Hungary August 2014
After the Lord spoke to me that there would be “new doors” of ministry opened up to me, my first new opening was in Hungary — a door that is continually becoming wider and wider. On this third mission to the formerly Communist country, I was invited by the overseer of one of the nation’s denominations to lead women’s conferences throughout the country. Since my calling is to stir up the women to take their rightful place next to men in the work of the gospel instead of behind or below them, I was eager to accept the invitation — and I was off, accompanied by Linda Easton for ten days of ministry in four different cities within Hungary. Our host traveled with us and testified at each meeting that God had given him a burden to encourage the women to realize who they are in Christ and to start being more active for the Lord. He was particularly excited to learn from one of our teachings that the first person to open the continent of Europe to the gospel was a woman — Lydia in the book of Acts.
In each conference meeting, we asked who felt called to work for the Lord — and almost every woman responded by coming forward for prayer. Unlike the women’s conferences here in the United States, we generally had a number of men present in the meetings. I was particularly excited to see how these gentlemen began to realize that God is drawing the women of Hungary — as never before — to join with them in the army of God. Since there had been much erroneous teaching that women should not teach but should remain silent in the church, the women were reluctant to step forward and the men were unwilling to have them take a position of leadership in the church. However, when Linda taught about all the women who co-labored with Paul, they understood they had been misinterpreting the scriptures and began to see these Bible passages in a whole new light. After the services, they eagerly bought my Women for the Harvest book that had just been released in Hungarian.
As we ministered, we saw the gifts of the Spirit poured out through prophecies, words of knowledge, and healings. At one particular service in a Hungarian gypsy church, the Holy Spirit dramatically fell on the congregation with people being slain in the Spirit, delivered, and filled with the joy of the Lord with uncontrollable laughter.
Many who have been praying for Europe to open up to the gospel feel that Budapest will be the portal through which the Holy Spirit will begin to penetrate the continent. I certainly believe that our ministry there is a step toward that reality. I’m excited to see Hungary becoming “hungry” for the gospel.
Hungary 2014
My host who had taken me throughout the country on my previous visit to Hungary had invited me to return to his country for a large pastors’ conference and extended the invitation for Peggy to come with me to hold a conference for women. Although he now lives in the United States, our friend was one of the most prominent minsters in Hungary during the Communist time, and was forced to flee the country when he became the government’s number one target for extermination. Because of his history in the nation, he still has tremendous influence with all the leading pastors of the nation; therefore, it would have been easy for him to organize these conferences. Unfortunately, situations arose that caused him to have to remain in the States this year, with the result that he was not able to finalize the plans for the conferences. When we received this news, we originally thought of canceling the trip; however, we felt that we should go even though the conferences were not going to happen. It seemed to us that God had a plan even if our plans didn’t materialize. Translations of Peggy’s book and one of my books had already been completed at the time that the conferences were canceled, so we decided to delay the actual printing of the books until we can go back to the country and hold the planned conferences.
Peggy arranged to meet me in Frankfurt, Germany, as I returned from India and Sri Lanka. From the airport, we walked to the train station where we began out ten-hour train ride to Hungary. In Budapest, we were met by our host, Pastor Tibor Balla. On my previous visit, I had ministered in his church — a congregation that he had raised up during the time of the communist persecution.
For our first ministry in the country, we traveled to a city about an hour and a half away from Budapest where we met a pastor who leads a powerful ministry among the gypsies. These believers were incredibly excited to receive the Word of God and unbelievably open to the move of the Holy Spirit as we laid hands on them and prayed for them. Almost all of the believers were touched by the Holy Spirit and fell under His anointing, and one young man began to move his fingers which had been paralyzed due to a stoke.
