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Why would anyone, beat up by a hard life to begin with, want to come to church to be subject to the will and strife of insecure individuals? Didn't Jesus say, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest"?

By now you may be asking, "Is there anything right with the post-communist church?" The zeal with which Eastern European believers kept the message during the communist era is an example of the church's strength. Persecuted pastors put in hours of work, with minimal or no pay, and traveled miles to care for their brothers and sisters. Evangelicals were harassed, fired, detained, and interrogated for owning Bibles or just talking about their faith.

Haralan Popov spent 13 years in concentration camps, accused of spying for the United States and England. He was not a spy, but a pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Bulgaria, when the communists took over in the 1940s. He not only did not renounce his faith amid torture, but he also shared the gospel and the love of Christ with his fellow prisoners. In 1972 he founded Door of Hope International, a U.S. mission agency that spread the news of the persecuted church in the West and helped underground churches behind the Iron Curtain. This past is the great spiritual inheritance of Eastern European Christians, one empowered by the freedom found only in Christ and displayed in the Book of Acts.

A new generation with a vision for change is emerging, too. Here are some of its leaders:

• Michailova leads a missionary campaign with her bus, selling Christian books.
• A missionary friend told me of a humble Bulgarian couple who minister to Bulgarian Turks in southern Bulgaria, with the vision of raising missionaries to go to Turkey.
• My brother's primary church reaches out to institutionalized orphans, and his church's rock band seeks to win young people's souls.

All these hope-filled glimpses show that true freedom for a servant and visionary church is not that far away.

My wife and I have returned to Bulgaria as missionaries with Door of Hope to pursue "the Bulgarian dream," as I often joke. But the dream is not a joke. The vision from that summer night of 1991—for a whole nation, a bride of darkness and hopelessness for decades, to find a better way, a way to truth, forgiveness, and liberty in Jesus Christ—is still very much alive in me. I think the same dream made the apostles follow Christ against all odds. It made the apostle Paul travel restlessly, building up churches. And it made missionaries go to foreign nations, reminding us over and over again that "for freedom Christ has set us free."

Viktor Kostov is founder of the Balkan Center for Law and Freedom, a religious-liberty lawyer, and a missionary (Web site: kmission.homestead.com) working in Sofia, Bulgaria, with his wife and two children.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The U.S. Department of State's Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2000 gives more background on religious freedom in Bulgaria. International Christian Concern has more on persecution in Bulgaria.

Radio Free Europe put together an update on the progress of Eastern European countries ten years after the fall of communism. One article on Bulgaria found that "communism had stumbled, not fallen."

The Kostov Missionary Web Site has information on the Kostovs and their projects

The Door of Hope International site has updates and prayer appeals.

The Balkan Center for Law and Freedom is a group of Christian lawyers whose purpose is to influence the legal community with the gospel message.

Los Altos Union Presbyterian Church has an online mission profile on the Kostovs.

See more Christianity Today coverage of persecution.

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October 22 2001, Vol. 45, No. 13