Calvin Synod Herald, 1981 (81. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1981-01-01 / 1-2. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 3 WELCOME HOSTAGES "TWO DIFFERENT CHURCH LIFESTYLES?" Impressions Gathered at Poiana Brasov Poiana Brasov1—Were two different and conflicting trends at work during the WARC’s European Area Council here from September 9th to 14th? RPS attempts here to sum up the general atmosphere and opinions expressed here and there. On the one hand it was clear that a great effort was being made to foster personal and small group encounters, with opportunities for free expression by everyone concerned. This was one of the chief reasons for planning no fewer than 21 discussion groups. The reduction of this number to 12 made a free exchange of views less easy, but not impossible. The visits paid by delegates to local churches on their way to Poiana Brasov were also part of the same intention. On the other hand, certain attempts to avoid encoimters between visitors and presbyteries, the incredible planning during the final days of the conference which precipitated delegates and visitors from the closing Sunday service in Brasov, so that they could not take part in the small reception planned by the parishioners there (coffee, sweets and small, beautiful gifts, and a willingness to start conversations, however limited by the language CAN DO Did is a word of achievement Wont is a word of retreat Might is a word of bereavement Can’t is a word of defeat Ought is a word of duty Try is a word of each hour Will is a word of beauty Can is a word of power. Author Unknown barrier), but prevented them from starting out on the six-hour trip to Cluj2 so as to be unavoidably late for the evening services there — no time in this alternation of delay with breathless speed even to say, “köszönöm szépen” (Thank you) — all this seemed designed to maintain large assemblies under one speaker and leave no room for individual contacts. Yet, on the whole, encounters took place: the local people as well as the Council participants had opportunities to express the joy of meeting, mutual care and concern. People were able to exchange information which was not necessarily contrary to official stances, but obviously independent. The question that came to mind was: “Are we seeing evidences of two conflicting strategies or merely two different church life-styles?” A mixture of both is more probable. The point at stake in the situation of the Reformed Church in Romania is the concept of religious freedom. Is the liberty here a liberty to grow or only a liberty to survive? The difficulty for the Church to obtain Bibles (which was the motivation for the unusual gift of 10,000 of them), the limitations to the number of theological students admitted to the seminary, the incredibly slow pace of restoration work to this seminary — the Theological Institute at Cluj, the difficulties in publishing or getting theological literature, the limited contacts abroad, the fact that when church buildings are demolished for reasons or urban planning, the premises provided to replace them often turn out to be less convenient for the life of the church: all this gives an impression of a church merely allowed to survive. Some Western visitors were inclined to react with a self-satisfied, “We have more and better freedom!” while forgetting that in many Western European countries the “laws of economy” can operate equally effectively, and often to the detriment of church expansion. Other comments referred to the meeting itself. It had been decided from the beginning of the planning stage that there would be no official concluding statement, so that participants could concentrate on contacts and discussions rather than on writing and amending documents. Everybody understood and agreed on this policy. Yet, when all was said and done, one missed the secure feeling of some sort of concluding evaluation session that would have given delegates a chance to assess the Council and reach formulations which, even if not couched in writing, would have been understood by all as a general consensus. Without such a session, it is undoubtedly not an easy task for a delegate to interpret the conference to her or his sending church. Someone suggested that some paperwork might be necessary, such as articles, perhaps in booklet form, to try to knit together the various themes that were left open-ended at Poiana Brasov, and fo define more precisely the guidelines along which the newly-elected European Committee will be working in the years to come. RPS Oct. 1980
