IBTS Community Blog

Arak Donald (Nigeria) is the newest member of our residential community–due to visa problems, he had to miss the September Orientation and Intensives and was only able to join us for the Second Intensives in November. It’s been great having him around and learning much more about Nigeria and Arak’s life and experience an African Baptist perspective on things.

Here Arak is reflecting on the ‘culture shock’ he experienced by coming to Europe (and to such a strange place as IBTS!):

I have heard and read about “Culture Shock” in missions but have never experienced it until my arrival in Prague on 02/11/2011. It all started in the airport after coming out to the taxi park. I stood there for 45 minutes waiting for a Seminary’s car or bus with bold inscription like IBTS PRAGUE just as it is with famous Seminarys, Universities and Colleges in Nigeria. My attempts to ask passers-by, including the Police, were fruitless because they didn’t understand English. Gazing at the blue sky, I suddenly realised there was no single black person around. I quietly but audibly asked myself, Yaro, me ya kawo ka irin wannan kasa (Man! What brought you to this kind of country?) I tried going back inside and there saw a young man displaying a card on which it said ‘IBTS’. With a deep relief I approached him and said, “I am the one” without waiting for any further introduction. He kindly helped me to the car. This young man was Zlatko Sebesta.

It was lunch time and I went to the dinning with the aim of washing my two hands and dipping my five fingers into the food to interact by eating and licking my fingers as usual. It turned out to be a different thing. I was given what I can best describe as “leaves and grass” with spoon, knife and fork. I was complaining within, what is this, is this food? I am in real trouble. I acted as if everything was ok and as if I was enjoying the meal—but I was not.

My first Sunday at IBTS was on 06/11/2011. I thought I will be comforted of my loneliness and shock through the mode of worship. The worship was blessed through the sermon, but afterwards I felt bad again, because it was my first time to attend worship without clapping, dancing, singing choruses, shouting amen and halleluiah to the glory of my God. That Sunday I had to ask myself a serious question, “Am I in the right place?” I called my friend who is in his final year of PhD study at Liverpool Hope University and complained to him. He laughed and laughed but then told me to relax: I will get used to it. He told me of his experience which was almost the same as mine. To God be the glory, the story is different today: I have made some major adjustments. With the loving, caring and family life in IBTS community, I can answer myself that what I considered leaves and grass is really balanced diet and truly, I am in the right place, with the right people, for the right purpose.  I love IBTS.

- Arak

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Your happy blog co-moderator,

- Lina

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) was founded in 1905 principally by English speaking Baptist communities together with a handful of European nations. Over 105 years later it has become a major Christian world communion with representative member bodies in almost every nation of the globe. Between 2005 and 2010 I served on a group seeking to truly internationalise the “leadership” of this word Christian communion to equip it to represent the real Baptist family of the 21^st century.  Sadly, it has proved to be a hard task!

Recently the BWA sought to initiate conversations with world Pentecostalism. Baptists interact with Pentecostalists in all continents of our world, but we could not, it seems, create an international team for this important dialogue!

Who represents us?

Neville Callam – graduate, Harvard, USA

Fausto Vasconcales – doctoral degree, South Western Seminary, USA

Timothy George, Dean, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, USA

Bill Brackney, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada

Curtis Freeman, Duke University, North Carolina, USA

All the above are excellent academics, but where is the representation from Africa, Asia, Central Asia, Europe (east and west), Central America and the like where Baptist – Pentecostal encounter is so important?

-  Keith

Like many other parts of Europe, the Czech Republic had a census earlier this year and the Czech Statistics Office are providing the first set of global figures with detailed analysis to come in the third quarter of 2012 and submission of more precise outcomes to the European Union in 2013.

There are few surprises, at least from my perspective! The trend towards people wanting to describe themselves regionally or ethnically, rather than as a “citizen of a nation state” grows here as it does in so many places of Europe. So, more people classify themselves as Moravians or Slovakians or Roma rather than “Czech”. There has been growth of the number of foreigners living here since the last census with massive growth of those escaping from Putin’s Russia and the perverse government in the Ukraine. I think this movement to local identity and feeling ourselves citizens of Europe, abandoning much interest in the nation state, is common in Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy. For my part I find it no bad thing (and long to belong, as a European, to a Yorkshire set free of the tentacles of Westminster and the dangerous powers of  a London elite).

On the religious front this most secular of nations continues on its journey, though the Roman Catholic Church still has 1.8 million out of 11 million citizens claiming to be adherents. The Czechoslovak Evangelical Brethren Church (a partner of the Church of Scotland and a classic reformed church) is the largest Protestant grouping with 52,000 people claiming membership, whilst the Hussites ( a denomination formed in the First Republic c 1920 to claim the heritage of Jan Hus) apparently has 32,000 people willing to say that is what they are. The Baptists hover somewhere about the 4,000 mark. This might be considered as worrying when over 15,000 people in the census claimed their religious affiliation to be Knights of the Jedi!

