Two weekends ago I visited the oldest Calvary Chapel in Eastern Europe – it’s about 20 years old, from right after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Tucked away on a little side street in a small city in Serbia, you might not see it if you weren’t looking for it. There is a small sign on the solid gate that is common in this part of the world and “ISUS” (Jesus in Serbian and other Slavic languages) is traced into the concrete walkway outside. Inside the gate the property is crumbling, but it’s clear that they try to keep it nice. The building itself is a couple hundred years old, so you can’t really blame it for a little bit of wear.
The five of us met up with the pastor, Kris, in Subotica (Soo-bow-teet-sa) and all drove another three hours to Belgrade for a Bible study. Pastor Kris does this every other week. We got to Belgrade early enough to take a walk around the historic part of the city, near a fortress that was constructed in the middle ages (I think) to keep the Turks out.
The daytime view is of the historical area. The night view is opposite, taken from the top of the fortress.
Walking through the city gave us some good fellowship time. The two Serbians in our group – Pastor Kris and Danny (from my school) – gave us some insight into the city and Serbia in general and what they’ve seen the Lord do there. Kris grew up in Subotica, but has had Belgrade on his heart for about five years. For four years now he’s been leading the Bible study, which is still very small. We weren’t really there for anything more than encouragement, but it was so encouraging to talk with believers there. Danny told us that Serbia is not a place where street evangelism is accepted culturally – the Serbs need to know that you’re a fairly normal person to even be interested in hearing what you have to say (which seems fairly reasonable to me, though we can see in the New Testament and in history that the word of God has power to change lives regardless) and most sharing of the gospel is in the context of real friendships, where Christ’s love is shown because it is true, not just to get someone to believe it.
Belgrade has a young, funky vibe to it – what struck me most is that there is graffiti everywhere, but it’s interesting graffiti. One several story building had a really basic but huge drawing of a guy eating a potato chip on the side of it. (I wanted to take a picture but we drove by it too fast.) I’m not sure whether that was vandalism or part of some kind of contest or maybe the owner thought it would be an interesting mural to add to their place of business, but it definitely stands out. Some more political graffiti I saw was “NO EU” along with “1389” – which was the year of the Battle of Kosovo which is very famous in Serbian history because someone killed the Turkish king and the Turkish army was really weakened… and no that’s not something I knew; I had to ask. It didn’t seem wise to dig a lot deeper than that at the time, but I looked it up later and found after this battle the Turkish army regrouped and Serbia became part of the Byzantine Empire. The history of this country is fascinating, just from the bits and pieces I picked up - it's old. Really old. Belgrade was a city (by a different name) during the Roman Empire and probably before. Danny told us a little about a revolt that happened during WWII when the leader of the country signed a pact with the Nazis - a small group of people said no way to that, the leader didn't live a whole lot longer, and the new leadership did not support Hitler. I tried to stay away from politics in the conversations I had while there, because if there is one thing I’ve picked up about European politics it’s that they are complicated, I don't understand them, and I’m better off not forming an opinion about them that is probably vastly inaccurate and might slip out at just the wrong moment. Kris and Danny cautioned us against being loud Americans while there, in Belgrade more than Subotica, because there is some anti-American feeling though they said it was in a small group of radicals not in the people as a whole. Again, I should probably not form an opinion, but I can’t help seeing why some people would think of America only in terms of having bombed their country and their city in the fairly recent past. It reminded me that although I was born an American, as a Christian, I am a Christian first and it is not the gospel of the United States that people need to hear; it is the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Anyway, the outreach! We joined the rest of the group in Subotica late Friday night and started early Saturday with some group devotions and then started in on cleaning the church. They have the coolest cleaning supply closet ever.
After cleaning, we enjoyed some hamburgers for lunch from a place that’s famous at the castle among those who have done previous outreaches. They were a little bit strange, but overall pretty good. I’ve recently been informed that the hamburgers were not in fact cow, but horse… so there’s another interesting experience to add to the “so glad I didn’t know that at the time” file.
After lunch we took a walk around the city square of Subotica.
A short walk from the center there is an old synagogue that is falling in ruins, although the city is raising funds to restore it. Subotica had a large Jewish population before WWII, but not anymore.
We sort of interrupted an interview about the synagogue, but tried to be quiet. The monument reads: “In memory of 4000 Jewish citizens with whom we lived and built Subotica. They perished in fascist death camps during WWII. Citizens of Subotica, July 10, 1994.”
The synagogue was a reminder of just how much conflict this part of the world has lived through, even in recent years. Although they keep a strong memory of events from the middle ages, like the Battle of Kosovo, the 20th century alone held two world wars, 40+ years of Communism, and the not completely peaceful break-up of Yugoslavia (Belgrade was the capital). That’s a lot for 100 years.
After that, we ladies got a bit of a surprise when we went upstairs to the church coffeeshop where we would be taking part in a women’s conference and found it all set up for a spa day. The ladies of the church were ministering their talents and gifts one to another – one lady was doing haircuts, another manicures, another facials, another massage – I think there were about 6 stations and they also wanted to bless us with that.
Pam, the MTP (missions training program) leader/teacher/mom, led a Bible study around the middle of the “conference” which started at 4pm and kept on going until well after 10pm. My roommate Katie is a massage therapist and was really inspired by the ministry that the day was to the women of the church. She took over for the lady doing massage near the end and made sure that all of the ladies who were ministering to the others got a chance to get a massage too.
On Sunday we finished cleaning and then ate some burek (rhymes with “pure-eck”), which is Serbia’s national food: deep-fried layers of phylo with meat or cheese or fruit or even flavors like “lasagna” inside. It’s wonderful. We ate it outside to keep the greasy-goodness off out of the clean church.
(Pam talks with Katie in front, and Pastor Kris and a couple from the church, CCBCE alumni are at the top of the stairs.)
Sunday night some of us stayed for a church service. Several of us worked in the children’s ministry. We had a couple of crafts – one was t-shirts with “Isus je moj dobar pastir” (Jesus is my good shepherd) on them and Tibi dressed up as a shepherd with a candy-cane staff (the only one we could find) to give a storytime about the Good Shepherd in Hungarian. Subotica is very near the Hungarian border, so many of the kids speak Hungarian, but some speak Serbian and they wanted to just translate once.
It turned out that there weren’t enough kids to split up into two groups so Jemma and Dani did their lesson and craft on sharing the gospel with all the kids and Tibi didn’t give his Good Shepherd story time. It was still pretty cool just to have someone dressed up as a shepherd and during the kids worship time they sang a song about a shepherd and they all followed Tibi around in a line.
Right after that we said goodbye to Pastor Kris and some of the people from the church that we had met there and packed it up to head back to Vajta. The return trip was also uneventful, and we all enjoyed some good conversation to help keep Lynn awake.
Thank you all for your prayers. The Lord provided well for us – including the “green card” insurance slip that we needed to actually cross the border arriving just a few hours before we were to leave! The border crossings were easy and with as many people as were on the team, including five kids ages eight months to 13, and with seven different nationalities going, that’s saying something.
I’m sorry this took so long to get written and uploaded, but I hope that it has blessed you now that it is finally here!
And one last picture… as I mentioned at the top, Calvary Chapel Subotica is the oldest Calvary Chapel church in Eastern Europe… and I think in the past 20 years, it may have influenced the addition of a word into Serbian – check out the “kesadija” (kay-suh-dee-yuh) on the menu board from the church coffee shop!
(I can’t take credit for all of these pictures… some of them were taken by my roomie and fellow MTP’er, Jemma.)
