Pacifism as a Social Stand for Holiness among Early Bulgarian Pentecostals
Historical and Doctrinal Formation of Holiness Teachings and Praxis among Bulgarian Pentecostals (Research presentation prepared for the Society of Pentecostal Studies, Seattle, 2013 – Lakeland, 2015, thesis in partial fulfillment of the degree of D. Phil., Trinity College)
When Pentecostalism began to spread rapidly in Bulgaria in the 1920s, it was viewed hostile as by both Protestant and Orthodox traditions. Not fasting during lent and not sacrificing for the dead, not honoring Mary or the saints was all detrimental in the formation of the identity of Pentecostal churches in Bulgaria. Even insignificant things like not wearing a cross, or not making the sign of the cross and not lighting candles and incense were noticed and severely criticized by the surrounding culture. And of course not drinking alcohol in Bulgaria and the Pentecostal abstinence was met with enormous opposition from other religious groups. Along with that any benevolence, social involvement, spiritual upbringing of minors (including sport actives) was all condemned as harmful protestant propaganda.
But one specific evangelical stand could never be forgiven – the protestant pacifism in the form of conscientious objection against carrying arms. For the newly re-born Balkan state, in a place where war has been ongoing for centuries, to refusal to go to war was essentially to refuse to be a Bulgarian.
The pacifism of Bulgaria’s evangelicals was silent but powerful against both Hitler’s fascism and the militant atheism of the coming Communist Regime. Their deep Christian conviction simply did not allow them to kill, carry a weapon, imprison another human being, swear allegiance to the communist state or take orders from another authority but God. And for their stand, many ministers and believers paid a heavy price. About 40 ministers and members of the Bulgarian Church of God alone were sentenced to hard prison labor for noncompliance with the mandatory military service. Hundreds more known and unknown believers from other evangelical churches followed.
Missions for the Third Millennium (2009-2010)
This is a re-post of popular articles on Missiology from 2009-2010:
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)
Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)
Repost: Ministry NOT for Sale
My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not (Proverbs 1:10)
Several years ago, while employed with a certain organization, we faced the dilemma to choose between what was morally right and what was financially secure. Regardless of the jeopardy of this predicament, we were able to make the right decision, preserving our integrity and disallowing financial pressure to dictate our moral choices. Soon thereafter, we initiated a healing process which dealt with the internal wounds, restored the lost trust and attempted to recover the invested time and resources. Years past, we forgot the pain, but never forgot the lesson we learned …
Recently, while involved in a global ministry campaign, we were faced with a similar situation. This time, however, it did not involve business partners, but a multitude of Pentecostal ministers. The larger size of the context did not change the problem at hand, but rather intensified and multiplied its harmful effects. We regretfully witnessed how hundreds of men and women involved in ministry were manipulatively forced to face the same dilemma. They had to make a mandatory choice between the financial security of their families and their own moral integrity. The results were accordingly. Read more
12 Benefits from Walking in the Desert for 40 Years
1. You lose excessive weight you don’t need
2. You lose treasures/gold you thought you needed
3. You go on God’s diet
4. You learn your true friends/brothers and sisters
5. You learn to trust God daily
6. You learn to keep walking
7. You see your enemies defeated by God
8. Walking in the desert takes you to the top of God’s mountain where you meet God
9. Your children receive the Promise Land
10. There is a generational genetic cleansing of unfaithfulness. When the faith of a generation grows, the faith of the nation increases
11. You learn to walk in unity or you get lost and die alone
12. You begin to appreciate the small things in life (like bread and water)
On PRAYER for REVIVAL
Corrie Ten Boon: “A man is powerful on his knees.” [Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983)]
Martin Luther: “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.”
Charles Spurgeon: “He who lives without prayer, he who lives with little prayer, he who seldom reads the Word, and he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on high — he will be the man whose heart will become dry and barren.”
Mother Teresa: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
Mary Queen of Scots said she was more afraid of the prayers of John Knox than of an army of ten thousand men. The word of Knox’s prayer were: “Give me Scotland or I die…”
John Wesley: “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer.”
One man at the Azusa Street Revival said, “I would have rather lived six months at that time than fifty years of ordinary life. I have stopped more than once within two blocks of the place and prayed for strength before I dared go on. The presence of the Lord was so real.”
