Dedicated Christians
Haralan Popov spent 13 years in prison. But eventually he was freed, in interesting circumstances which I won’t go into now, you can read it in the book if you like.
Underground Churches in Bulgaria: Faith Amidst Surveillance
Out among the public, he found that the whole country was kind of like a prison anyway – minus the torture. But everybody lived in great fear of the officials and tried to just keep their heads down and not attract any attention.
Popov being Popov, he straight away began holding church meetings. But what he found was that the secret police had spies in each church, to report back on what was being said – and in most churches the ministers were appointed by the police to also report back. In fact Popov says that a joke among the Christians at the time was that the police spies were the most faithful church members of all – they never missed a meeting!
I chuckled at that, and then I got a little sad. How can it be that the most faithful Christians are the fake ones? The ones who are doing it for the wrong reasons? In today’s world, our churches are empty. People feel that church is miss-able. That gathering with the people of God is not really a priority. There are other things to do on a Sunday. Other things to do on weekday nights. It says something if the most faithful church goers are those who don’t believe but are there to spy!
And so in Bulgaria, an underground connection of churches began, where the real believers could meet away from the prying eyes of the secret police. One of the techniques Popov and his group used was to have a supposed birthday party as a cover for a church service – the officials saw people gather but if it was for a birthday they weren’t interested and would leave them alone. Popov says each member had 3 or 4 ‘birthdays’ a year so that the people could get together to worship!
Rediscovering Genuine Faith: Lessons from the Bulgarian Underground Church
In Popov’s opinion, this was actually a good thing for the church, because, he writes on page 143, “the suffering purified the Church and united believers in a wonderful spirit of brotherly love… petty differences were put aside, the people loved and cared for one another and carried one another’s burdens. There were no nominal or ‘lukewarm’ believers. It made no sense to be a half-hearted Christian when the price for faith was so great. There came a great spiritual depth and richness in Christ I have never seen in the times before when we were free.”
This convicted me. In our country, there is no price to pay for faith in Christ. Nobody bats an eyelid. And so it’s easy to pop in, pop out, follow today, forget tomorrow – it doesn’t really matter if you’re in or out, in terms of safety. And I wondered if being a Christian became illegal, how many people would stay at church?
Forgive us Lord, for our nominal faith. Forgive us for our comfortable faith. Forgive us our lack of commitment, our lukewarmth. I pray that we truly give our lives to the mission of Jesus, and dedicate our lives to you – no excuses, because that’s how deeply we believe.
May it be that our churches today recover that faith of the early church, and that faith of the Bulgarian underground church, where true believers dedicated their lives to the cause of Jesus Christ, even if it cost them Sundays and more.
