26 September 2012 Podgorica, Montenegro [Laszlo Gallusz, tedNEWS] The Adventist Mission department of South-East European Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SEEUC) has organised six regional weekend mission conferences in 2012 in cooperation with the local conferences with the last one being held on 8th and 9th September 2012 in Podgorica, Montenegro. This particular conference had a particular role in the wider strategy of evangelism layed down by the pastors and members in Montenegro last year. As a motivational ‘warm-up’ it generated an atmoshere of spirituality and dedication to personal evanglism focusing on impacting the believers’ circle of personal influence. This conference made it possible not only to impact the segment of the church membership who are able to travel to different events organised by the church, but also those who do not usually leave their local surroundings.
-l.jpg "[l to r] Janos Kovacs-Biro, Evangelism Director at the TED and Laszlo Gallusz, Adventist Mission and Education Director at the SEEUC")
The conference was opened by Laszlo Gallusz, Adventist Mission and Education Director at the SEEUC, who challenged the 200 believers gathered to use the opportunities they have at this moment in the best possible way. The guest speaker was Janos Kovacs-Biro, Evangelism Director at the Trans-European Division (TED). In his messages and the afternoon training seminar , he inspired the participants to prioritise their outreach aproaches and adopt an oikos (house, family) evangelism approach because no programme can or should replace the outreach in the personal circle of influence. For this reason, he argued, small groups need to have a special place in Adventist outreach strategy in the postmodern world, for they provide the best unthreatening context for fostering the values of discipleship, community, service and outreach.
Kovacs-Biro comments: “The regional Mission Conferences in the SEEUC provide church members an easier access to motivational training for witnessing. 75% of all Adventists in Montenegro were present in Podgorica, and received training on House Churches and Small Groups. The majority of the members decided to be engaged in this personal witnessing approach, making themselves available to God, and in the long term being committed to serve as Jesus served, and make God known in their own circle of influence.”
The event was crowned with the baptism of Balsa Ivanovic, a young man from Cetinje, a city with rich Montenegran tradition but with almost no Adventist presence.
The church in Podgorica, the largest Adventist church in the country, has been actively preparing in the last 15 months for an evangelistic series, which will be held in November and December by Pastor Kovacs-Biro. Although Podgorica church believes that the power of personal witnessing from the pews is impossible to replace with the preaching from the pulpit by the pastor, in major reaping events like this one, we are looking forward to an opportunity for making decisions and impacting more deeply the thinking of the society on spiritual matters.
Montenegro is a small country in South-East Europe with a population of about 650,000 and an Adventist presence of 250. [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS Staff: Miroslav Pujic, director; Deana Stojkovic, editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ted-adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division.
You are free to re-print any portion of the bulletin without need for special permission. However, we kindly request that you identify tedNEWS whenever you publish these materials.