On Sunday, Peggy and I split up so that we could minister in two different cities at the same time. Pastor Tibor and I about a hundred and twenty kilometers to minster in the second largest city in the country while Peggy stayed in the capital with his wife to minister at a women’s meeting at Tibor’s church. I was having a bit of an internal struggle concerning what to preach on at the church in Miskolc. I felt prompted to minister on the same message that I had used the night before among the gypsies; however, I somehow felt that I was being a little lazy in using the same message twice in a row. However, as I was spending a few minutes with the pastor before the service, He made a comment that confirmed the direction for the service. Using the story of the entrance of the Israelites into the promise land, he said that the present sate of his congregation is that they have entered into the land of milk and honey but still had to fight some giants, At that point, Pastor Tibor responded, “Well, Brother Delron can tell you how to do that,” making reference to the fact that the previous night’s message had been on David’s victory over Goliath. The response at the altar call at the end of the service certainly that this was the direction from God for the meeting as almost the entire congregation responded to the prayer for new authority to challenge the “giants” in their lives. Peggy’s women’s meeting drew women form not only Pure Heart Church (Pastor Tibor’s congregation) but also ladies from many other churches and fellowships in Budapest. After her ministry on recognizing and activating the Gifts of God in your life, she invited those women who wanted to know and use their God-given gifts to come forward for prayer. The entire group responded.
Our next assignment was to minister at a Bible camp in which the leaders from two churches and representatives from four other churches had gathered with their families for a week of relaxation and renewal. I had preached at the two sponsoring churches when I was in Hungary before; however, this retreat was a wonderful opportunity to renew and deepen the relationship I had with these believers since I had only been with them for a short time during the the services where I ministered. I was aware that these churches were affiliated with the denomination that I had grown up in as a child; however, it was only on this visit that I came to know that ther pastors and leaders in these two congregations constituted the national leadership of the denomination in Hungary and that they worked directly with good friends of mine whom I’ve known since childhood. Anther revelation of how small our world really is came when the American missionary who had been working with these churches joined us to help translate for us. As we got to know one another, I discovered that he was a cousin to my former pastor and mentor, Dr. Lester Sumrall.
One of the first items on my schedule for the time at the camp was to teach a Bible study with the group for two mornings. Rather than give the campers a lesson each day, I asked if I could teach them how to study the Bible on their own more effectively. Of course, they all eagerly accepted the offer; so, I used the first day to train them in the Be Fruitful and Multiply method that I had helped develop as part of the discipleship ministry within Every Home for Christ. On the next day, I prompted them as they did a study in small groups. The passage we were studying on the second morning was only six verses long, but I seemed to have some difficulty getting the groups to keep progressing through the sequence of questions that are involved in this study method. As I would prod them to move to discussion of the next topic, one gentleman answered me, “The time is too short, because the message is big even when the passage is little.” Everyone was thrilled to see how much new insights they received from familiar passages that they thought they already knew very well. In fact, when we had a testimony time later in the camp, I continued to hear references made to the revelations that had been gained during these morning Bible study sessions.
In the afternoons, we had special ministry time with the leaders and their wives. On the first day, we ministered to them together and on the following day, we spit the groups between the gentlemen and ladies. I genuinely believe that these sessions will prove to be historic turning points in the church in the nation of Hungary in that the leaders present with us are the men who have emerged form a devastating conflict in the Body of Christ in Hungary as the ones who are destined to lead the church into the future. The key pastor graphically summed up the meetings, “Your messages were like lightning to us.”
On our closing session together, I had felt directed to minister on the message of “Doors, Windows, and Gates” from my recent book, Interface; however, I was struggling a bit with that prompting since I had been focusing on the same massage in so many recent meetings and didn’t want to begin to get into the “one size fits all” rut of thinking that the same message is appropriate for every audience. However, throughout the day, I continued to hear the pastor make references to doors, gates, and gatekeepers. He even made mention of the fact that gates are referred to in Proverbs chapter thirty-one, a passage I had suggested that the single young men read before selecting a wife. Although he had no Idea that I even had a teaching on the biblical significance of gates — much less that I was considering ministering on the topic that evening — he seemed to be peppering his conversation with references to the topic. Just as I was being introduced to minster that evening, Peggy had a prophetic word that again confirmed the message for the night. After the teaching time, Peggy again took the mic and expressed that the Lord was prompting her to ask if anyone needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We all were amazed to see the entire group of high school and college age students respond. As they prayed and wept as the Holy Spirit fell upon each of them, the American missionary whispered to me that he had not seen anything like this during his twenty-three years of ministry in the country. After they had all had their own encounter with the Holy Spirit, they broke into pairs to pray for one another — a prayer session that lasted until midnight. One other side note to this experience was that we asked the youth to go into a separate room for prayer so that we could continue to minster to the adults. As they were walking into the other area, I felt prompted to ask one particular gentleman to assist in praying for them. He later confided in me that at one time he had been active in ministering to people to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit and to be healed. Unfortunately, things had happened in his life that had discouraged him and he had stopped this sort of ministry. This opportunity to pray with the students was exactly what he needed to step back into the forefront of leadership within the church — and, with the renewal that is coming in the ministry in Hungary — he is right on time and right on target!