M3: Mobile Power for the Ministry
After traveling almost 4,000 miles, I am finally at the 2010 BibleTech listening to Antoine’s talk on mobile technology in the ministry. Antoine is the main guy behind the Mobile Ministry Magazine and a great friend, but I am sitting in his lecture for more than just the code and the algorithm. I am a practitioner in the ministry.
Thousands of Bulgarian speaking people across the globe rely on our team every day to receive a verse from the Bible via SMS. Our Bibliata.TV website has become the Bulgarian GodTube with over 10,000 daily visitors, 1,500 active uploaders and hitting a half petabite monthly traffic in video exchange. So, I am more than just a listener – I am here for the power of the experience.
I met Antoine last year at BibleTech in Seattle. I shared with him our ministry in Bulgaria and abroad, and he offered to help us. Not long after the conference, I received in my office a Nokia 5800, which according to Antoine had more than one advantage over the iPhone, but the one that concerned me the most was the uStream app.
Speaking at the Leadership Development Institute earlier that year, I mentioned uStream but being busy with other projects never paid too much attention to it. Now, I had a reason to try it. No more than five minutes after opening the FedEx package I was broadcasting LIVE on a dozen of our ministry’s websites. Five more minutes and people were actually watching. Hundreds of them.
WOW! I stopped for a pause, because my heart was racing. The potential of one small mobile device applied to the ministry of the church was overwhelming and I needed to pray.
A week later I had convinced two Bulgarian churches to broadcast their services via uStream. Two more joined on the following Sunday, one of them being a Bulgarian speaking congregation in Chicago. A Bulgarian minister from Spain began broadcasting on Thursday nights as over 50 people were logged in and ready to watch 30 minutes before his broadcast. We then put LIVE online the annual conference of Bulgarian churches in North America. Then the Global Day of Prayer from downtown Sofia was watched by 35,000 people LIVE on our Bibliata.com website.
Before we ever returned for our ministry term in Bulgaria, we had over a dozen churches broadcasting LIVE services on Sunday alone plus additional LIVE services on every night of the week except Monday. We received hundreds of emails with testimonies of dramatic healings and life transformations. And this has been going on for over one year now. All because of a small portable telephone that can fit on the palm of my hand and travel with me oversees in the pocket of my blue jeans. I guess I can say it like this: this phone was made for preaching!
John Maxwell says that while training followers adds to your church, training leaders multiplies it. I call this the G2 effect – the growth of the church in a geometrical progression. Like the story of chess boards (2, 4, 16, 256, etc). But the use of mobile technology in the ministry multiplies its effectiveness tridimensionally, adding to it a mobile dimension as a Rubik Cube. I call it M3 – a mobile motivational ministry factor that is unprecedented. And this is something the church cannot afford to miss if it wishes to remain relevant in postmodernity.
PRAYER for the POMAKS of BULGARIA
This urgent report is based on the resent proposal for changes within the legal status of the Muslim mosques on the territory of Bulgaria. The controversial changes may allow even Muslim temples which are protected as buildings of historical value to be reactivated and used again for service. This will inevitably affect the Muslim community on the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the Bulgarian Pomaks – a Bulgarian-speaking Muslim population group native to southern Bulgaria. The building of Muslim mosques on the territory of Bulgaria has been revitalized in the past decade, especially in the villages in Southern Bulgaria where Pomaks live.
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit
1. Never put a price on the human soul, which you are not willing to put on your own.
2. Unsubscribing from missions’ newsletters may result in unsubscribing from the missional letter of God.
3. By no means raise an offering because a missionary needs it, do so because it’s needed for the survival of the church.
4. Not giving to missions is far better, than committing to give without any intention to do so.
5. Before using a missions’ offering to pay a church bill, think of whose offering a missionary should use to pay their bill.
6. Don’t wait on a missionary to ask you for what God has already commanded you to give.
7. Pray for missionaries without ceasing. For it could be your prayer that saves a soul.
8. Never delay sending a missions offering for tomorrow. After all, it was you who preached that tomorrow may be when the Lord comes back.
