The Church in Eastern Europe

(Posted by John)

Last week a colleague and I enjoyed a short 7 1/2 hour train-ride down to Ljubljana, Slovenia. There we participated in a conference focusing on church planting in Eastern Europe, and in particular, the various challenges that churches face in this region. (If you are interested in reading the paper I presented at the conference, "Toward Improved Contextualization and Acuity in SCP Strategy," click here). It was a fascinating set of discussions, with quite a few differing viewpoints represented, and was something that I walked away with more questions than answers. And for me, that is something really positive.

The other thing I've been chewing on recently, is a comment a business partner of my father-in-law made in a conversation a couple days ago. After describing some of the heartache he has in life these days following a family tragedy, he went on to say that my father-in-law is one of his best friends--no, not just one of, but truly his best-friend. And the reason he supplied for András being such an important friend was because, "In over 20 years of knowing him, he has never cheated me; not even one forint [cent]!"

Obviously, not cheating someone is an important part of a good friendship. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that an important cultural difference lay in the background of that sentiment. For me, my expectation is that my friends wouldn't cheat me. And if one of my friends decided to cheat me one-day, he would cease to be a friend. But for a Hungarian, that's not necessarily so. Perhaps due to the corruption and dishonesty that pervaded the old Communist system here, and it's still lingering effects, it seems that most people expect that at some point in a relationship the other other person will deceive them, cheat them, or deal underhandedly with them in some way. And for a person not to do that is remarkable; an exception to the norm. Which explains why it seems to take so much longer to develop trust in a relationship in this part of the world.