The year 1994 was significant in the life of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). Both Canada and the United States jointly discerned a clear and compelling call to send international workers into the countries of Russia, Poland, and Hungary with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We were one of the many couples who went. We had a message of hope to articulate verbally as well as by our committed presence to these people who had been oppressed by Soviet Communism for well over forty years.
Five years earlier, the Iron Curtain imposingly dividing the continent of Europe came tumbling down almost unexpectedly, not unlike the walls of Jericho centuries before. The Soviet Union, along with its satellite nations in Central Europe, had disintegrated before the eyes of a watching and waiting world. Communism had collapsed under the immense weight of its misguided ideology. It was difficult for many in the West to believe the Cold War had actually come to an end after forty years. But it had, though not without drama.
Hungary is situated in the heart of Europe. It was one of these Communist satellite countries, along with Poland and Czechoslovakia, trying to find its way through the fallen rubble while desiring to build a better nation, free from the shackles of Soviet rule and domination.
Many Christian mission agencies and churches from America, Canada, and Western Europe saw a wide-open door to reach lost souls for Christ and began pouring workers and money into this part of the world. Figuratively speaking, harvest time had come, and workers needed to be sent. The C&MA was one denomination that committed itself to go in the summer of 1994. The three mainline/dominant churches, Roman Catholics, Reformed, and Lutheran, did not seem pleased nor welcoming. We were often asked, “Why did you come?” followed by, “We don’t need you here.”
In July 2011, the C&MA closed its ministry efforts in Hungary after serving there for seventeen years. We wondered: Did our ministry have any significant impact on Hungarian people? Did we faithfully bear witness to Jesus in the power of the Spirit of holiness? Did our children ever regret going with us and being educated at Black Forest Academy (BFA), a boarding school in Germany, in their formative years...away from their parents for extended periods? If we had to do it over again, would we?
Looking back, we believe the decision to be a verbal witness and a dedicated presence for Jesus to the Hungarian people was indeed worth the commitment, effort, and time invested. As for our children, they never once regretted their formative years being spent on another continent. They were exposed to many different European cultures and unique experiences while becoming fluent in Hungarian. BFA in Germany provided an outstanding education, while the friendships they made with other “missionary kids” have been fulfilling and long-lasting.
Our Calling (1992-1994)
Two years before leaving Canada for Hungary, when Steve was pastor of the Cochrane Alliance Church in Alberta, he received a clear and strong impression from the Lord that now was the time to leave the pastorate and pursue overseas ministry among the Hungarian people. God used an advertisement in a missions magazine sponsored by another denomination looking for English teachers willing to teach in Hungary.
Even though Steve was born and grew up in Canada, he had European blood flowing in his veins—his mother had immigrated from Hungary and his father from Ukraine. After his conversion to Christ at the age of fifteen, Steve nurtured a heart-felt, God-given premonition that one day he would go to Hungary to minister and bear witness to Jesus, particularly to unsaved, unbelieving family members.
Steve had been married to Audrey for two years after the passing of his first wife, Wynelle, in a car accident. He now had to share with Audrey what God had put on his heart. Would she agree and come alongside? He wasn’t sure, but to his pleasant surprise, Audrey listened attentively, and within a few days, decided to follow God’s call on their lives.
Audrey always had an adventurous spirit, not being averse to taking risks and embracing challenges. Since her conversion to Christ in 1988, she had taken many large steps of faith. After quitting a very successful business career with Xerox for Bible College in 1988, only two years later, she became a pastor’s wife and a mother all at once by marrying a widower with three young children. Brendon was five, Jonathan three, and Stephanie only one year old. All three warmly welcomed their new mom into their lives. A new family chapter was about to be written, but it would mean leaving Canada for Hungary.
By 1994, the whole family was walking the streets and breathing the air of a foreign country. Within six years, Audrey had made multiple momentous life-changing decisions.
First Term (1994-1998)
During our first term, we lived in the eastern city of Debrecen, regularly attending and ministering in the Free Christian Church, primarily with the youth when Steve was not ministering elsewhere in an itinerant evangelistic ministry. In his broken Hungarian, he regularly preached in the surrounding small towns and villages of Debrecen while the rest of the family earnestly focused on learning the difficult language.