Window for the Price of a Church
January 20, 2007 by Cup&Cross
Filed under 365, Publication
As a Pentecostal Christian, I love the church. I love going to church, participating in church and simply being the church. It is my only true passion. I love making the church a better place. If there was a phrase “born to church,” it would define me completely. In the words of an unknown preacher, “I’m as churchy as Noah was arky.”
I love to worship with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs with all people regardless of age or ethnicity. I love singing from the old red-back hymnal, just as much as singing contemporary songs. Southern gospel pleases me, but Christian hard rock, techno or gospel rap does not scare me one bit. I cannot help but often wonder if one day Christian rock lyrics will be on the pages of the red-back hymnals.
I also love listening to the message, whether it is delivered inside or outside of the church walls. A good sermon always inspires me. Some sermons touch my soul while others simply entertain me. And I do have to admit, that some preachers bore me. I wish that I could tell them to keep their day job, for after all if you are going to be doing the work of the Lord, please do it right.
And then, there is the prayer at the alters, which I also love. I know this may sound very Pentecostal, but in our postmodern context of worship there is really no other time during service where people finally hush and allow God to speak.
But something has been bothering me lately. Every time I sing, listen to the sermon or pray at the church altar, I have to face a wall with a huge stained glass window. I know it cost as much as a brand new AMG Mercedes Benz and this disturbs me a bit. My concern arises because I am personally familiar with locations where a brand new church could be built for this same amount of money. I guess I have chosen a different value system and I cannot help but ponder, “How many souls will come to Christ because they saw the light reflected through this magnificent stained glass window?”
I know that some will say, “Well, if you don’t like the window, just turn the other way.” And I mustask, “What would happen if every time we see something wrong with our church we turn the other way?”
So next time, when you worship, listen to your pastor or pray facing that stained glass window, which costs as much as a church, please ask yourself the question, “Should a window cost as much as a church?” Just something to think about …
Christmas for Evangelicals
Christmas for Evangelicals
Communism changed a lot in the Bulgarian mentality. For 45 years Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter were strictly forbidden. Christmas symbols and words were changed in an anti-Christian propaganda. For example, the traditional Bulgarian Christmas greeting Tchestito Rozdestvo Hristovo (Happy Birth of Christ) was replaced with Vesela Koleda (Joyfull Koleda – the word koleda derives from the Bulgarian word “kolia” which means to kill, to slay, and symbolizes the Bulgarian custom of slaying a pig in the preparation of the Christmas dinner). The name of Santa Claus was replaced with Grandpa Frost – again an old man with red clothing, long white beard and bag with presents; however, completely separated from the Christian meaning of the holiday. Even the traditional Orthodox Church was limited in their practice of Christmas.
Nevertheless, regardless of the persecution, secretly or openly, Christmas has always been present among the Bulgarian Protestants. Usually the church congregation would gather for a special Christmas service on Christmas Eve. In the Underground Church this event was one of the few occasions where the local congregation would come together and remain unnoticed by the secret police because of the celebration going on. Using the rare opportunity the church would not only use the time for fellowship but also for Communion and Baptism services. Since the churches did not own buildings, the baptismal would usually be performed in a river after the ice had been broken.
With the Fall of the Berlin Wall the situation changed dramatically. Through the largest spiritual revival Eastern Europe has ever known, in 10 years millions came to Christ. In the midst of the severe national economic crises, for protestants Christmas became not only a time of celebration, but also a time to reach to the ones in need. Thus the renewed Christmas became more powerful as it not only reflected on the Christian tradition but a real-life inspired practice of Christianity.
The Bulgarian Church of God is no stranger to these events. Every Christmas is seen as a ministry opportunity, as several activities take place. There are Christmas dinners for the needy which take place in the churches that sponsor social centers across the country. There is also a Christmas gift service for children from homes for children.
Christmas is a time when the church congregation comes together for reconciliation and recognition of the Birth of Christ. As the Christmas message is preached and Silent Night is sung, this holiday also becomes a celebration of the liberation of spirit and soul, provided by God through His Son. Thus for the church in a post-Communist context Christmas is the gift of liberty to come together and to worship. Remembering the Son of God who came to liberate us from sin and death we also wish you a Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
