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Aims
To relieve poverty in the Balkans and Caucasus regions, in particular by the provision of financial and practical support.
To advance public education in Christian religion, social history and culture in the Balkans and Caucasus regions.
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The key message of the Bible is that God loves us, and that the key command is that we must love – firstly God, and secondly everybody else.
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One of the major issues in the world at the moment is xenophobia – hatred and fear towards anyone who is different in any way. The Balkans and Caucasus exemplify this tragically |
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Our vision therefore is to offer friendship and encouragement to Christians who are different ethnically, culturally and theologically, and who are in a position to reach out to those around them. |
We need to identify appropriate individuals living in the Balkans and Caucasus.
Our commitment to them will ideally involve finding out about their histories and languages.
It will mean listening to them and being willing to learn from them.
Many in this part of the world will be in difficult and forgotten situations: our primary aim will be to encourage them.
Many will be serving communities who are desperately poor. We need to be in a position to make some sort of meaningful response to the physical and spiritual needs we find.
Logically, an ultimate aim would be to network these peoples.
All members of the Body of Christ are inter-dependent . Nevertheless, we do not want to encourage the wrong type of dependency in our friends.
Our own culture – and our experience in Romania and elsewhere - may well have equipped us with valuable insights which we can share with our friends. We must recognise also that we will have blind spots. Perhaps our foreign friends can help us.
We rejoice in the rich diversity which characterises the Body of Christ worldwide.
We need to reflect our experiences back on ourselves, and on our friends here.
We need to help each other – we must recognise that such an enterprise will generate emotional and existential strains. Hopefully these strains can be creative, if worked through in an atmosphere of love.
“Practical assistance” does form an essential part of this vision, but only in the wider scheme of things.