Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe

A brief history and presentation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe

"Let them know that this is your hand; you, O LORD, have done it!" (Psalm 109:27)

In the second half of the 20th century many Christians in Western Europe and United States started praying for spiritual changes in the communist countries. Some tried to hasten this by smuggling Bibles, Christian books and tracts; others came in after the fall of the Iron Curtain as missionaries to help these nations recapture the faith once delivered to the saints.

The beginnings

One among many missionary endeavors targeting Eastern Europe was the establishment of a new Reformed theological seminary – called Károlyi Gáspár1 Institute of Theology and Missions – by a small Presbyterian Mission2 from the USA. This was originally located in Budapest, then later moved to Miskolc. Knowing that the Hungarians were historically affected by the Reformation, the vision was to help them return to the faith of their forefathers given the heavy influence of German liberal theology, nationalistic ideas and 40 years of communism. In the early stages this effort was welcomed by several evangelical pastors and organizations within the church. But one matter was not anticipated: the real, large scale spiritual condition of the historic Reformed church. It was believed that there will be a willingness to return to the Scriptures and Reformed Confessions. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Accreditation efforts went on for nearly five years, but finally in 1997 a Consultative Synod of the Reformed Church3 decided to reject the Seminary on the grounds that “theologically it is not acceptable.” This automatically led to the exclusion of its graduated students from any ministry within the state Reformed church.

Points of confrontation

What were the main issues at stake? Or to put it differently: What was behind the decision of this Consultative Synod? It was the theological position articulated by the Seminary that was not liked by this Synod. During these five years, gradually it became clear that the church has major problems: it has nominal members; theological liberalism is rampant; it is ordaining women as ruling elders and pastors, it is sacrificing the truths of the Scriptures in the ecumenical movement (the historic Reformed church is a member in the World Council of Churches), etc., to name just a few. Therefore, the Seminary stressed several pillars which were considered important: 1) The inerrancy and authority of the Scriptures. 2) The normative nature of the Reformed creeds.4 3) The relevance of the marks of the true church – given the unbiblical practice of the distribution of sacraments and the total lack of church discipline. 4) The unbiblical practice of ordination of women. 5) The need of abandoning church hierarchy and establishing a truly Presbyterian church government. 6) To do away with false ecumenism; especially having joint services with Roman Catholics and Unitarians. In essence, there was nothing new in these theological points, since all were in accordance with the historical Reformed teachings. But the state Reformed Church unfortunately was not ready (not for the first time in its history) for the slightest reformation. So the birth of our denomination is the result of a reformation effort within the state church, which has ultimately failed.

Early stages: the period of church planting

That is how, beginning with 1998, the graduates of the Seminary started their church planting work in three countries – Hungary, Western Romania (Transylvania) and Ukraine – primarily among Hungarian speaking people. These were groundbreaking years, with much labor and strong opposition from the old church. The burdens were enormous; everything was started from ground zero, since we had no members or buildings, and in many cases not even a core group to begin with. We had financial difficulties as well, since we relied only on a modest support from abroad. As for the methods: in most of the cases, the first step was just talking with people on the streets and inviting them to a house Bible study. In other cases we distributed hundreds of tracts in a neighborhood, or advertised public lectures on various topics in order to reach out to people. Then later we rented properties and started holding regular worship services – where possible. During these years, we developed a membership course and people started joining our churches. Step by step we grew to the point where we are now with 20 churches5 and 16 pastors serving in three countries. As we are looking back to these pioneer years God’s grace amazes us, since we had no exact blueprint of what to do and how to do it; we were inexperienced and young. And Reformed church-planting had never been done before us in Hungary. However, the Lord blessed the work.

There are three major landmarks which were reached in premiere in the Hungarian lands since the time of the Reformation: a) a professing church membership, b) self-supporting churches (in most of the cases) and c) biblical church government. I know that these biblical parameters are obvious for most of you, but none of them were ever in place in the past centuries in our lands.

Organizing the denomination

Since we had churches planted in three countries, a careful correlation and harmonization was needed. This process took us considerable time. Another major impediment was the selection, election and ordination of ruling elders and deacons. In the state church no attention was paid to the biblical qualifications of elders. Therefore, we did not want to ordain elders too quickly, just for the sake of having elders. So we had to wait a few years for mature men who would become officers in the churches. Meanwhile a Book of Church Order was elaborated and preparations were made for the organization of the denomination. To make a long story short: it took us over 20 years to plant these churches and we had to wait until 2018 to organize our two Presbyteries (one in Romania and one in Hungary/Ukraine) and have our first General Assembly in 2019. By God’s grace we had our fifth General Assembly earlier this year.