Back in Budapest after the camp, we ministered at an all-day conference in one of the local churches. After the meeting had ended, one of ladies who had not been able to attend the service because she was working in the nursery came to me for prayer. When she mentioned that she occasionally serves as an interpreter for guest speakers, I immediately had a prophetic word for her that she should get ready to see the situation reversed because she would be going to minister in other countries where the people didn’t understand either English or Hungarian and she would need people to interpret for her rather than for her to be interpreting for them. When I spoke those words to her, she responded that the exact message had already been spoken over her about two weeks before. The next day, we ministered at a church where the leadership had read my book on discipleship and made a decision to become discipleship ministry. We ministered to the entire congregation on the importance of discipleship within the Body of Christ and spent the afternoon in personal discussion with the church leadership answering their questions about practical ways to encourage and implement discipleship in the church. When the pastor prayed before I came to minster at the service that evening, he petitioned God for open doors — exactly the theme of the message I had on my heart for the congregation. Peggy followed up my teaching with a message on offenses. Most of the congregation responded to the altar call, asking to be healed from wounds they had suffered from offenses. The pastor then confided in us that the sermon was actually a prophetic word for them because the church had just gone through a very painful split two weeks before in which over half the congregation left with two of the associate pastors. Of course, we knew nothing of the troubles within the church before the service, and our visit had been scheduled before the split occurred.
As we wrapped up our ministry in Hungary, we received one last confirmation of the Lord’s anointing upon our time there when the interpreter who translated for us during much of our time in Hungary said that he had had very little sleep during our stay because he was awake every night rehearing the messages in his heart and rethinking how significant the lessons were for his own life and the churches of his nation.
Hungary 2013
As a Pulp and Paper Science and Technology student in my late teens at North Carolina State University, I had a dream in which I saw myself ministering to a large group of men; however, there was a very unusual component to this dream—the faces of the crowd kept changing. First, they were black like Africans, then they were brown like Latin Americans, then they looked Oriental. From the night that I had that dream, I’ve known that the Lord had some sort of a plan for me to minister to people in many different parts of the world. As the years progressed, the doors did indeed begin to open for me to go to various nations to minister—first, there was Japan, then Sri Lanka, then India, and eventually Africa and Latin America. But Europe was somehow lacking. However, I knew that Europe had to part of the plan because, at a time when I was thinking of trying to move to Nepal and concentrate on that one nation, God very specifically directed me to Matthew 28:19 as the focus and name our ministry: Teach All Nations. Since “all” means “all,” I knew that there would somehow be an open door in Europe as well as in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Although most people don’t think of Europe as a mission field, some mission strategists actually call it the “new dark continent” because the percentages of born-again Christians in most European nations are actually lower than those in some lands that we traditionally call “the mission field.” Spain, Italy, Greece, Austria, Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Ireland—just to name a few—are all listed as having less that two percent of their populations as true believers while the official calculation for Indioa is almost three and some unofficial counts go as high as eight to twelve percent. Certainly, Peggy and I have ministered in a few European countries, but the door has never been “great” or “effectual” as Paul described in I Corinthians 16:9. That is until recently when I was invited to Hungary.
