Our Principal recently had the great joy of interviewing Pastor Pal Borzasi for his Preachers on Preaching series and out of that has come a wonderful new ministry opportunity.

John writes: Pál is an EMF Missionary and pastor of the Hungarian Baptist Church at Pericei, in the region of Transylvania, Romania. In addition to his pastoral responsibilities, Pál lectures in the Hungarian Baptist Seminary in Oradea.  On Thursday of this week, and again next Thursday, I have the privilege of teaching Pal’s students at the Seminary over zoom. I am doing three hours on each of those days on the subject of Pastoral Theology. I am hopeful that out of this will come further opportunities to work alongside wonderful men like Pal in Romania and elsewhere, and possibly in person as well as online. Pal shared the following information about the Seminary and I commend this great work to your prayers, as well as coveting your prayers for me on these two upcoming afternoons.

The Hungarian Baptist Seminary exists

1. to train young men for pastoral ministry (preaching and teaching in the church);
2. to train young men and women to become teachers of religion (i.e. of Christianity) in public schools, and
3. to train young men and women to teach the subject of music in public schools.

The students can receive accredited diplomas, both BA diplomas and MA ones, as they are enrolled either at Emanuel Institute of Oradea (Romania) or at the Baptist Theological Academy of Budapest (Hungary). We are very grateful for this.

Given the fact that our evangelical denomination (the Baptist Convention) is a minority within a minority (among ethnic Hungarians in Romania), it is very small (see the short history below). So at the moment there are 5 students training to become pastors and around 20 students training to become teachers of Christianity or of music in our public schools.

For various historical reasons, there are 1.5 million Hungarians in Transylvania, Romania. My family and I belong to this ethnic group. After Hungary lost the First World War, Transylvania was taken away from Hungary and given over to Romania. Thus, my grandparents, who always lived there, became Romanian citizens overnight, even though they still lived in the same place and spoke the same language (Hungarian). This is why there are so many Hungarians in Romania.

As the gospel reached Transylvania toward the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, more and more Hungarian Baptist Churches were planted. After communism fell in Romania in 1989, my denomination formed this seminary to train young men for the ministry. At present there are around 250 Hungarian speaking Baptist churches in Transylvania, but only about 56 pastors. It is therefore absolutely vital that we invest time, energy and resources in trying to raise up a new generation of godly and gifted church leaders.