letter from Moldova
Until a couple of years ago, Moldova was a largely obscure backwater but, due to the war on its doorstep, Moldova now finds itself near the new dividing line between East and West.
Though great upheaval continues to dominate the region, Operation World statistics show that Moldova, and her neighbours Romania and Ukraine, are the three countries which have seen the greatest gospel growth within Europe in the last 35 years. After significant openness to Christ during the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is now a deepening hunger for faithful Bible preaching amongst numerous evangelical churches in Moldova.
A growing number of churches are committed to preaching the whole counsel of God, through expository preaching. What started as an expository preaching group six years ago has now developed into Moldova’s Alianța Evanghelică Reformată (AER – Reformed Evangelical Alliance).
AER Moldova is a community of evangelical pastors and churches, with shared theological convictions, who are partnering together to deepen and strengthen the roots of Moldovan evangelicalism into God’s word. It is led by Moldovan pastors Mihai Chisari, a European Mission Fellowship (EMF) missionary and Reformed Baptist pastor, and Paul Sanduleac who leads the International Presbyterian Church in Moldova, and by Graeme Innes, who has been serving in Moldova with Crosslinks since 2017.
In addition to regularly running training events and fraternal meetings amongst pastors, AER recently organised their first-ever national Bible conference. The ‘Big God’ conference took place in the country’s capital, Chișinău, on Saturday 18 May. By God’s grace the conference was packed to capacity, with over 200 believers from 15 churches who gathered together hungry to hear the faithful proclamation of God’s word.
The speaker was Orlando Saer, who is the pastor of Christ Church Southampton. Every participant received a copy of his book Big God, which AER translated and printed into Romanian especially for the conference. Orlando preached warmly and winsomely about just how big God truly is, and how His providence is seen in every single area of our lives. For some of the attendees, this was the first time they had heard preaching on this subject preached faithfully from the Bible. Believers in Moldova live in a part of the world that has suffered considerably for most of living memory, so it was particularly helpful to hear deep application of God’s providence to a sphere of life which is a heavy burden to many.
In addition to edifying teaching, the conference provided a precious time of fellowship, particularly for believers who travelled from more remote parts of the country. It was also an opportunity to bring in good books in Romanian and in Russian from surrounding countries in the region, which were snapped up by those who attended as such resources remain scarce in Moldova itself.
Going forward, our prayer and hope is that this national conference will be an annual conference, and that the Lord might choose to use it to glorify Himself through the edification and maturing of Moldovan evangelical churches, leaders and Christians.
