Filled with trepidation, Marjan Tudija enrolled in the Roma Bible school (RBS) at the urging of his Slovenian pastor.  He had surrendered himself to Jesus in 2016 after a life of increasing despair and a suicide attempt.  His pastor had been discipling him for years and felt the school was the next step in his formation as a leader. But he was barely literate, and when faced with the homework after the first weekend session, he flatly told his pastor, “I can’t do this.” However, during the 14 modules of the monthly school, he gained confidence, knowledge, and a supportive community, proudly graduating in 2023 with 13 other students.  In Slovenia, he became the liaison officer between the city government and the Roma communities in the area, started a Roma service at their multi-ethnic church, and is leading new home groups in another Roma community with a reputation for violence and danger.

            Marjan’s story is representative of only one among a diversity of hopeful stories from Roma Christians in Central and Eastern Europe. In Southeastern Europe, Roma churches began forming around 30 years ago, particularly after a revival in Southern Serbia in the mid 1990s.  The stories that emerged focused on healings, visions, and conversions, and while this is still the case, a new chapter is presently unfolding.

             Roma movements in Western Europe have been involved in theological education for decades— both the French Vie i Lumière movement and the Iglesia de Filadelfia in Spain have their own Bible schools. For many years, Roma leaders in Southeastern Europe recognized the need for more theological education. However, general education levels among the Roma in Southeastern Europe are still far lower than the majority population—this means that often they do not meet the required educational requirements or have the skills to succeed in a Bible school or seminary.

             And yet, in what can only be described as a Kairos movement in 2019, Roma leaders decided to move forward with an idea—a school by the Roma and for the Roma (and those serving among the Roma), open to all educational levels.  A contextual curriculum was developed by Roma pastors and other mission leaders as the vision became clear:  to educate, empower, and equip Roma and non-Roma to make holistic disciples in Roma communities and beyond.

             Indeed, when the launched in February 2022 with men and women from Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, a variety of educational levels were present. Some of the students had finished high school and planned to enroll in university.  However, a percentage of the students had little to no formal education, and yet their desire for learning theology and the Bible motivated them past those limitations. In addition, the presence of Roma teachers sharing their knowledge and lives modelled a range of possibilities for the students. There was no building, so it became a traveling school and students bonded closely while traveling together to a different city every month. Being exposed to the diversity of cultures and places was transformative. In the words of one student: “We saw current problems in different communities, churches, all over the Balkans.  The school broadened my view from my local church to the wider area of the Balkans, which is important so that we do not revolve around ourselves and our problems but can easily see the wider picture of what God is doing.”*

            In fact, one of these ongoing problems facing the Roma church is developing a greater unity among the leaders.  And yet when churches took turns hosting the school, it developed a sense of both ownership and unity.  For the students, it also laid a foundation of friendship for future cooperation across national borders and different cultures when they eventually become the church and mission leaders of the future.

            The traveling school addresses another ongoing challenge—the relationship between Roma churches and majority culture churches, which continues to be a wound on the Body of Christ. However, barriers are slowly being removed— RBS is developing a good partnership with the Evangelical Theological Seminary (ETS) in Osijek, Croatia, and several majority culture churches have hosted RBS, the students serving in the church on Sunday. In fact, trust is slowly growing in general throughout the region as more joint initiatives occur—such as a large-scale youth conference involving all the countries of former Yugoslavia taking place in June 2025. Roma leaders have been part of the organizing team and a number of Roma youth will participate in the event.

               In 2024, 23 new students—Marjan’s wife and son among them— started RBS. RBS also began a parallel school in Germany—with 27 students—to equip 3 churches filled with Roma labor migrants from Serbia.

               This movement toward theological education is wider than just RBS and Southeastern Europe. In the past year, Roma have begun studying at ETS in Osijek with others finishing their theology degrees at Balkan Theological Seminary in Niš, Serbia. The Rugul Aprins movement began in Toflea, Romania and now has 23 churches across Europe.  In 2024, they began a Bible school in Germany with 123 students, in cooperation with a seminary in America.  In the last couple of years, the Hungarian Gypsy Mission International, a movement encompassing 220 churches, launched their holistically designed Community Transformation Mission Training.

            Intersecting this trend toward theological education is another critical aspect gathering force in Central and Eastern Europe—the translation of the Bible into multiple Roma dialects.  For example, in Southeastern Europe, the entire New Testament will be released in October 2025 in three different dialects.  Roma translators have so far found the impact of this to be stunning as communities hear the Bible for the first time in their mother tongue.  At a recent youth conference in Serbia, one 16-year old young woman commented in awe, “While you were reading this, I felt like God himself was sitting beside me and talking to me.”

            All of this is preparing the soil for the missional vision of the Roma church.  At a recent workshop in Serbia among Roma pastors, they discovered they all shared a common vision: unity, discipleship, and church planting.  The leaders want to see a church in all 700 Roma settlements in Serbia and to plant more churches among the Roma diaspora in Western Europe.  More than this, their vision extends beyond the Roma to the many other peoples that populate Europe. In fact, a few Roma leaders have stepped into wider leadership roles beyond Roma ministries. As great as the current challenges that are facing the Roma church, greater still is the power of our God who calls, equips, and sends out into the world.

By Saša Bakić, Miki Kamberović, and Melody Wachsmuth

*Derived from a survey of graduated students administered January 2025.