Articles - Miscellaneous

Romania: September 2006

Back in September I spent two weeks in Romania. I thought you might be interested, so here goes! No, it wasn't a shoe box mission, nor were we armed with whitewash brushes. Our visit, organized by the Church Mission Society, was planned to give us an opportunity to learn what the Romanian Orthodox Church is doing in meeting the needs of marginalized people and what it is doing in reaching out to those for whom the beauty of the traditional formal liturgy seems irrelevant to their personal spiritual needs. CMS is supporting both initiatives with prayer and funding.

The projects that we visited; a hospice, an EPH, a women's refuge and two children's homes, were all quite new. During the Ceaucescu years all church social work was banned. Since then the church has had to assess where state provision now falls short and where the church can best make its contribution. One problem is that since voluntary work as we know it was forbidden for nearly fifty years it is hard now to get church members to own the projects and to do the kind of visiting and supporting that are second nature to us.

We worshipped in Orthodox churches. No expense is spared in making the sacred space overwhelmingly beautiful and the unaccompanied singing really glorious. We were challenged because we saw that at each project a chapel had been built and decorated by experts at considerable expense while the plant needed for the project's practical caring was still being built, progress being dependent on incoming funding.

A delightful Orthodox priest is leading the renewal movement (see para1).He is determined that any lasting influence that their innovations may have will be contained within the church that he serves, not in any sense a splinter group. We went to one of their mid-week meetings where any Pentecostal Christian would have felt at home. If the priest can hold together two such different ways of interacting with almighty God so that they are mutually enriching he will have served well. There is much more to tell but that is enough for now.

Pat Hooker

26 November, 2006