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October 22, 2007
Outside the box
PC(USA) missionaries help Hungarian church find post-Iron Curtain role after half-century of isolation
Joe and Kathy Angi LOUISVILLE — During the 50 years of communist rule in Hungary, congregations of the Reformed Church in Hungary (RCH), were severely restricted in their activities.
“The government told the church that as long as it stayed within its four walls, they’d be left alone,” says Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker Joe Angi. “They never foresaw that the church would outlast them.”
Now, 17 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the resurgent RCH is seeking its missional footing. And Joe Angi and his wife, Kathy, are accompanying the PC(USA)’s Hungarian partner in that journey.
Joe and Kathy Angi are two of some 48 Presbyterian missionaries participating in Mission Challenge ’07, a monthlong effort to reconnect PC(USA) missionaries with congregations and presbyteries for spiritual, communication and financial support.
The Angis are working with the RCH to develop its “mission department.” The linchpin of that effort is an outreach program to refugees from Africa, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Working with Iraqi refugees in Hungary is an outgrowth and reflection of the network of worldwide partnerships that characterizes PC(USA) mission efforts, Joe Angi says.
“Many of the Iraqi refugees in Hungary had gotten help originally from the PC(USA) through the Middle East Council of Churches,” he explained. “Now they resettle in Hungary and find the PC(USA) is helping them again through the RCH.
“They are deeply moved that the Presbyterian family is still searching and caring for them.”
Joe and Kathy Angi know first-hand of this PC(USA) commitment. Joe Angi was born and raised in Hungary. He fled to the U.S. as a refugee in 1956 when the Soviets brutally suppressed a democracy movement in Hungary. He settled in Cincinnati and became a member of College Hill Presbyterian Church.
It was through volunteer work in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s — through College Hill Church and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance — that the Angis now find themselves serving as missionaries in Hungary.
Kathy Angi feeding workers during the 2002 flood in Hungary, one of the first disaster relief efforts of the Reformed Church in Hungary. “In 1999, we spent three months in Albania working with Kosovar refugees and PC(USA) leaders began asking us if we were interested in full-time mission service,” Kathy Angi says.
“When (then Europe area coordinator) Duncan Hanson found out I was Hungarian and knew the language, he wouldn’t leave me alone until we agreed to come,” adds Joe Angi.
The RCH refugee program has grown from a staff of two to seven full-time persons, Kathy Angi says. “We are primarily mentors to the Hungarians — this was to be their program in the first place.”
The program keeps expanding. Lay people are increasingly involved, another big step for a church that has been clergy-reliant for many years. Programs are now being developed for disaster response and outreach to other marginalized groups in the region, such as the Roma (gypsies) in neighboring Ukraine.
Another crucial need is education for the children and youth of refugee families. “Some of these kids have never been to school before,” Kathy Angi says. “Others have been on the run for four years or more and have missed all that school. And many of these kids know only Arabic, so they even have to learn a new alphabet.”
The RCH mission department has launched a language program and, for the first time, the church and government are working together, says Joe Angi. “It’s very unusual — the church employs the language teachers but they work in the public schools. Two years ago they wouldn’t have talked to us.”
The Angis enjoy serving in missionally uncharted territory. “Church people are just beginning to understand what it means to be church outside their four walls and there’s been historic mistrust between the church and the ex-communists who are running the government.”
He laughs. “We make no sense to about half the population.”
During Mission Challenge ’07, Joe Angi is visiting the presbyteries of Boise, Eastern Oregon, Kendall, and the Pacific. Kathy Angi is visiting the presbyteries of Kiskiminetas, the Peaks, Upper Ohio Valley and Washington. |
