BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
STARKE— A team of 13 summer missionaries from Madison Street Baptist Church recently returned from a trip to Slovenia.
Senior Pastor Richard Cason, along with team members Carson Wainwright, Landon Cason, McKenzie Sparks, Guy Padgett, Darlene Padgett, Katy McQueen, Kencie Wainwright, Joy Zapp, Kyle Funderburk, Caleb Zapp, John Ripplinger and John Sparks recently reported to the congregation on their activities.
Cason has been taking mission teams to the country for over 10 years.
He said that after traveling to Albania and the Dominican Republic to share the gospel, he wanted to work in a country with no or a small gospel presence.
Less than one percent of Slovenians identify as evangelical Christians.
Cason said that during his first trip to the country, the resident missionary rolled out a map of Slovenia on a table and pointed out the handful of churches throughout the country with congregations of less than a dozen believers in each town.
“There were just pockets, small pockets of a handful of believers in all these places,” Cason recalled.
Suspicious of outsiders
Slovenia is located on the eastern boundary of Italy, bordering Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea.
It’s 2.1 million people speak Slovene, and they have a high standard of living. With an area slightly smaller than New Jersey, the terrain is mountainous and forested.
Cason said the country is a European magnet for ecotourism.
“Paragliding, white-water rafting, mountain climbing, hiking,” he said. “Every day, doing our (Vacation Bible School) camp, you could look up in the skies and see the parachutes of people jumping off the mountains.”
Cason said the people of Slovenia are suspicious of outsiders and reluctant to accept ideas from outsiders.
He said the missionary that the group works with within the country is in a family that has had the same address in eastern Slovenia for over 100 years.
“At that same address they have been Italian citizens, German citizens, America occupied them for a brief time for two years, I think during World War II and Slovene,” he said. “And so, they have experienced a lot of border change, identity change, cultural influences.”
Cason said that because of that history, the people are suspicious of any influences outside their culture.
“It’s not that they’re hostile towards the message of the gospel,” he said. “It’s that they are reluctant to receive anything that would come into their way of life that would disturb it.”
“With that mindset, it takes a lot to earn relational equity with them,” he said, “for them to trust you and for them to buy into anything. That’s true of any of us, but it takes them even longer because of their history and experience.”
Cason said many camp attendees’ parents run ecotourism-related businesses during the summer, like shops and restaurants. So, while the children attended the group’s camp during the day, the Americans visited their parents’ businesses in the evenings.
“We drink in their coffee shops, we eat in their restaurants, we go get gelato,” he said. “That gives us face time (with the adults). We immerse ourselves in their culture.”
When you live in darkness, shine Jesus’s light
The group’s primary activity was running a children’s day camp featuring the same Vacation Bible School curriculum the church uses in its summer VBS on its Madison Street campus. However, the Slovenia version also included an hour of English instruction, which was a draw for the Europeans.
Team member John Ripplinger said the camp started at 10 a.m. with a game time that team members Guy and Darlene Padgett organized. From 11 to noon, the team would break the campers into groups for English instruction consisting of games and songs. After lunch, the campers had free time until around four, when they would end the day with the Imagination Station, which included the Vacation Bible School material.
“And so, with each one of those events, there’d be a theme each day,” Ripplinger said. “Like Monday would be: When you live in darkness, shine Jesus’s light, and the next day is: When good things happen, shine Jesus’s light. So, they had that constant reminder that Jesus is a major part of your life.”
Aroma of Christ
Ripplinger added that the resident missionary with whom the team worked with hands out business cards with a link to a YouTube video that shares the gospel.
“The cards had two questions,” he said. “One was: What’s my purpose in life? And the other is: Who is God?” he said. “So, they would be able to go online and take a look at that and start learning about the gospel as well.”
Cason said the group also communicated an unspoken message by the way they related to one another and with the Slovenes.
He said the laughter, the open communication, and expressions of love and compassion between the team members and the campers are atypical in Slovene culture.
“The community loves us,” he said. “They love when we come there because we bring the aroma of Christ, specifically our joy, our laughter, our camaraderie, and how we love all the kids.”