Several facets of the work of our churches

At the moment we are involved in a variety of ministries with expanding possibilities:

a) Evangelism. This is an ongoing ministry effort to reach out to the lost. The Hungarians are quite secularized6, with little interest in the Gospel, so we have to find ways to reach them. We organize evangelistic meetings and lectures, tracts distribution campaigns and we encourage friendship evangelism too. Apparently this last one proved to be the most efficient.

b) Camps and conferences. We have a very strong camping program in these three countries – especially during the summers. These include camps for children, youths, families, and even for pastors. We also have special English camps, where we teach English using a biblical curriculum. Then we have regular conferences during the year: one conference at Easter and one at Reformation. In addition, we organize conferences for ladies and special theological conferences for pastors featuring guest speakers from abroad.

c) Publications. Due to a lack of sound Reformed literature, back in 2002 we established our small Presbyterian Publishing House located in Miskolc. Our vision was – and still is – to translate authors who stick to the doctrines of grace and the historic Reformed Confessions and are relevant for today. During the last two decades, we managed to publish over 30 titles, covering a wide range of topics which we considered underrepresented. As a vanguard of this effort, we published Arthur Pink’s The Sovereignty of God and John Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. Then we translated the Westminster Standards. These were followed by books written by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Jay Adams, Richard Bennett, C. H. Spurgeon, Bruce A. Ray, Tedd Tripp, James Montgomery Boice, Sinclair Ferguson, Jerry Bridges, David Murray and R. C. Sproul to name just a few.

d) Work with Gypsy people. We have three churches (one in each country) which are involved with Gypsy people. This is a complex ministry, since they have so many needs. We found out that evangelism and the diaconical efforts must go hand in hand. For example, in Miskolc we have a program where we teach these Gypsy children practical skills, we offer help to fulfill their school responsibilities along with the teaching of the Bible.

e) Homeschooling. Our church promoted homeschooling for those interested as well, since institutionalized Christian education is very poor in our countries. Unfortunately, this is not a success story, since two years ago – after 30 years of educational freedom – home schooling was banned in Hungary. Paradoxically, our pro-family government is very much against this form of education.

f) Helping war refugees. This is a more recent, quite demanding ministry for the churches which are affected by the influx of people. We are trying to assist both those who had to flee to Hungary and those who are stuck in Ukraine. It was very touching these months to see how many of you helped us in this effort. A special Committee of our church is directing this ministry, which will go on probably for a longer time.

One noteworthy peculiarity of our church

Although we work primarily among ethnic Hungarians, in Romania we have two Romanian congregations as well. For Transylvania this is something unique, since due to historic reasons the Romanian-Hungarian relations are sometimes tensioned. Thus, the ethnic barriers are very seldom crossed. But the Gospel is more powerful than these deep ethnic prejudices and offences. We admire the grace of God in this and are very thankful for the uniting work of the Holly Spirit. 

International Relations

In the last two decades we were so focused on planting churches and organizing the denomination that there was no time left for establishing international relations. So we are trying to catch up now. In the last couple of years we sought relations with the larger body of Christ. We are in fraternal relations with the Evangelical Reformed Church in Ukraine and the EPCEW in United Kingdom. We are also in corresponding relations with the OPC and have some contacts with URCNA, Canadian Reformed and PCA churches. Finally, we are members in the World Reformed Fellowship and submitted our application to be members of the ICRC earlier this year. Our church sent twice a delegate to the ICRC; once in 2001 (Philadelphia) and more recently in 2017 (Jordan).

Challenges we face and where prayer is needed

a) Although Hungary appears to be a safe haven for Christianity (at least from abroad), the situation on the terrain is more fragile. Laws can change quickly and evangelical Christianity could easily lose its relative freedom. Even now bureaucracy and other administrative matters are a heavy burden on us.

b) We are in process of restructuring our theological program in cooperation with Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Please pray, since this is a big project and our human resources and time are limited. But this is a must, since in a decade or so we will need pastors to replace the older generation.

c) Pray for the expansion of Gospel in the Hungarian lands. The former glory of the Reformed faith has also faded away. We rely on the Lord to turn His face upon us and use us for His glory. Pray also that we might be able to guard the spiritual vigor and purity of this small denomination.

Rev. Imre Szoke

1 Károlyi Gáspár (1529-1592) was the man who translated for the first time the entire Bible into Hungarian.

2 Westminster Biblical Missions, later Westminster Biblical World Mission; its field director was Dr. Robert Rapp.

3 The church government of the historic Reformed church is quite unique. Elders play very little role in it; the pastors, but mostly the bishops have real power. This particular Consultative Synod was also dominated by the bishops of the various church districts.

4 The Confessions of the historic Hungarian Reformed Church are the Heidelberg Catechism and The Second Helvetic Confession. Unfortunately, these are looked upon as historical documents, without having too much relevance in the everyday life of the church. Our denomination kept these Confessions to stress the continuity, but also adopted the Westminster Standards.

5 Our local churches are small, the average attendance is around 35-45 people. This means that in some places we have just 20-35 people, in other places more (up to 55-60), the biggest church being the congregation in Budapest with nearly a 100 in attendance.

6 It is estimated that less than 2% of the population in Hungary has evangelical believes or attends a faithful church.