One of my students at the Charis Bible College in Colorado Springs came to me after class one day and asked if I would consider coming to Hungary with him someday. After a nanosecond of deliberation, I answered in the affirmative. Peter was from a prominent family in Hungary. His grandfather was an architect who helped rebuild the city of Budapest after it was destroyed in the fighting between the Russians and Germans during World War II. His father was one of the leaders of the revolution in 1956, which gained partial liberty for the citizens of Hungary even though the country remained a communist state. As a university student, Peter had a supernatural visitation from the Lord that drew him from atheism to salvation. He eventually became one of the leading pastors in the country during the communist regime, which extended in Hungary for another fifteen years after the breakup of the USSR. During the communist era, the Christians and especially the pastors and Christian leaders suffered severely, including daily interrogations and beatings, imprisonment, and martyrdom. The church was all but destroyed by the end of the era. When Peter learned that his name was number one on the government’s list of political enemies to be killed, he had to flee to the US for political asylum. His escape was a real miracle in that his passport had been confiscated in an attempt to keep he from fleeing. However, because of a supernatural connection with an official in the passport office he received a new passport just before he was forced to flee. After freedom was restored to the country, Peter was eventually allowed to return to his homeland and the country so dear to his heart. Although he maintains residence in the US, he travels frequently to Hungary with the specific intent of strengthening and encouraging the pastors there. When he learned that the heart and focus of our ministry was to train up strong Christian leaders in nations around the world, he was prompted to ask if we could consider also coming to Hungary.
My visit was a ten-day get-acquainted trip to learn about the condition in the country, to get to know the Christian leadership, and to give them a chance to get familiar with the ministry of Teach All Nations. Of course, I started off with a big bowl of delicious goulash and a tour of Budapest. I was really surprised at how beautiful the city is. Located along the banks of the Danube River, it is filled with cathedrals, castles, and beautiful government buildings such as the Parliament Building, which was designed by the same architect who designed the Parliament in London. I was surprised to learn that the king’s palace has a separate bedroom for each night of the year. Peter and I punctuated our tour with stops along the way to sample unique Hungarian dishes like trumpet cakes, a pastry that is wound around a spindle to form the shape of a trumpet. If the delicacy were stretched out straight, it would probably be at least ten feet long. We also had “pancakes,” which are actually crepes that are served not only as desserts but also as the main course with all sorts of ingredients. I not only got to see the bright, touristy side of the country; I also had the opportunity to descend into the depths of the nation’s agonizing history by visiting the ghetto from which eighteen thousand Jews were herded off the Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps and the House of Terror where the communists took “the enemies of the state” to be interrogated, tortured, executed, and ground into powder that was then dumped into the Danube. I also spent hours talking with leaders to learn about the present situation in the country. I was told that the country is teetering on the verge of economic collapse, with hundreds of thousands of the members of the upper middle class (such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers) having already left the country to relocate in more stable countries where they can earn as much as fifteen times the salaries they receive in Hungary. The middle and lower classes have also suffered severely through loss of jobs. In one industry alone, eighteen major factories have closed. Multiply that over all the various industries in the country, and you can understand why thousands of families are living without heat or electricity because they simply cannot afford to pay their utility bills. In addition, thousands of families become homeless each year as they fall behind in their mortgage payments. Tragically, the law in Hungary requires that the families continue to pay the mortgage payments even after the bank has repossessed their homes. Politically, the government seems intent on corruption with no plans to try to rescue the country or save the suffering citizens. A recent policy forced all judges older than sixty years to retire, leaving the judicial system in the hands of a younger, liberal faction. One political party has even declared its intent upon instigating genocide against Jews and gypsies if they are able to gain power. Spiritually, the general populace—still living under the humanistic and atheistic mentality imposed during the communist regime—is hardened against the gospel. The present government has begun to put pressure on the Christian churches by taking away the registration status of all but a few denominations. This means that the charismatic and independent groups are no longer recognized as legally functioning organizations. They fear that this may be the first step toward confiscation of their buildings and persecution of the pastors and members. One pastor who has a significant ministry within the school and prison systems has already lost all the governmental support that allowed him to go into these institutions and is, therefore, on the verge of having to close this aspect of his ministry. The born-again believers, who constitute lass than three percent of the population, are now left in a quandary as to what they can do to impact and redeem their nation.
