An Evangelical Greek’s Story

“The Volos church is the second oldest protestant church in Greece, founded in the 1870s. It was always small – many times it was shut down because there were no people or there was no pastor. We came in 1994 when the church was 35 people (old people – average age 65) – Angela and I came when we were in our 30s and we were the only ones with children. When a church doesn’t have children, the future isn’t very bright. My concern was the future and the presence of the church in the city – being so small and always perceived in a negative way in society.

Because faith is associated with nationality in Greece, the fact we aren’t orthodox to them means we’re not true Greek – we have betrayed our national identity. So, how do we go about engaging with our local community in a non-threatening way, while making the church known in a positive way by having a presence in the city and proclaiming the Gospel?

Also, I wanted us to define ourselves – we had teams that either came from the US or Europe, but every time they left, we were here to reap whatever they sowed Usually it wasn’t positive. Doing pantomime or a rock concert, for example. Presenting the Gospel through those means – this is a very conservative society when it comes to religious matters. For them, being Christian means going to the orthodox church – you have the liturgy, you have the sacraments, and all that is in a language and method that is so set. If you go out of that, they think you’re being sacrilegious. So, speaking about God through rock music is offensive to them. A. because it isn’t Greek and B. because how can you talk about God through rock music? You sing to God through Byzantine chant.

So I asked, how can we approach this society without being offensive to them and also defining ourselves in their mindset? Until then two other factors had defined us to them: One, we are heretics – so they kept away, and the other was all these foreign groups that came. They did whatever they did in their own way and through their own methodology and then they left. But we were identified with them in the minds of the people. I had to really think and pray, and I was preaching on the gospel of Mark at the time. What struck me that gave me my basis was chapter 10:45 where Jesus says, “I did not come to be served but to serve, and give my life as ransom.” And that gave me the whole framework that a better way to approach our city and our people instead of giving pamphlets – which they throw out anyway – or a rock concert or something like that (the young people of the communist party usually have rock parties. So often we were identified also with the communist party). What if we go about and serve our community? Because trash is a problem here, I thought, what if we gather a group of young people and we do a week long service to our city? The areas that we were going to clean were the exits and the entrance to the city. A. because we don’t want to clean inside the city where people are being payed to do that and B. because the exits and the entrance of the city are areas where people would throw their trash out the moment they get outside the city. And no one cleans those spots. And C. it’s a good place for us to be seen.

So, I gathered about 25 young people. The year we started, there was an uprising in Albania, and people broke out of prisons and entered into the military camps and there were a lot of guns and bullets, so it was very dangerous in Albania. So, I got a phone call from the OM office there asking if we could host a number of missionaries who were supposed to be in Albania for a while, so we hosted about ten missionaries. And they came in July of 1997, so we were about 30-something people. But before we started I went to the city and told them who I was. They had not heard of me, because we never had any contact with the city. So I told them what we were going to do – volunteerism is not very high in Greece. Especially at that time. Volunteerism is a protestant and catholic practice. So the director of the cleaning services first asked, “Do you have a license to clean?” I told him you don’t need a license to throw out trash, why do you need a license to pick it up? So I asked if we can have a truck to pick up the bags and he said yes. So we started on the road from the cement factory to Volos. We worked for five hours every day – it took us three days to clean that. It’s one kilometer. You can imagine the trash that had been accumulated over the years, and nobody was touching it. A lot of trash.

The second day we continued and the word had got around. We were all wearing the same T-shirt that said “We love Volos.” And a hat with the name of the church. So in a way we were not evangelizing by giving anything, even though later we started giving bags to the cars to use for their trash. On the bag it had a message. So by the third day, the media started coming to us. That was gold. For the first time, we were not the bad guys or the heretics. Once in a while there are articles against us in the newspaper – “the heretics of our city.” So, radio, television, and newspapers asked the question: who are you and why are you doing this? Now that gave us the best platform to start from. And the people that were going by – because that road is a very busy road, by the thousands during the summer – so people would beep their horns and some would stop to say thank you, and a lot of them would stop to ask, who are you? That gave the best platform for us to present ourselves, to engage with our community in a positive way, and to tell them who we are and why we are doing it.

That opened many doors for us. But the best thing was that it was defining us. “The church that cleans our city.” That has been the way people know us now. And the church has very good testimony in the city. That helped the church become extroverted, because when you are a very small minority, you become a minority mindset also. So hardly anyone knew about us. And being protestant is not easy in Greece. Everything is a big challenge. Now the past few years, we don’t have any teams any more that come. Because of the economic crisis we’ve lost a lot of our people, and especially the younger generation. So in a way we are back where we were when we started. Many of our young people and young couples left – they went to Germany, Finland, or other countries. And we don’t have children anymore because they were the ones who had the children.

