What is your ministry?
I'm part of the mission organisation TC Kompas (Josiah Venture internationally); I serve here as an intern for the sports project EDGE. I coordinate and organise sports tournaments for youth groups around Slovakia to unite and expose young people to the gospel. Locally, I'm part of the lead team for teenage youth ministry in our church, EDGE Club. I also lead a small group of 3 boys, focusing on how to be a man like Jesus. During summer, every year, I'm in a core team for our gospel-focused camp for new youngsters in our city.
When did you trust Christ?
My classmate invited me to join a non-profit gaming project four years ago. I was never in the church, and I only thought about the church as a corrupted place full of hypocritical people. But when we started working on gaming events, I saw people around me having their lives fulfilled. So, I searched for why that may be. When I went to a sports youth camp at the same church, God showed me that they all followed Jesus, and this was the reason for their fulfilled lives. In this situation, God questioned me if I also wanted to be like Jesus and change my life based on who He is. I was excited and said yes. From that experience, I started seeing how God began to shape my life closer to the life of Christ.
What have been the defining moments of your Christian walk?
The pivot of my life was at the youth English camp at our church four years ago in 2019. Then, four months after that, I started regularly going to church on Sundays. In March 2020, I had my first opportunity to lead a group. In September 2020, I started in the youth ministry as one of the leaders for teens from 12 to 15 years old. In May 2021, I was invited to join EDGE, Josiah Venture's gaming and sports ministry, as an intern, which I'm still part of. In April 2022, I heard the call from God to become a pastor. So, in September 2022, I started studying theology in Vienna.
What do you hope to gain from participating?
After the 2023 ELF, I've seen a change in my approach to the questions that young people around me ask. I feel more confident in navigating the hard questions in conversations I had with the students. In the summer, I had a chance to serve at a youth in Romania thanks to an invitation from a friend I met at ELF 2023. I am also participating in Paul Bowman’s Year-Round Mentoring, which is still ongoing.
What is your leadership role or what were your past leadership roles?
I was a youth group leader, which included preparing Bible talks, leading young men to Christ, and organising fun events to get to know each other more. I was also the Camp Promotion and Production Leader. In this role, I led the promo team for two years, mainly promoting our camps through social media and annually going to schools around our city to present our camp to them.
Outside of our church, I have been interning at Josiah Venture Slovakia, in a sports ministry EDGE for the past two years, coordinating sports (frisbee/volleyball) tournaments for youth groups from the whole of Slovakia to connect and to form relationships between churches.
Why should someone invest in your ministry?
God has been doing such miracles in my life, transforming me from a total atheist who wondered what to do with his life to a child of God, student of theology, and university youth group leader. It's already been four years walking with Christ, and it's still just the beginning of this wonderful journey. As a student, my income is a bit more limited than a full-time worker, but that doesn't stop me from spreading His Gospel and growing His kingdom around the places I go and the lives I interact with.
