The last goal of our visit was to visit Illyricum, present-day Durrës. In the late 1900s the amphitheater where the Romans watched gladiator fights and martyrs being fed to lions was unearthed. The arena was built during emperor Trajan’s rule. As you can see from the picture above, the concrete bleachers are all but washed out.ts because of their faith.
Pastor John Bilti from Sacramento, California and I took a ten-day missions trip to Albania this October. We’d both been there before been involved in mission work assisting local pastors and ministries in evangelism, church planting, and discipleship of new believers. Our involvement in Albania started through Pastor Jeremy Dollar, a missionary among the Eastern European peoples who served in Albania for a few years. Jeremy also served among Eastern Europeans in North America, establishing churches among the Romanians in Las Vegas, as well as other groups. Our goal for this trip was to see how the evangelical church there was doing and to offer whatever help we could for further healthy growth.
In 1967 Albania became the first official atheist country in the world. But there is no lack of correlation between the gospel and the small Balkan country. Apostle Paul’s connection to Illyricum (today part of Albania) is associated with his third missionary journey in 56 A.D. In Romans 15:19, the apostle writes, “In the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” Later, during his second imprisonment in Rome (66/67A.D.), Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, recording the departure of Titus to Dalmatia, a province on the east of the Adriatic Sea, part of Illyricum province. Traditions hold that around 60 A.D. there were 70 Christian families in the Albanian coastal city of Durrës, in present-day Albania. But today, only 20 percent of Albanian population claim Christianity as their religion. So what happened?
In 1415 the region came under the Ottoman rule and by sword or tax incentives the majority of Albanians became associated with Islam. In 1912 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Albania declared independence after five centuries of Ottoman rule; Christianity was all but wiped out from Albania. Today, Albania has a Muslim majority with only 20 percent of its population claiming Christianity—Orthodox, Catholic, and new Evangelical. There is much work to do in Albania.
We arrived in Tirana and met with a pastor named Fredi Golloshi. He grew up in the Aromanian or Vlach community, a people group who were initially Romanian shepherds. Six or seven hundred years ago, they dispersed throughout the Balkan regions looking for greener pastures. Most of them never made it back to the motherland, but they have preserved most of their language, give or take different dialects and other nuanced differences.
When he was 20, Fredi ended up in Bucharest and after some time there he went to Germany, where he connected with a group of Romanian evangelicals. Although Fedi was raised on a diet of Easter and Christmas Orthodox religion, he’d never heard the gospel the way that group of evangelicals in Germany presented it. Fredi surrendered his life to Jesus and when he came back to Albania he enrolled in a Bible school and got married to Giystina, an attorney in Tirana and they started a church about three years ago.
This new church is made up of about 25 believers. They gather weekly in a storefront room of a four-story building. The members are professionals, a few of them lawyers, and even a military officer among them. The room is about the size of an oversized American bedroom. It’s filled with foldout chairs on top of linoleum flooring and a small bathroom is tucked away in the corner.
Fredi took us to visit a group of Gypsies the church ministers to. The few homes we have visited were not too far from the church. We brought some groceries and gifts and fellow-shipped with the people. I met a man with whom, interestingly enough communicated not in English but Italian, a language that none of us speak with the exception of a few words and phrases. Go figure!
After we left the last family’s home, Fredi expressed his frustration at the church’s inability to get the Gypsy families to come regularly to church. “How can I integrate these families in our church of professionals?” he wanted to know. He had a “come to us” mentality. I suggested to Fredi that the best approach might’ve been to focus on developing and empower them to go and take the gospel in their own community. The “you all come to us” model doesn’t work, not even in America, I added. He was surprised to hear that. “You are the first American to tell us not to follow the American model,” he said.
The second part of our focus was on the Aromanians or Vlach people. Fredi being of Aromanian ancestry plays a large part in his passion for his people. The Vlachs are spread out all throughout the Balkans– Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece, and southern Romania. They are, for the most part, missionarily un-engaged. We needed someone who could reach out to that community. Fredi confirmed that there is a guy with a passion for Aromanians. His name was Mite Nikolov and he lived in Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic.
“Let’s go visit him,” John said.
Connecting with Mite turned into a mission in itself. First, we lost connection with Mite due to an inept phone. So we finally reconnected. Mite was excited to meet with us. We asked if we could meet halfway, since he was in Skopje, Macedonia, a four and a half hours drive from Tirana. He said he’d figure something out to meet us half way despite his car being broken down.
Mite borrowed a friend’s car and met us in Struga, Macedonia. Struga is a beautiful city on the shore of Lake Ohrid. We had invited others—a Romanian missionary from Romania serving as a missionary among the Albanians in Macedonia, and two other men from Venice, California, among them. After we had fellowship and lunch together at a local Macedonian restaurant, we had prayer and a round table meeting in the lobby of the Drim Hotel.
During the meeting we learned that Mite headed the project that recently translated Campus Crusade for Christ’s 1970s Jesus film, based on the Gospel of Luke, into Aromanian. This movie will be used as a tool to engage the Aromanian communities with the gospel and cause them to ask questions about God and eternal life.
We agreed that we needed to pray for financial support so Mite could dedicate all his time to ministering to Aromanians. Fredi committed to donate a projector so Mite can use it in presenting the Jesus video as a starter dialogue about God and eternal life. Pray that the Lord will raise up prayer and financial partners in supporting this new mission opportunity throughout Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and other areas throughout the Balkans.
The last goal of our visit was to visit Illyricum, present-day Durrës. In the late 1900s the amphitheatre where the Romans watched gladiator fights and martyrs being fed to lions was unearthed. The arena was built during emperor Trajan’s rule. As you can see from the picture above, the concrete bleachers are all but washed out.
–
Mark Hobafcovich , is a Kingdom catalyst, pastor, leader, and author of "Defector: A True Story of Tyranny, Liberty and Purpose" , a memoir chronicling his journey to becoming a disciple of Christ inspiring others to live a purposeful life.
Comments