Days of Open Doors Press Conference in Varna

When the year 2008 was announced as the Year of the Bible in Bulgaria, it drew many churches and organizations in a common attempt to present a unified evangelical strategy. Accordingly, many of the opponents of the evangelical movement in Bulgaria used this as an opportunity to attack the evangelical churches calling them “sectarians” and “heretics.” The attention which the general media gave to this anti-evangelical wave in the media reminded of a similar wave which took place in the early 1990s in Bulgaria. This time, however, the evangelical churches were prepared and ready to resist these unacceptable media attacks which restrict religious freedom and oppose the pluralistic values of the democratic society. In a typical puritan matter, a number of evangelical churches have organized acts of peaceful protest and media events to counteract the false accusations and establish anew the truth about Bulgarian evangelism.

One of these acts was the Days of Open Doors organized by the evangelical churches in the Black Sea port city of Varna on the Day of Reformation. Our team was also invited to participate as cofounder of the Institute for Bulgarian Protestant History. One of the many events which took place during the Days of Open Doors was a press conference which was given in the Varna Press Center. Side by side with the Assemblies of God and the Methodist churches, we were able to represent our Church of God denomination in partnership with the Institute for Bulgarian Protestant History in a powerful media event, which put a start to a national PR campaign on behalf of the evangelical churches in Bulgaria. Similar campaigns took place in Sofia, Bourgas, Lovetch and just recently in Silistra on the Danube river. We were also able to publish a commemorative brochure dedicated to the important role of Protestants in the Bulgarian national history.