We are walking to raise money for our general funds, allowing us to support partners across the network. We also want to raise awareness of and encourage you to pray for three specific nations where protestant Christians are a very small minority. Our goal is to raise between £5K–£10K through our sponsored Walk the Balkans 2023 Challenge and we would love for you to take part with us.
The Protestant Church is a small minority in all the nations that TEN works in, but Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo have particularly small numbers of churches and protestant Christians.
TEN recognises that there are Christians in the Orthodox Church but because it is the cultural, national religion of many of the nations we work in, the Protestant Church is often marginalised and even faces some persecution. Based on TEN partner intelligence, we believe that in these three countries Protestant Christians make up about 0.01% – 0.05% of the population. That is 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 2000. In a small UK town of 10,000 people that would mean between 1 and 5 Christians in the whole town.
We want to support our partners for the long term, by raising general funds we can help partners to develop more leaders, plant more churches and reach more people with the gospel. Such funds also allow us to support our partners as they practically share the gospel through compassion ministries. It will be a tremendous encouragement to our partners to know that you are aware of this, and that you are supporting and praying for them.
The Walk the Balkans 2023 challenge launches in May and will run until November.
Our virtual walk takes us through the capital cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Pristina. We will start in Sarajevo, and walk about 150 miles to Podgorica, then walk a further 150 miles to Pristina.
Walk, jog or cycle. You can complete the challenge yourself or with a friend. Alternatively, walk as part of a group and combine your mileage. Participants can choose to complete a stage of the virtual walk, a specific distance or the whole 300 miles.
Register as an individual or as a team. Once you have registered, we will send you our welcome email with further details on how you can make the most of your challenge.
Set yourself a target, register on our Enthuse page and get going!
Sponsor forms are also available if you prefer to gather donations yourself. Contact Melanie Griffiths for more details.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is a country with a complex political structure. All three ethnic groups—Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks—have leaders which control the country’s politics, each political group being concerned with their own advancement, rather than that of the country as a whole. This leads to a lot of tension among the people.
Our partner, Dario Kapin shares, ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina is a nice country but divided in itself. All those national-religious groups have roots in the pagan history of south Slavonic people and those things can be seen in daily life. But God still loves our country and he has placed all of us (less than 400 new-born believers) in this land to be a light to a dying world.’
Montenegro is a small but beautiful country situated on the Adriatic coast. Montenegro means ‘black mountain’. Our partner, Jovica Bacvanski, says this name reflects the spiritual darkness and blindness which makes it very hard to share the gospel with people.
Jovica says, ‘In the whole country, which is about 600,000 inhabitants, there are less than 200 believers, but few of them are Montenegrins.’ Daniel Stracinski is grateful for all prayers and support. He says there is big need for Christians to ‘have burning hearts for people in Montenegro who don’t have Jesus in their hearts.’
Our partner Alban Krasniqi, who we first met through Fellowship of the Lord’s People Church in Pristina, has launched Youth for Christ Kosova, to support churches in their ministry to young people.
Alban writes, ‘Kosovo is a small country in the heart of the Balkans, with a great need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a small community of believers, but they have a great passion to reach the unreached. Kosovo is 98% Muslim, but it has a great hunger for God! When darkness is huge, the Power of Light will be strong.’
James Vaughton, our CEO, is working with a local mountain guide from Sofia Baptist Church to organise a trek to climb Musala in Bulgaria, the highest mountain in the Balkans. It stands at nearly 3,000 metres!
The trek will be over three days (two nights) and the overall trip will be four to five nights. It will take place in the first half of September. Places are limited. It will be an opportunity to get into the mountains, fundraise for TEN, make new friends, join an adventure, and pray together for the Balkans.
