Sarajevo Ministry - Why We're Here

Written for Welcome to Sarajevo - Summer Project Briefing Manual, an internal publication put together to help introduce a team of college students to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where they would be working and living for 6 weeks during the Summer of 2005.

SvakiStudent Ministry Vision

As a campus ministry here in Sarajevo, our vision statement has been to see “a movement of Bosnian Christian students, transformed by God’s grace, building each other up, spurring each other on, and sending each other out.” Scripturally, we look to passages such as Ephesians 4-6, as well as the descriptions of the early church in Acts to find our basis for this vision. We believe that we are not wishing for something that is simply unattainable; in fact, we believe that such a vision is essential in order for us to realize all that is possible here. With this in mind, we look for the great and supernatural to happen here, and we pray for the over abundantly great and supernatural.

In looking at the early church in Acts, we also have examples of the paths that the early apostles took to reach their vision. We have example of Paul, who spread the gospel so widely in Ephesus that chapter 19 says the “entire town” had heard the word of the Lord by the end of Paul’s time there. Here we have a precedent for sowing widely in order to realize the vision of a growing, thriving body of Christ. From this we have created our own “mission statement”, which is essentially the path that we believe we need to follow in order to reach our vision. Our mission is to “reach every student with the gospel of Christ, challenge every believing student to grow and serve, and equip every leader to make an impact for Christ.” This three-pronged statement builds a framework around which to structure all of our events and activities; with everything we do, we can ask ourselves, “how will this help us to reach every student, challenge believers, or equip leaders?”


Ministry History

About ten years ago, a small group of young adults just out of college journeyed to Zagreb, Croatia, with a vision of seeing God use them to start a ministry to college students in Croatia’s capital city. Today that ministry is called Nada i Život, which means “hope and life” in Serbo-Croatian and is staffed by several Croatian families in addition to American missionaries that have committed their own lives to serving in this country. Nada i Život’s student ministry calls itself SvakiStudent, or “Every Student” in Serbo-Croatian, and Nada i Život now also reaches people in Croatia through Family Life and Jesus Film ministries.

In 2001, yet another group of young adults set their sights on neighboring Sarajevo, Bosnia – home to over 30,000 university students – with the same aspiration. In addition to short term STINTers, permanent staff has been added this year; Svjetlana, a Bosnian national, has been on staff with Nada i Život in Zagreb for the past three years and joined the team in Sarajevo in November 2004. SvakiStudent in Sarajevo is also developing relationships with local churches and groups in the U.S. that will help to further the ministry for years to come. The main connection with ministry in the U.S. is through the Atlanta-Metro ministry of the Southeast Campus Crusade for Christ, who have been sending both Summer Projects and STINT teams to Croatia and Bosnia for over 10 years.

Summer Project Vision… how you fit in

Meeting Students

Go to Romans 10:14-15 and read Paul’s argument for preaching to the lost. We view our task here the same way as Paul might, and we ask, “how can they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear without talking to someone? And how can they talk to someone they have not met?” Extraordinary value lies in knowing someone whose life and actions are living testaments to the grace of God. If your life has been changed by God, then you can give everyone you meet this summer the opportunity to know a living, breathing disciple of Jesus Christ. One of your objectives this summer is to help us meet as many students as possible, with the purpose of eventually sharing the gospel with as many students as possible.


Reaching Students

Again, our ultimate purpose is to share the gospel with as many students as possible. During your short time here, your specific objective is to “get the gospel out” among the students you meet. Be bold. This is a rare situation. Your sole purpose for being here is to see God work through you. Give Him the opportunity by seeking out as many opportunities as possible for spreading His light into this dark world.


Grow!

We encourage you to use this time to devote yourself to your own spiritual growth and development. Going to an international mission field is an opportunity that many Christians in America never get. We hope that you will be grown and stretched by the Holy Spirit, returning to the states renewed in many ways by what you allow Him to do through you this summer.

The College Prowler Take On Academics at Georgia Tech

Written for Georgia Tech: Off the Record, 160 pages, published by College Prowler, Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. www.collegeprowler.com

If you choose to attend Georgia Tech, you can expect that the professors in any given course of study will be among the most recognized and respected names in their fields. Doctorates from Princeton, MIT, Stanford, CalTech, and Georgia Tech roam the halls, instructing the next generation's leading scientists and engineers. Having come from demanding academic backgrounds themselves, Georgia Tech professors are notorious for being stingy with grades. Do not expect to receive exemplary grades at Georgia Tech, unless you are willing to put in the time and effort required. With that said, the vast majority of these professors will do their best to accommodate unforeseen difficulties and problems, if they are informed. Most large classes are constructed with one professor that oversees several teching assistants, or TAs. The professor is obligated to carry on the regular lectures and the gneral administration of the class, but each TA is given charge over a small subset of students. Most of teh interaction that takes place in the course is experienced between the students and these TAs. TAs are generally very helpful, since they were also students not long ago.

