Visit to EBF in Hungary
Heather & Andrew Browne, Hamilton Road Baptist Church
This was a first for us. We had never been to an EBF conference before and we had never been to the city of Budapest, or anywhere in Hungary for that matter. The flight from Dublin was straightforward and we soon settled into the Hotel Benczur for a few days sightseeing before the conference opened on Wednesday 25th September with a wonderful evening of praise in the Wesselényi Street Baptist Church.
It was thrilling to be part of a group of 150 people from 41 countries. While we knew very few of the participants at the start they were very welcoming and we had the added advantage of Stephen Adams being with us, who was able to make many introductions. It was also a help that English was the language of the conference and spoken by most of those present, although we discovered that having an App on your phone to help translate a Hungarian sermon is not all it’s cracked up to be!
Baptist House Budapest.
The conference ran from Wednesday evening to midday on Saturday and was built around the theme of ‘Change of Era’. The organisation was first class (congratulations to the new EBF operations manager, Dana from Lithuania) and we had no complaints about the catering or the venues. The Museum of Ethnography and Baptist House offered excellent facilities for plenary sessions and break-out groups. The programme over the three days focussed on ‘Challenging, Collaborating and Connecting’ and we were given many examples of how these are working out in practice at the moment, specifically amongst Baptists in Europe and the Middle East. We discussed the challenge of migration and heard more detail of how the conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East are affecting our brothers and sisters there. Indeed, there were feedback reports from many nations as well as informal opportunities to talk to other delegates. Heather and I believe that between us we were able to have one-to-one conversations with people of 20 different nationalities.
Frontline Hungarian Baptist Aid workers.
A series of mission trips were organised for Friday afternoon and we elected to go with the social care group. Transport was provided and we were taken to see the work of the Hungarian Baptist Church in a hospice, a school, a children’s home and at the headquarters of Hungarian Baptist Aid, where a substantial warehouse was packed with supplies and vehicles, including a rescue boat and fire engine, to be deployed rapidly to any humanitarian disaster, such as the recent earthquake in Turkey. To us this demonstrated a very practical outworking of Galatians 6, verse 10:
“Therefore, as we have opportunity let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers.”
Helle Liht and Daniel Trusiewicz with Alan Donaldson. Helle and Daniel have both given a lifetime of service to the EBF family.
For those who know the EBF personalities well this conference was an opportunity to welcome some new faces, such as Enoh Šeba the new director of IBTS, and to bid farewell to Daniel Trusiewicz and Helle Liht, who are moving on after many years service.
Many speakers gave memorable presentations and two quotations that lingered were Cristina Arcidiacono’s comment that “God is not tired of being patient with us” and Azar Ajay’s observation that “there is a living church and we are part of a bigger family. The body of Christ needs you.”
St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest.
There is so much more to report and of course there were opportunities outside of the conference for a cruise on the Danube and even a visit to the State Ballet (only Stephen knows how we secured such cheap tickets to a gala performance of Swan Lake!). The over-riding memory however is of God’s people uniting in worship, sharing our hopes and fears and looking to a new era, however uncertain, confident in the knowledge “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”