Interestingly, Dr. George Kovacs, a church-planting researcher with the Baptist Union, made a fascinating comment regarding missionaries who live and minister in Hungary but refuse to learn the language. He said, “Hungary became a country where many mission groups settled when the East opened. However, not many and not enough came with the proper attitude—to learn the language and minister to and with a Hungarian mindset instead of a Western one. I cannot understand how some missionaries have lived here for five years and still cannot speak the language. They have made no attempt to learn, which is an insult to Hungarian sensibilities.”
In our minds, this observation by Dr. Kovacs underscored the wisdom of the Alliance’s strategy of having their international workers invest time and energy in learning the language and culture of the people they are ministering to.
One of our key leading scriptures is found in Proverbs 16:9, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” We decided to be involved in a variety of ministries during the first term. This way, we simultaneously learned the language, the culture and finding out where God wanted us to join in the work He was already doing and preparing for us.
We served the poor, singles, youth groups, neighbours, and small Romani home churches, all while establishing a home for our children and helping them adjust to school life. Once every month, Steve would minister to one particular village in a small house group. They raised chickens and pigs on their small plot of land and grew a vegetable garden. So how did they show their appreciation for his ministry? He always came home with either a small fowl or a bag of vegetables. Not your typical honorarium!
Dealing with government bureaucracy was always a major headache. Paperwork was endless and time-consuming year after year. We endured graciously mentoring seventeen national church planters in Hungary; however, it made the bureaucratic hassles we suffered bearable. These relationships lasted over two years, longer with some. It was a privilege to be a part of Hungary’s church-planting movement, where many missionaries came alongside committed church planters. We blessed each other in the flesh even as God blessed them and us in the Spirit.
Second Term (1999-2003)
After Steve had his left hip replaced in Calgary while on home assignment, our whole family returned to Hungary. We settled in Budapest and started to attend and work with Bicske and Rose Garden Baptist Fellowship. This term would be a five-year commitment instead of four to accommodate our son Jonathan graduating from Black Forest Academy in 2004. We were always so impressed with how understanding, flexible, and insightful our Canadian mission’s leadership team worked with our family for a mutually beneficial outcome.
One aspiration we nurtured as parents was to include our children, as much as possible, in our ministry, making them feel a part of serving the Lord with us. During this second term, they were older and had learned to speak Hungarian. A weeklong evangelistic outreach in the small town of Bicske provided such an opportunity while the children were on summer vacation. The Bicske Baptist Church invited our whole family to participate in July 2000.
Steve preached every evening in an outdoor tent. Audrey and Brendon, Jonathan, and Stephanie ministered to the local community’s children in the mornings. By the end of the week, over forty children were attending, and sixteen committed their hearts to God. From this, an ongoing children’s club was established for the church starting in October; Audrey continued to teach. We stayed actively involved with the church for six years, watching it grow from fifteen people meeting in an old converted pub into a church building with an average attendance of over ninety people. It is not often when the whole family can minister together like this; it proved to be a significant highlight. We believe children need to feel they are a part of what their parents are doing without feeling the pressure to participate against their wills.
Audrey and Ildiko Kovacs met with the church-planting wives of Debrecen in late January. These women needed to experience the joy and freedom of Christ to serve with their own gifts and abilities stemming from the different circumstances and stages of their lives. From this group, we assisted in three church plants.
Audrey stated, “There are so many hurting people, so many people with hard lives, living with broken dreams, abused and used by this harsh world, they just need to know that they are loved, accepted and valued. After five years, we are beginning to see how to touch peoples’ lives in this culture. The alabaster jar of God’s love has been broken and is being poured out. The fragrance of His love is in the air. We are that broken jar.”
In speaking with Pastor Attila György and Pastor Bálint Bacskai, two young promising Reformed Church ministers, we became intensely aware of their denomination’s spiritual barrenness in Hungary. What we had sensed intuitively was confirmed for us assuredly by the testimony of their own experiences.
Further verification came from our own experiences, having spent time among them.
