#Iwitness: An Unlikely Confluence for the Roma Church

by Melody J. Wachsmuth

“I have read your three articles on the Roma people,” she wrote me from California in September of 2013. “I now have the burden to encourage the Chinese Church to care about the Roma people.” 

I DID NOT REALIZE THAT THE FIRST EMAIL from Dr. Sharon Chan, director of the Great Commission Center International (GCCI), would have such a ripple effect on my life and on the lives of many others in Eastern Europe.

“I have read your three articles on the Roma people,” she wrote me from California in September of 2013. “I now have the burden to encourage the Chinese Church to care about the Roma people.” 

I had moved to Croatia in 2011 and had barely heard of the Roma.¹ However, as I began to travel and research what God was doing in Eastern Europe, God’s activity among the Roma roared into my consciousness and soon began to eclipse everything else. 

My unfolding interest motivated the articles which Sharon wanted to translate into Chinese. I agreed and promptly forgot the brief interaction. 

Two months later, I found myself in a car with my teammates. A Roma couple, a Croatian woman, and I had recently planted the first known Roma church in Eastern Croatia. They convinced me to visit our sister Roma church just over the border in Apatin (Serbia), a small town of less than twenty thousand, to meet some foreign guests.

Arriving at a Roma believer’s house, the pastor introduced us to the six Chinese guests who were eating around a table. Suddenly, a small, yet energetic woman exclaimed, “You are Melody? I’m Sharon Chan!”  

Baffled and shocked, I stared at her—how did she get to this small town? For her part, she had had no idea where I lived. As it turned out, translating the articles into Chinese was only the beginning of GCCI’s vision.

“We want to plan a consultation that will bring Roma leaders and others together,” Dr. Thomas Wang, founder of the GCCI, said. “We want to create a platform to help inform people, strengthen their ministries, and increase awareness regarding the situation of the Roma.”

That night, I agreed to help as the GCCI began this tenuous process of planning an international conference. I was filled with doubts—they did not know the Eastern European context, nor did they know all that much about the Roma. At the same time, I was struck by such an implausible coincidence. Could God be up to something here? Suddenly, I remembered what a Roma pastor in Romania had said to me while I was interviewing him for one of the articles: “God told me to take this interview seriously. Because of this article, three people will be influenced and impacted in a significant way.” Could Sharon be one of those people?

As 2013 turned into 2014, the number of emails Sharon and I exchanged gradually increased as she planned her return to Eastern Europe to meet more Roma leaders. I guided her through Romania, Serbia, and Croatia before handing her off to my Croatian colleague who took her to Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro. 

It was a whirlwind trip, and everywhere the response was curious, positive, and often laced with a pinch of skepticism. Some Roma leaders shook their heads with an incredulous smile, “The Chinese want to be involved with the Roma?”

As the months grew closer to the conference date in September 2014, I began to feel nervous. All the diverse threads required to bring the conference together were incredibly complex—it began to feel so risky that I feared my own level of involvement. Would this be a disaster?  

In the end, one hundred Roma Christian leaders, thirty mission leaders, and missionaries from over fifteen countries attended the consultation. It began to dawn on us that this was a historic moment because of the diversity of the participants, the number of Roma leaders, and the fact that it was organized by a Chinese mission organization. 

The first couple of days were stressful and chaotic. More than a few speakers pulled out at the last minute. The carload of Albanians became lost, driving for twenty-one hours before stumbling bleary-eyed and exhausted into the hotel lobby a day late. Managing over eight languages was fraught with unanticipated challenges.

However, by the third day something began to happen. A spirit of unity and cooperation broke out among the various leaders from different countries. Many had no idea what was happening outside of their own local context. By connecting and developing new relationships, they began to gain a sense of what God might be doing in Eastern Europe. Leaders from various countries and regions committed to support and encourage one another.

In the end, there was a unanimous cry for another conference. A committee comprised of Roma and non-Roma leaders was elected to continue this new movement by networking, researching, and planning the next international conference for 2016.   

GCCI’s vision continues—they will work with Roma leaders and organize short-term mission trips exposing Chinese Christians to Roma communities. Sharon organized a European Chinese conference in September 2015 to raise awareness, inform, and educate Chinese leaders in Europe about the Roma.

This story is not finished. In fact, it is just the beginning. No one knows what God is really doing, but many—Roma, Chinese, and many of us working in Eastern Europe—have the sense that God may be doing something new. As for me, the unlikely success of the conference encouraged me to engage in what often feels like the risky movement of God’s mission —and reminded me it is not really about my reputation or my ideas of success. 

After all, who else could think of such an unlikely idea as to use one Chinese mission organization based in Hong Kong and America to begin to bring Roma leaders together in Eastern Europe?

Endnote

1. “Roma” or “Romani” refers to a population spread over numerous countries (ten to twelve million in Europe alone) who self-identify as Roma and may speak a common language or related dialect (Romani). Although outsiders may refer to them collectively (and often disparagingly) as “Gypsies,” they are not a monolithic people. Rather, Roma communities in various countries consist of many cultural groupings and practices and may not speak Romani, although still consider themselves Roma. In many countries in Europe, they are often marginalized and disparaged.

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Melody J. Wachsmuth is a mission writer and researcher based in Croatia and is currently pursuing a PhD focusing on the Roma Church in Southeastern Europe.

EMQ, Vol. 52, No. 1. Copyright  © 2016 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.  All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.

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