Zagreb, January 27, 2024 (IBA)
- On January 27, 2024, a seminar on church revitalization was held in the main hall of the Baptist Church in Zagreb, organized by the Association of Baptist Churches in the Republic of Croatia (SBC RH), and attended by about 40 believers, including pastors and leaders of Zagreb's Baptist and Evangelical churches.
After the opening prayer and welcoming words of BC Zagreb pastor Filip Grujić, the seminar was led by pastor Ivica Horvat, president of the SBC in the Republic of Croatia, and pastor Željko Mraz, secretary of the SBC in the Republic of Croatia. The seminar was based on the book "Healthy Church" by David Brown, published by the SBC in the Republic of Croatia, which, according to Pastor Horvat, relied on Mr. Brown's experiences of church revitalization in Paris while leading the Church Revitalization Network for the European Leadership Forum (ELF) in order to offer a vision and process for church revitalization, with a focus on the European context.
The seminar was conceived and organized as a series of interactive lectures with contributions from the participants, and the topics discussed were: A vision of a healthy church, the Biblical basis of church revitalization, Social and spiritual dimension of church revitalization, and Leadership and revitalization.
The participants had the opportunity to share different experiences, successes and challenges from the perspective of their local communities, and to think together about the revitalization of the church. Some of the questions that the seminar participants dealt with were: What are the challenges of communicating the Gospel to modern society? How does the Church respond to such challenges? What are the signs of the need for revitalization in the local church? and many others.
The meeting ended with a joint prayer during which the participants had the opportunity to pray for each other and the wider Zagreb church community.