According to these pastors, 28 percent of Hungarians claim Reformed Church affiliation, about 2 million people, but only 5-10 percent were truly converted believers and followers of Jesus Christ. Pastor Bálint believed that 25 percent were avowed atheists who just happened to be christened as children. Another 25 percent believed in God but were very liberal in their beliefs and behaviour. For example, they did not believe in the divinity of Christ or His resurrection, or that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, or that Jesus performed miracles because miracles just don’t happen.
Still, another 40-45 percent were religious but not truly born again. This was certainly a sad state of affairs, not just for the Reformed Church but also for the traditional Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. In essence, the situation in Hungary represented that of Europe as well. The historical churches needed to be re-evangelized and re-awakened.
Preaching Jesus in both a secular society and a church culture that valued the “traditions of men” was at the heart of Steve’s ministry. In November 2000, Steve preached six times in two different Reformed churches in Budapest. Not unexpectedly, these religious folks were a tough group to speak to. On the four weeknights, we averaged about 20 people, and on Sunday, there were 45 in attendance. There were not many conversions or professions of faith during the weeklong campaign. Some significant breakthroughs did encourage both Pastor Attila and Steve. Overall, people reacted positively to the meetings and messages. There was a “stirring of the soul,” a “breaking up of dry ground,” and “awakenings within the heart.” People were attentive but unresponsive—in the sense of not making any visible, open commitments. But people were visibly moved, and God’s presence was noticeable.
One middle-aged couple raised their hands the first night was so changed their daughter later reported to us she had never heard her father and mother talk about themselves and about the Lord so openly. The man served as an elder in the Albertville Reformed Church. Pastor Attila could not contain himself; he was energized and excited over how God had worked amongst us.
Third Term (2005-2008)
Health is always a concern, and missionaries, wherever they are, share that concern. Steve had to deal with a painful deteriorating left hip and subsequent replacement. In 2006, he was forced to return to Calgary for three months to have an angiogram and an angioplasty, alleviating two blocked arteries. Had it not been discovered, he would have suffered a life-threatening heart attack.
Since we were married in 1990, Audrey suffered acutely from Crohn’s disease with periods of remission. In 2003, she took a major turn for the worse, returning to Canada for treatment and possible surgery. Upon her arrival, she was entering a state of anorexia caused by the painful disease.
The Lord was clearly involved in her healing process because, after much prayer, no major surgery needed to be done. The surgeon was amazed and publicly acknowledged Divine providence in Audrey’s recovery, saying, “this was indeed a miracle.” Someone in her condition simply does not recover without removing the entire affected area.
Audrey’s two-year healing process under her new gastroenterologist went so well that we were cleared to return to Hungary in the summer of 2005. Through everything we experienced, we learned that we all face testing and trials in many different ways and degrees. Faith is not only a belief in the living God and His promises but very much a personal trust in God during the trials of our faith. Sickness is a trial very draining physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, affecting the whole family. We learned perseverance and to trust God in every circumstance of life where faith might be tested.
Ministry takes many different forms. In our case, we focused on preaching, teaching, and service. Over eight years, the Alpha Course became a key component in our ministry in two of the churches— Rose Garden Fellowship in Budapest and New Life Fellowship in Gyöngyös. One semester Steve had the privilege of teaching the Alpha Course to a class of English-speaking university students at the Gáspar Károli University in Budapest. Their English teacher Julia Fodor, a firm believer who attended the Rose Garden Fellowship, invited Steve into her classroom to conduct these sessions.
Audrey’s English clubs and classes were always well attended. In Budapest and Gyöngyös, she held conversational English clubs to help Hungarians gain confidence in speaking the language, hoping to lead them to Christ. In Budapest, she taught English Life Lessons to four different groups of Hungarian teenagers. One group went through the “Life on the Edge” series by James Dobson. She also began a group for adults in the local elementary and summer school with the Rose Garden church plant, with over 100 attending.
Over our two years in Gyöngyös, around fifty Hungarians participated in our conversational English clubs and classes. We endeavoured to build friendships, introduce them to our church, and invite them to the Alpha Course. Through this ministry, we learned we can always bear witness for Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit even when the focus is on serving people in their place of need, without having to resort to manipulation.
