Entrust in Bulgaria
An Overview
Entrust training began in Bulgaria in June 1979 with a group of 10 young people who were invited for a retreat in Velengrad, a spa resort on the Rhodpi mountain in central Bulgaria. The young people were from various Congregational and Baptist churches and knew each other well. They stayed in homes of believers and during the day gathered to study. Here they first met with an Entrust couple who introduced them to Entrust (then known as BEE International) and the principles of the course, How to Study the Bible. The meetings and discussions were held on the mountain, where the group went every day under the pretense of hiking. This was a dangerous adventure during communism, but God protected His children.
After this introduction, regular meetings started in the fall of 1979. A group of young men met with facilitators who traveled to Bulgaria three or four times a year. The meetings were held for two or three days during the week. The men arrived in the morning and left in the evening. During the summer one-week retreats met in remote country houses. The men who were trained were lay preachers, eager to learn, as there was little Christian literature and no Bible schools in the country at this time. More groups started in the following years in other cities.
After the political changes in the country in 1989, the Bulgarian Bible Academy "Logos" was registered as a non-profit foundation. Second-generation Entrust groups started in different parts of the country. The men who had been trained became facilitators to those groups. In 1994 over 400 people were taking the courses all over the country. By 1996, 18 groups were going, with 600 participants, including one in Skopie, Macedonia. All of the men trained in the first Entrust group became key leaders after communism fell: pastors, church planters, Bible teachers, and leaders of Christian organizations.
Entrust training for women started in 1985. A group of 10 women were trained for eight years; some of them started second-level groups. The real process of multiplying began after 2002, when Entrust, in partnership with the Bulgarian Evangelical Alliance, started a Women's Training Program. Initially, 40 women from different denominations were trained, 30 of whom successfully completed the courses. In 2007 four local training centers were started with 120 participants who will graduate in June 2009.
God used the Entrust training in a wonderful way and at the best time to prepare pastors and leaders for the time after the fall of communism. It was the only systematic theological training offered at a time when there was little training or literature available in Bulgaria or other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
Please continue to pray for the continued success of training servant-leaders in this part of the world.