When did you trust Christ?
I was a teenager. I grew up in a believer family, yet the divorce of my parents and, subsequently, my mom joining a cult shaped most of my childhood. Early on, I had an eager desire for the Lord, but over the years, hurts and disillusionment caused me to wonder and question many things. Despite the unbiblical control of the cult, I desired to trust and follow Jesus as a teenager. I moved to Budapest as a high school student and realised that while I had a heart for the Lord, I also had a lot of unresolved hurt and bitterness. After high school, I started working as a stagehand in the production business, and I did pretty well. The more success I experienced, the emptier I felt. The Lord was drawing me to Himself. I started attending church again and reading the Word. In the summer of 2003, I re-committed my life to Jesus. At the end of the summer of 2003, I was diagnosed with metastasised testicular cancer. The following year was one of the most formative seasons for my love and devotion to Jesus. He overwhelmed me with peace in pain and suffering. Many of the misrepresentations of Jesus from my childhood experiences were set straight in that season by His sheer love and peace toward me during the cancer treatments. During this time, I decided to go to Bible college and had a sense of calling to ministry.
What do you hope to gain from participating?
I hope to receive accountability for reading about church revitalisation and processing my thoughts by writing about it. I also hope to gain manifold wisdom about my local church context and how I can be more helpful on the national board overseeing struggling churches; I want to process YRM mentoring with my co-pastor as well as Laci Gyugyi, who also serves on the same national board. I want to practice discipline so as not to get stuck in maintaining mode and go from Sunday to Sunday, but look ahead and look deeper into the future and the health of our church. I seek wisdom in encouraging some of my fellow pastor friends in my country who are struggling. I am also looking for resources I can point them toward.
What is your ministry?
I am a national American missionary raised for church planting. After Bible college, my wife and I moved to Pécs, Hungary to assist a church-planting pastor. Shortly after our arrival, the founding pastor left and handed over the church leadership. I have been the pastor of that church since 2007. Today, the church is an international community of college students and older people. I am thankful to have worked with an assistant pastor and a wonderful group of deacons. Our church is very transient, with students and professionals only spending a short season in our town and, hence, in our fellowship. This is one reason our church, although growing, continually always feels like a church plant.
What is your leadership role or what were your past leadership roles?
My assistant pastor and I lead the church by dividing our teaching, counselling, and discipleship opportunities and needs. We also lead the team of deacons. My role is changing as the church grows. As a church planter in the earlier years, I had to see a need, always react to it, and do the work regardless of the task because there was nobody else to do it. This is no longer the case, but the mentality is hard to break. In addition to my role in our local church, I serve on the national board of the 22 churches in our network.
Why should someone invest in your ministry?
Our fellowship is unique in that university students represent over 20 nations. We desire to raise them for spiritual work as they go and work professionally after graduation. My wife and I hope to work ourselves out of our job here to be sent out one day to help some students start their ministry who already left our church and returned to their country. I am surrounded by a few passionate and called young men and women, and I want to see them walk out their calling here.