Audrey’s weekly Bible study group from Rose Garden Church, begun in 2006, averaged ten faithful and vibrant women committed to God’s Word and doing good works. One neighbour, Erzsi, prayed the sinner’s prayer and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. “It was truly a holy moment for us all as we saw the work of God’s Holy Spirit convicting and drawing her into His family,” said Audrey.
Audrey and Kovacs Zsuzsa started a mainly non-believers’ Bible study from this group, made up mostly from outreach programs and neighbourhood friends. Over four years, many women came and left, with seventeen of them coming to know Christ and growing into mature disciples. They all found a place where they could minister, both inside and outside the church.
Some began ministering every two weeks in the nearby Ray of Hope Institute. Initially, they were told very directly not to speak of God to any of the patients. Still, they stayed, helping the nurses with the handicapped patients while showing the love of Jesus. They brought joy and laughter, as well as the gift of themselves. After two years, the institute gave them a room for a chapel, a place to have a time of worship with the patients and their families. Many of the institute employees also used it to pray and be prayed for.
Having moved to Gyöngyös, Audrey was still able to meet with these women monthly travelling into Budapest. Many other ministries grew out of this group—craft outreaches, benevolent funds, caring for the sick, clothing drives, teaching children, and more.
In 2006, a fantastic ministry opportunity opened up for Steve in a secular setting at the same university where he led the Alpha Course. He taught a U.S. History Survey Course for the Department of English Literature and Culture. Professor Julia Fodor asked Steve to be the guest lecturer while she was on maternity leave. She wanted a native English-speaker and fellow believer in Christ for her substitute. He taught the course using her lectures and connected with seventy students as well as faculty and staff. He presented a Christian perspective in this history course only because of the heavy religious influence in American history, from the first evangelical awakening in the 1700s to the founding fathers who were either deists or orthodox Christians the present day.
One pleasant surprise was the many closet Christians coming to him expressing gratitude for having a Christian professor unafraid to talk about matters of faith in class. One young woman, Nori, was still finding her way back to God, having gone through a deep hurt in the local church she had attended. Another student, George, an eclectic religionist with Buddhist leanings, had taken the best from many religions and created one of his own liking. Jesus was much appreciated in his religion, but he was a much different Jesus from the one taught in orthodox Christianity. These were the kinds of discussions Steve often had with students on campus.
Every fall, the university features a North American Culture Week where they invite guest lecturers from the Canadian and American embassies and within the university to speak on various aspects of North American culture. There was a two-day Canadian focus in which the Canadian Ambassador to Hungary, Robert Hage, gave the opening address after which Steve lectured. Steve’s topic was “A Canadian Citizen with Hungarian Blood and a Christian Soul.” He highlighted those positive values that had shaped his life growing up in Canada, along with his Hungarian heritage and his faith in the Living God. Ministry takes many different forms; being ready and available for service is critical to effective, fruitful service.
Fourth Term (2009-2011)
Our fourth term lasted two years. We lived and ministered in the city of Gyöngyös (Hungarian for “Pearl”). We worked closely with a Baptist church plant of thirty people. During this time, we discerned God was calling us back to Canada. After discussing this with our regional developers, Gerald and Dorothy Hogenbirk, we decided to make plans to return in the summer of 2011.
Although we believed we were making the right decision, it was tough to say goodbye to so many people we loved. We were emotionally spent by the time we attended all the farewell parties but felt we left well. This taught us the importance of arriving well into a new country and the equally important aspect of leaving well.
Striving to be faithful to our calling and giftedness, we also longed to be fruitful in our labour for Christ. As we prepared to leave the country, many Hungarians told us how grateful they were for us having been there because their lives had changed for the better; our witness for Christ in word and deed had made the difference. They kept asking, “Why are you leaving?” How ironic! Only seventeen years earlier, when we arrived for the first time, the one question we kept hearing was, “Why did you come?”
We left immensely encouraged that our witness for Christ had not been in vain, and our committed presence and verbal witness had born fruit in the form of changed lives.
This is an excerpt from the book, On Mission Volume 1. Download your free copy today.