“Come over and help us…”

“We need people.”

By far, this was the most commonly uttered need as we traveled to Roma communities throughout Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Money was not first on the list of needs, but people.  This must be connected to another common theme I have observed in pastors and people working in Roma communities all over Eastern Europe:  a struggle with what appears to be stress-induced health issues or illness.

They carry many burdens without fellow leaders to share them, and rarely do they place a priority on “self-care.”

“People do come and do projects, ” one Roma pastor in Macedonia said, “but then they leave and nothing goes deeper and no relationships are formed. And most missionaries work with Macedonians or Albanians. Evangelistic outreaches that come and do drama and music on the streets have limited effectiveness, but staying and being with people in their homes is where things can go deeper.

Despite seeing negative effects from short-term mission projects, I am not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Mission “projects” certainly have their usefulness and value; but most lack intentionality and a vision toward long term relationships.  Few realize the burden and stress the locals feel while trying to accommodate the short-term plans.

Without careful planning done in the spirit of a listening humility and open dialogue,   short-term mission projects can become a zero-sum game—an exciting cross-cultural experience comes at a cost for the local leadership.

Not properly researching  the context contributes to the probability of a zero-sum game. It might surprise some to know that Macedonia, a small country with a population of around 2 million, is primarily an Orthodox country (64%); however, the Muslim population, makes up about 33% (2002 census).  (For more background on Macedonia, read this insightful article by Kostake Milkov).

Because of these dynamics, there are only a handful of Roma churches in the whole country,  and most of them are small.  And the questions and obstacles they face are different than in Croatia, Serbia, Romania, or Bulgaria, for example, where the Muslim populations are much smaller.

“A graveyard.” The Roma pastor told me matter-of-factly when we were discussing barriers to the gospel in his particular town.

“We are not allowed to be buried in the Orthodox or the Muslim graveyards; and people worry about what will  happen to their bodies when they die. It is a very serious concern for them.” He smiled.  “I myself don’t worry about my body, but I also don’t want to leave that burden to my family when I die.”

I stared at him in disbelief.  “So you are telling me that if you had the money and ability to purchase land for a graveyard, this would remove a big obstacle for people to come to faith?”

Of course, missiologically speaking, this is probably only one barrier in a complex situation—but it sounds as if it is a significant one.

Another difficulty in establishing growing disciples is the constant stream of people leaving to go find work in Western Europe, a common story in this part of the world. “It is difficult for the Roma to find work among Macedonians,” he tells me.

He guesses that there are about 2000 Macedonian Roma in Austria. “I would love to send Roma missionaries to that community to plant a church,” he tells me.

But he alone pastors his small, struggling church, so his vision will have to wait…for more people to come.

“During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” ¹⁰ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.”  Acts 16

The Invitation is Waiting in Your Mailbox

“After a year of working with them, ” a Macedonian pastor said about the Roma village with whom he and his wife virtually stumbled into working, “we realized that we actually knew absolutely nothing about them, even though we had lived side-by-side all these years.”

And this is the clincher, the key to the problem of the vast relational divide between Roma and non-Roma in this part of the world.

The non-Roma think they know exactly who the Roma are—and why not?  They can be living side-by-side, neighborhood by neighborhood for centuries.  But the knowledge is formed by a constructed image, past down through generations, maybe reinforced by a bad experience or two.  Their entire culture is often summed up in a sentence, applied unilaterally with the word “they.”

“How often are you here?” I asked one Bulgarian college student, who graciously took us into the huge Mahala(the Roma quarter), estimated to be around 40,000 in Sofia, Bulgaria. This young women had been working part-time for an NGO which, among other things, offered a kind of “half-way house” for young Roma leaving an orphanage, providing job and life skills training.

“Oh no, it is not safe for me to come here by myself,” she said emphatically. “I’ve only been here one or two times.”

I looked around at the kids walking through the mud-rutted streets, the shacks and houses leaning tiredly against each other, the women on their way to the store.  Yes, they glanced at our car as we drove through, and one teenage boy whistled at us.  My lens interpreted these glances as a half-hearted curiosity because of a car with Croatian plates driving through neighborhoods.  My young friend interpreted them as thinly-veiled threats.

Constructed images?

“Is it getting worse, staying the same, or getting better?” I continued to ask Roma as we traveled through Bulgaria and Macedonia in regards to the relational divide.

Everyone said it was worse.

“When I was a boy, I grew up next to Bulgarians.  I was friends with them,”  one Roma man in his late 40’s told me.  “Now, it is not like that.”

Although it is not legal to segregate schools in Bulgaria, others told me that Bulgarian parents would bus their children to a further school in order to avoid being in a predominately Roma school. This, despite the Bulgarian government’s efforts to sometimes bus Roma children to other schools in an effort to integrate.

If it is getting worse, this is puzzling, since no other time in history has seen such a raised awareness of Roma issues, increased exposure of discrimination and hate crimes, and vast of amounts of money being poured into projects.

Often, what I  read in the press, academic reports, and public policies seem galaxies away from the situation on the ground.

Still, as always, there are exceptions to the rule.

“It was hard at first,” one teenage Roma boy told me in regards to his experience of moving out of the Mahala and into the town.  “But after a couple of years, they got to know me and became my friends.”

Still, his new Bulgarian friends, although freely inviting him into their homes, will not go with him into the Mahala.

“They don’t feel safe here,” he said.

Sadly, this relational divide, with few exceptions, also exists in the Church.  The handful of Bulgarian and Macedonian Christians working in Roma communities are usually on their own.  It is always encouraging to hear their stories of how their opinions and hearts were transformed when they entered into relationship with a Roma.

“I grew up hating them, and thinking of them as dirty gypsies,” one said to me. “When I first came here, I didn’t want to touch them or have them touch me.”

But perhaps  it is safe to say that this “constructed image”  goes both ways.  One Roma pastor in Macedonia told me of his vision to break the chains of nationalism in his church.

“Everyone thinks they are the best…the Albanians, the Roma, and the Macedonians,” he said. “But if we don’t want the next generation to bear this curse, change has to start somewhere.  My church is not just a Roma church but open to everyone.”

The Church should be a prophetic witness of reconciliation, forgiveness, and a place where people can have their images of the “they” recreated through relationship.  From Roma to non-Roma, and non-Roma to Roma.

Thank goodness that God’s mission is bigger than the Church, and he graciously invites the Church to be a part of his mission.

In other words,  Church is invited to God’s party of what he is doing among Roma communities, and we can be privy to how he will use Roma Christians to bless the global Church and the world.

One of the biggest Roma churches in Bulgaria.

The question is: Will the Church accept the invitation to the party?

For an interesting article discussing other problems related to this relational divide, click HERE.