More specifically, different fields of study usually beget different breeds of professors. Social science professors are generally muuch more supportive than math professors. Engineering professors always require a lot of homework, and are usually difficult on tests and exams. Physics professors are known for being vicious. Computer science professors are usually very helpful and are always very knowledgeable, but their TAs are very strict and sometimes not helpful. Overall, you will be expected to learn things without supervision, and will be held to very high standards. Of course, the harshness is not without reason, and Tech graduates are generally very well-trained and sought after in their various fields, whatever career path they choose.

A Short History of the Ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ in Sarajevo, Bosnia

Written for internal publication, Winter, 2005, as part of a much larger report on the condition of the ministry in Sarajevo.

History of the ministry
Practical Difficulties
The first Sarajevo stint team was due to arrive in mid-September, 2001, mere days after the tragedies of September 11th. Instead, the entire team delayed their arrival for more than a week and remained in Zagreb while they and the staff there assessed the conditions in Sarajevo following the terrorist attacks. As more than eighty percent of Sarajevo’s population is Muslim, the staff was unsure of what the local attitude might have been toward Americans and Christians in general. It was quickly determined that conditions would be safe for a STINT team, but since that time, the staff has had to deal with the presence of Islam in Sarajevo and the heightened awareness that requires at this time. Practically, Sarajevo is at least as safe as a city like Atlanta, but the international political climate and the conventional worries do not ease the mind.

Sarajevo
Sarajevo is the only major city in the Denaric region of the Balkan peninsula, with a population numbering between four hundred thousand and a half million. It is the capitol of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also of the country’s Muslim-Croat Federation entity. Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises two such entities, similar to states in the U.S., the other being the Republika Srpska (literally, “The Serbian Republic”), whose capitol is at Banja Luka, in the north of the country. The country is home to three ethnic groups – Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks – which were all at war with one another during overlapping periods in the early 1990’s. Serbs are ethnically Serbian and culturally Orthodox Christian, but born outside of Serbia and Montenegro (formerly “Yugoslavia”); Croats are ethnically Croatian and culturally Catholic, but born outside of Croatia; Bosniaks are Muslims from Bosnia or the surrounding regions. Out of the wars that followed the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia came the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, called such because it includes both the region known as Bosnia in the north and east, occupied by Muslims and Serbs, and Herzegovina in the south, occupied mostly by Croats and Muslims.
Bosnia has made mixed progress since its war for independence ended in 1996. Among its cities, the hardest hit was also the largest; Sarajevo has been rebuilding itself since its four year siege was ended, and is still protected by an international military presence, which was recently handed over to the European Union by NATO.

Svakistudent
The ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ in the city of Sarajevo began in the summer of 2001 with a Summer Project team from the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Sarajevo partnership was started as a continuation of the Atlanta Metro College Ministry’s existing partnership with Nada i Život’s (Campus Crusade in Bosnia and Croatia, literally “Hope and Life”) campus ministry in the Croatian city of Split. In the fall of the same year, a STINT team of four Americans and one Croatian arrived in the city and established the first permanent presence of Campus Crusade for Christ in the city of Sarajevo.
The countries of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia are directed together, as one larger country, under the ministry of Nada i Život, headquartered in Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia. For the first two and a half years of its existence, the campus ministry in Sarajevo also operated under the name “Nada i Život”, until the beginning of 2004 when the name was changed to “Svaki student” (literally, “every student” in Bosnian) to mimic its counterpart in Zagreb, which had been using the name for several years.
The Sarajevo ministry has been in the STINT phase since the fall of 2001, and has had a STINT team and a Summer Project team come every year except for 2003, when no Summer Project team came.

Phase
Staff/STINT/ICS
The STINT team was led its first two years by Neil Arner, a recent graduate of Georgia Tech and a Rhodes scholarship finalist. The other Americans were Drew Matter and Kathryn Reed, also graduates of Georgia Tech, and Maryann Woodward, the team’s Associate Leader. Joško Vukušić, a Croatian from Split, also served on that first team.
The first STINT team was followed by a second Summer Project team from the Atlanta partnership in the summer of 2002. All of the members of the first STINT team elected to stay for all or part of a second year, and the team also gained two new members: Jimmy Trent, a graduate of UNC-Charlotte, and Rachel Rollins, a former staff member in the missions department of NorthPoint Community Church.
In 2003, Neil Arner, Kathryn Reed, Jimmy Trent, and Joško Vukušić all left the Sarajevo ministry for their respective homes, and Maryann Woodward left Sarajevo to serve for a year with the staff in Split, Croatia. In the fall of 2003, the ministry, still in the STINT phase, was led by Drew Matter and Rachel Rollins, and three new STINTers joined the team – Jessica Gorny, a graduate from the Miami Metro movement, and Jonathan Trousdale and Raechel Nebergall, both from the Atlanta Metro movement.
In the fall of 2004, Drew Matter, Rachel Rollins, and Jessica Gorny left the Sarajevo ministry for their respective homes, and the ministry is now being led by Jonathan Trousdale and Lauren Tuten, a graduate of the Atlanta Metro movement. The new staff/STINT team is composed of Raechel Nebergall; new STINTer Ashley Clark from Atlanta; Chris Carter, serving a staff-STINT in his first year as new Crusade staff; and Svjetlana Brezo, the first Bosnian staff member of the Sarajevo ministry.

