David M. Howard, Jr.
3/26/98
ORADEA, TRANSYLVANIA, ROMANIA
March 13-21, 1998
Background
In September 1997, I was asked by Dr. Robert Yarbrough, a former New Testament colleague at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to consider teaching at the Emmanuel Bible Institute (EBI) in Romania. The school had a great need for an Old Testament professor with an accredited Ph.D. degree, who would commit to teaching there twice a year for at least three years. After much consideration and prayer, and kind permission from Dr. Steve Lemke, the Provost at my current institution, the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, my wife and I decided this would be a good ministry to undertake.
Emmanuel Bible Institute
EBI was founded in September 1990, shortly after the revolution that toppled the Communist regime only nine months earlier. It now has more than 300 students, drawn from all parts of Romania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Yakutsk, Sudan, South Africa, and elsewhere. The school is officially accredited as a degree-granting institution by the Romanian government and is under the auspices of the Romanian Baptist Union. Conservative and evangelical in its theology, it serves students of various Christian denominations, the greatest number of which are Baptist.
The school is making great strides in its development. It has a fine campus on the edge of Oradea, a city of ca. 200,000 people in northwestern Romania, near the Hungarian border. The campus is slowly being developed, with a student dormitory building having been completed in October 1997 that also houses the administrative offices and the classrooms. Further development of this building, and many more, is planned for future years. The school's library is as good as that found in many small Christian Bible colleges in the U.S., with more than 40,000 volumes, and their Biblical studies collection is good. At present, the school is funded primarily from outside sources, primarily in the United States.
Many of the faculty are visiting faculty from other countries, such as I, who come and teach on a short-term basis. Its resident faculty is composed of foreign missionaries and Romanians, only two of whom have terminal degrees in their fields, to my knowledge (none in Biblical studies). Thus, there is a need for people such as Robert Yarbrough and I. Bob and I are the NT and OT professors of record in the eyes of the Romanian government, and we help to determine the curriculum of study in our fields. Many of the Romanian faculty members are starting or completing Ph.D.'s in England and America, so, within a decade or so, they should have a much better-established indigenous faculty.
My Trip
Bob Yarbrough and I arrived at EBI late Saturday afternoon, March 14, after ca. 24 hours of continuous travel (for me, flights from New Orleans to Washington, DC to Frankfort, Germany to Budapest, Hungary, and a drive into Oradea). We were welcomed by Dr. Paul Negrut, President of EBI. On Sunday, Bob and I both preached in different village churches some distance from Oradea, both morning and evening.
On Monday morning, we began the routine that carried us through the week: 6-8 hours of teaching each day. It was a heavy schedule for us professors, but also for our translators and the students. My classes averaged 35-40 in enrollment. I taught the following courses:
OT Introduction (1st-year students)
OT Theology (3rd- and 4th-year students)
Hebrew Exegesis of Psalms (3rd- and 4th-year students)
Part of the joy of the experience was experiencing the appreciation of students and faculty alike. They are hungry for in-depth Bible teaching, and they have almost no tradition in Romania of this, so they welcomed this warmly. Part of Bob's and my ministry was inter-personal, as well, as we spent most lunch hours and evenings with various ones of the faculty. We were able to encourage them in their theological studies and to discuss possible pitfalls they might encounter. We also had opportunity to minister to, and to fellowship with, several American missionaries associated with EBI. And, Bob and I were richly blessed to see the great faith of everyone associated with EBI, their concern for the lost of Romania, their enthusiasm, and their commitment to the success of the institution.
Evaluation
This trip represented my first trip to Eastern Europe, and it was radically different from anything I have ever experienced. I grew up around great poverty in Latin America, but the Latin psyche is much more "alive" than what I experienced as a typical Romanian psyche (although the Christians at EBI are atypical). Romania has suffered greatly under a succession of Turkish, Austro-Hungarian, Nazi, and Soviet occupations (with only brief, intermittent periods of freedom), and it is one of the poorest and most undeveloped countries in all of Europe. Its needs are very great, not the least of which is the need for the Gospel. EBI is one of two Christian institutions in the country, and it is known throughout Europe as a fine institution. It is self-consciously committed to solid theological training in a Romanian context, and, as such, it has a very strategic ministry.
I thank Dr. Bob Yarbrough for inviting me to participate in this ministry, Dr. Steve Lemke and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary for granting permission for me to go, Dr. Paul Negrut and his assistant, Mr. Calin Pop, for welcoming me on board as a colleague at EBI and facilitating my stay there in many ways, and Dr. Don Church of Wheaton College, who has coordinated much of the American involvement with EBI, including arranging for the funds that allowed me to go. I look forward to returning in the fall.