During my stay in Hungary, I ministered in a number of churches in several different cities and spoke at the ministerial fellowship in Budapest in addition to spending personal time with many of the leading pastors in each area. In each city, I found tremendous openness to the ministry. In fact, at least one church adjusted the time of its services so that I could also minister in another church on the same day. In another place several churches came together for a combined service since I was not able to minister in each church individually. The invitation to speak at the ministerial fellowship was a special opportunity in that they rarely invite outside guests to minister in their meetings. In fact, I was told that it often takes foreigners as long as ten years to gain the acceptance that was shown to me on this first visit. In addition to Peter’s recommendation, one other factor that gave me acceptance in the hearts of the pastors of Hungary is the fact that I was associated with Dr. Lester Sumrall for so many years. Even though it has been more than twenty years since he was in Hungary, his ministry is still known and loved in the country. Another factor was that the pastors all found the messages I ministered to be vitally relevant to their present situation. After every service, there were always several people who would come up to say that the message was just what they had needed and some even said that they had been praying specifically that they could get some understanding on the subject I taught on. On one occasion, I slipped in a quick example based on the story of the four lepers in II Kings chapter seven even though I was just about out of the time I had been allotted. The next day, a pastor told me that the Lord had spoken to him concerning that story about two weeks prior and he had spent those two weeks wondering what the story was supposed to mean to him. During my short explanation from the story, he got the necessary revelation to apply the message to his life and ministry. At one church where I spoke on hindrances to answered prayer, I noticed that the people seemed especially intent on the message and that that they were all taking lots of notes. When the pastor took the microphone after I had finished speaking, I understood why. He had been teaching a series on prayer and had ministered a message entitled, “We Don’t Really Know How to Pray” in the service just two days before. He assured the congregation that he had not talked to me before the service about the current emphasis on prayer in the church. The pastor at another church specifically asked that I teach on discipleship, so I ministered from my recent book Discipling Nations and gave him a copy to study. When I saw him the next day, he had already read the full book and had made a decision to implement the program in his church. Another pastor took the book and said that he felt that it was the answer he had been looking for in his ministry among the gypsy groups in Hungary. After one service, a pastor who was visiting from another church called the next day to say that he had spent all morning on the phone calling all his friends to invite them to the next service. In a follow-up meeting with the leadership of one congregation, I was asked why I chose the specific topic I ministered on. The reason they asked such a question was that it specifically addressed the present needs of the church. At another church, the pastor told me that he had been having meetings with his leadership team over the previous few weeks to try to find out why the church had “lost it’s edge” and that the message I delivered was the exact answer to they question. The founder of a large, well-respected ministry that reaches throughout all of Eastern Europe remarked to the local pastor that he had never heard such preaching before and asked if it would be possible to arrange for me to come into the other countries where his organization operates. The pastor of one of the country’s largest congregations told me that he and about twenty other leaders had decided to hold a special conference for at least a thousand women and had been praying about whom to invite as the speaker. When they heard about Peggy’s ministry, they have decided to ask her to minister at the conference.
When I prayed with the members of the congregations after the services, many reported that pain left their bodies and several said that their hearing began to be restored; however, the most obvious miracle happened in a lady who was bound by depression after the recent loss of her daughter. “Pathetic” is the only word that could describe her when she walked into the service. Carrying a photograph of her daughter, she was “crying on everyone’s shoulder”—even strangers whom she had never met before. After prayer, she was smiling, laughing, and rejoicing as she told everyone how God had touched her life! Another young lady who was delivered from a spirit of suicide walked out of the church quoting scripture and exercising her new authority over the devil.
The result of this get-acquainted visit is that, before I boarded the plane to head home, plans were already underway for a return visit in which there will be a pastors’conference, a women’s conference, the translation of Peggy’s book and at least one of my books into the Hungarian language, and visits to neighboring European nations. God has now given us a great and effectual door into Europe!