Outlook
As of December, 2004, the Sarajevo ministry is still very much in the STINT phase (“phase 2”), but the addition of a new national staff member is very welcome and promising. The team is currently run as one “staff” team, reporting to Zagreb and partnered with the Southeast region of the U.S. There is currently one Bosnian applicant for new staff, Bojan Dragičević, and if accepted, he will join the Sarajevo staff team in September of 2005.
There are no immediate plans for any American ICS to join the Sarajevo staff. Nada i Život as a whole is, of course, committed to the growth of the Sarajevo staff and ministry, but there are no immediate plans to send other staff to Sarajevo. This may change soon.

Sarajevo Campus Ads

"What are you waiting for?" ad run at the campus of the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovnia. (photo taken by Jonathan Trousdale)

This ad was part of the "Herman" ad campaign, run at the campus of the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in preparation for a campus-wide student event (photo taken by Chris Carter). Text from the ad says "What are you waiting for?"

Hope for Sarajevo

Published in ChristChurch Presbyterian newsletter, June, 2006

Recently I had the privilege of returning to the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia, where I lived for two years as a missionary before coming to ChristChurch in August of last year. While I was quite happy to go – visiting Sarajevo meant seeing my old home, my old friends, and my fiancé, who is due to come home in a few days – I couldn’t help feeling anxious as well. How would I be received? Or, more to the point, how would I receive this place that had been my home so recently, where I had experienced so many ups and downs?

Soon after I arrived, I easily fell back into my old routines. In almost no time, I was walking down the city’s famed walking street, an old friend on either side of me, and the tinkering sounds of little teacups and saucers at outdoor cafes all around me. I went to eat with students again, enjoying the Bosnian cuisine that I once ate so often. For me, the mere routines of life here were in many ways a welcomed change.

Then I began to once again talk to students about spiritual things, and I received a much more significant reminder of what my life and work had been like in Sarajevo. As our team assisted and encouraged the long-term team there, which I had been a part of until I came to ChristChurch, I once again was reminded of the outlook on life that many Bosnians share. Theirs has been a very difficult life over the past ten years. A devastating war for independence left the country depleted, and even ten years later, students are still hopelessly pessimistic about the future. Ethnic quarrels have buried the city and the country in strife and averted hopes for progress. Unemployment still hovers at 40 percent, and war criminals still roam the countryside, mysteriously unable to be found.

Most students think that the vast religious differences that exist in their country were the cause of the wars, and therefore attempt to keep any real discussion of God or religion at a good arm’s length They claim that it’s just not relevant to life here. Missionaries know different, but communicating truth is seldom easy in such a setting. Those in Sarajevo who truly know Christ know that the gospel is the only thing that will ever bring an end to the ethnic struggles that have plagued their land. Only the love of Christ and the forgiveness that He enables will bring lasting peace and progress. And that is the vision for sharing the gospel in this, the last reach country in all of Europe. Indeed, in Bosnia, a country of over 4 million, less than a thousand know Christ personally. In Sarajevo, a city of half a million, less than 300 have ever met Him.

Still, there is the undeniable truth that God is working. He is not less powerful, just because there are mosques and minarets on the hillsides instead of churches and steeples. In one conversation that I had with a student that I had met only a few days earlier, the student told me that, because of all the hard things that had happened to Bosnians over the past ten years, it made perfect sense to him to come to Bosnia and talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He said that if more people would live according to a relationship with Jesus, things in this country would start to change. This student was not a believer, and yet he could see the goodness of Jesus within a personal relationship.

On my journey back to Atlanta, I was deeply impressed with the fact that God’s church is universal, and that His work here in Atlanta is inseparable from his work around the world. We are bound together with Christians all around the world, of all different denominations, races, and languages, by the same God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. And He is always working. He gives us the privilege of coming along for the ride, but it is He that sets the course, and He that gets the victory. What a vision to have, that we will one day witness Christ, as He brings His kingdom to earth, even here – even among the mosques and minarets of Sarajevo.