshly painted walls and better conditions for treating patients. There also pictures of the many children waiting to be seen.

You may view the presentation here or download it:

A Brother on a Mission2010[1]