As to personal life, the divorce rate continues to rise. Meanwhile more people have an indoor toilet and a bath than a decade ago.

We await more detailed analysis in due course and the opportunity to comparer this country with others within the European Union.

- Keith

Václav Havel was an outstanding Czech playwright, humanitarian and dissident against the repressive communist regime.  In the velvet revolution of 1989 he was a leading figure. As someone often imprisoned and interrogated in Prague Castle (the Hrad) the students, gathered in their thousands in Wenceslas Square, demanded “Havel to the Hrad!” and so he was installed as first President of the “free” Czechoslovak Republic of 1990 and then later of the Czech Republic. I had the privilege of shaking his hand twice on Czech National Day in the Hrad and this will be a special moment for me in my life.

Havel had a pan-European vision of a liberal, inclusive society – a vision which the Czech government, the British government and many others lack today. He was an outstanding leader and statesman – a giant in a Europe of pygmies politically!

I quote words from his New Year Address to the Czechoslovak peoples in 1990:

“I dream of a republic independent, free, democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short of a humane republic that serves the individual and that therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve in return.”

Addressing he Council of Europe in May 1990 he said:

“In 1464 the Czech King George of Podebrady sent a momentous message to the French King Louis XI proposing that he preside over a league of peace and invite Christian rulers to a convention which, on the basis of binding international law, would prevent war amongst members of the union and ensure their common defence.”

Václavl Havel – you were an outstanding European politician, philosopher, statesman and humanitarian. We salute you! We will miss you.

- Keith

You know what a mine disaster is. In recent weeks we have had to read about one in the newspapers.

The moment even the most courageous miner has dreaded his whole life long is here. It is no use running into the walls; the silence all around him remains. . . . The way out for him is blocked. He knows the people up there are working feverishly to reach the miners who are burried alive. Perhaps someone will be rescued, but here in the last shaft? An agonizing period of waiting and dying is all that remains.

But suddenly a noise that sounds like tapping and breaking in the rock can be heard. Unexpectedly, voices cry out, “Where are you, help is on the way!” Then the disheartened miner picks himself up, his heart leaps, he shouts, “Here I am, come on through and help me! I’ll hold out until you come! Just come soon!” A final, desperate hammer blow to his ear, now the rescue is near, just one more step and he is free.

We have spoken of Advent itself. That is how it is with the coming of Christ: “Look up and raised your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Advent sermon in a London church, December 3, 1933

(A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1990, 1995), 223.)

We are now into the four week period of the year set aside as a preparation for the celebration of the incarnation, or the nativity. In the West Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas (this year Sunday 27 November). The name is derived from the Latin root meaning ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’.

The early western church from the 6^th century onwards had a period of six weeks of fasting and penitence before Christmas. The reduction to four weeks was a gradual development, but is now almost universally accepted. Today, the accent of the Advent season is on ‘getting ready’ for the coming of Christ – at Bethlehem, into our prepared lives and the final coming of Christ in glory. Advent seems to be getting more popular – even amongst Baptists! In North America this year Advent was hailed with “Black Friday” when supposedly everyone goes on a mad post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas shopping spree.

In central Europe things feel somewhat different this year. We are in troublesome economic and political times. Unemployment rises, the world of banking still seems unstable, the borders of “fortress Europe” are being tightened and the talk everywhere is of austerity. So it seems a proper time to reflect on the deep Advent themes. This past Sunday (Advent 1) the Revised Common Lectionary reading was Isaiah 64 with the returned Babylonian exiles having to re-assess their dismal state – not all had come back and they had not been able to rebuild Jerusalem. The expectation of a highway through the desert of Isaiah 40 now had to be reflected on, because the reality in Zion was not as they had been promised. Perhaps rather like us in these Bohemian lands re-assessing the legacy of the collapse of communism twenty years ago? Then, there was a bright hoped-for future of democracy, economic development, and open borders. Now, Czechs are looking again at what has happened and experience something else. Disillusionment has set in. This Advent, in the midst of difficulty in the world, the anticipated failure of the Climate Summit in South Africa, the instability of the Eurozone, massive famine in east Africa and all, we need the realism of Isaiah 64 and the call for faithful people to have hope, to look into the gloom and darkness for the Christ light.

So, as we set up our Advent wreath of live seasonal greenery with four strongly coloured candles and with a larger central white candle representing the birth of Christ which is lit at the Christmas Eve Eucharist, or on Christmas morning, let us follow Isaiah 64 in offering confession of the failings of our world and of ourselves as we wait, in hope, for the coming reign of Christ in Bethlehem, in our own community setting and, finally, at the end of time. Maranatha – Come, Lord Jesus, come!

- Keith