Noteworthy CIMS Events

As CIMS is concerned about the theory and the praxis of mission I would like to make reference to a number of noteworthy events which deserve attention in this chronicle. First of all the conference for the European partners of the Reformed Mission League in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), a mission agency which celebrated its centenary last year, hosted by CIMS in Budapest. This is not only a noteworthy event because a mission agency is serious about consulting partners concerning their strategic plan for the next five years. That in itself is also significant. The other reason is that Akil, one of the Albanian partners, shared that many churches have been established since 1991, and in fact they have no church history. Soon the connection was made with Hungarian mission history, that in the late 1930ies a Hungarian Reformed pastor Lajos Parragh served as a missionary in Albania. We showed him the Albanian songbook he had donated to the CIMS library. Now Akil has registered for the CIMS MTh in Missiology program. Mission is about connecting and learning!

A second significant development is the building of bridges between “East” and “South”. For many years links between “East” and “West” have been frequent, as have been the connections between “West” and “South”. A delegation of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Nairobi, Kenya paid a visit to the Reformed Church in Hungary with the purpose of re-connecting, since in 1974 another Hungarian Reformed pastor, Dr. János Pásztor served as a missionary in Kenya, teaching at St. Paul’s Seminary in Limuru, Kenya. The delegation was greatly impressed by the work of the Reformed Rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol addicts, but also greatly disturbed someone making the remark: Hungarians never marry Roma. It seems that a hidden cast system is existing in Hungarian society. They also visited CIMS, and were surprised discovering that the local congregation as the main agent in mission, and that Mission is nature of church, not additional part, like „church with a mission program”. Apollo came up to me after the presentation: I would like to learn more about that perspective! Now he joint the CIMS MATHEM program.

A third remarkable event was the Dutch-Hungarian partner congregation’s conference in early May in CIMS, the fruit of a series of thematic days on “New developments in twinning links with churches in Central and Eastern Europe”. Almost 20 members of a Reformed congregation in my village of birth, Oud-Alblas, and 20 members of their partner congregation in Sigisoara (Segesvár), Romania, met for a three days program in Budapest, with site visits to new church plants and urban social projects, sharing about the challenges each church faces, and lively interaction and discussions (with simultaneous translation assistance from Dutch language students) how they could help each other to “Together Witness of Christ today”. Many Reformed congregations in the Netherlands have maintained twinning links with churches in former Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary and Romania, for two or even three decades, in which a paradigm shift is taking place from a rather one directional, humanitarian aid focused relationship, from the “haves” to the “have-nots” into a bi-directional relationship, how to encourage each other to be missional church today. CIMS provides training and consultancy in these processes, and students research its history and current developments.

"Wie is later jouw buschauffeur?"

Vrijdag 17 juni 2011 | Peter Jorna

In de zes maanden dat Hongarije voorzitter van de EU is, was het Roma issue ‘Top Prioriteit’. Ook een aantal ambassades ging serieus aan de slag met het onderwerp. In Nederland organiseerde de Hongaarse ambassade samen met Clingendael op 14 juni een conferentie over de integratie en ontwikkeling van Roma in Europa. Centraal thema: 'Hoe zorg je ervoor dat Roma betrokken zijn en zich betrokken voelen bij de samenleving?'

Lees verder: http://www.wereldjournalisten.nl/artikel/2011/06/17/wie_is_later_jouw_buschauffeur_roma_vraagtekens_b/