But through that – not that people accepted the Lord through that or they came to the church – but that opened the doors for us to engage with other parts of our society and also to start a very good relationship with the orthodox bishop. And the orthodox have free access to anything, no question are asked, the doors open. So one way that we have been working together – and all this came because of the trash – because that’s how I got to know the bishop – it’s through the Gideons. In about 2003 they told me they have many copies of the New Testament – about 200,000 – and they cannot give them anywhere. So I approached the Bishop and I asked if we can distribute the Testaments through the schools here. So he agreed to it, and he did a lot of work for that by preparing the way. On the day we had arranged, he opened the door for us – he talked with the principles and religion teachers of each school and we were able to go and distribute in one day 10,000 New Testament Bibles. That opened the door for the same thing to happen in many other schools, because once the Gideons were able to do that here, they got a letter from him, and also he talked to other bishops, and other bishops started invited the Gideons into their area, and Bibles were distributed to high schools and also military installations. So since then there has been that very good collaboration between the orthodox church and the Gideons.

Another very good development was the Jesus Film. The orthodox were always closed to the Jesus Film. At some point, I gave the bishop a cassette and said, “If you like it, we can provide a couple more.” A few days later he called me and said, “Meletis, this is the best film of Jesus I have ever seen because it’s so faithful to the text. Can I have a couple of copies – I want to show this to our camps.” So this was in 2002/2003 – for a few years, he kept showing the film. Then I asked him if he’d like to meet with the people from Campus Crusade. He said yeah, I would like that. So I arranged a meeting, both the national and European directors (of CRU) came to Volos, had a very good meeting – and the first order was 50,000 copies of the DVD to be given to schools, students, etc. and here’s the story:

Because the church is very powerful here, the principle at the school I had tried to accept the Jesus film before, he will not accept it. So after the bishop gave the film to them, I went to see the director, and right behind him on the bookshelf I see the Jesus Film. So I see it on the shelf of the principle, and as we are talking I act like I don’t know anything and say, “What is this?” and he says, “Oh, Meletis, this is the best film of Jesus. The Bishop gave it to us and we are showing it to them.” So I’m just saying that because of us bending down and serving our community, the Lord opened many doors. And yeah, people don’t come to our church, but that’s not my goal. The goal is not to bring them to my church, my goal is to bring them to Christ if I can. And I realize Greeks do not become protestants. And they do not need to become protestants. Protestants have enough problems of their own. But if I can direct them to Christ – and there, I have a very good example of Andrew, the apostle – only twice is Andrew seen in the Gospels. The first time is when he brings his brother Peter to Christ and then he is not seen at all. He brings Peter and connects Peter with Christ. and the second time is when Jesus is teaching and the disciples say “let the people go” because it is dark and they are getting hungry, and Jesus says, “no” and then there is a little kid with five loaves of bread and three fish. It’s Andrew who brings that kid to Jesus. And then he disappears again and lets Jesus do whatever he wants with the kid. So we see Andrew as someone who brings people to Jesus and then he disappears. And he’s a model of mine – if I can do that with my people – bring them to Christ and then disappear, let Christ do whatever He wants with them – I have done my job.

In a way we were involved with the refugees since the mid 1990s. the first refugees that we got were Albanian. But the recent influx of refugees started in January of 2015 when they first started coming. We were involved right from the beginning. We – mainly our parishes in the North around ______ (an old forgotten border crossing, practically nobody remembered it, so it was open) – that’s where they started going through. Over a million people crossed. We were there every day with our volunteer teams. What we did, Angela and myself, was we fundraised for all the necessary funds needed. But we had teams from our churches that would go North. Many women and men preparing the sandwiches every day, buying the various things needed – water, medicine, clothing – one ministry from Germany sent us 15 tons of clothes, a huge truck load. So we had people working in the clothing ministry to sort out all those clothes and package them and sort them into different sizes. So it was a very big building where they did that. That first year went all the way to May of 2016 when the crossing was sealed. Over a million people crossed and we were there. We set up – because they didn’t have a way to recharge their telephones, they didn’t have Wi-Fi – so people took advantage. In order for them to charge their phone they would charge them five euros. And for Wi-Fi they would charge them a euro. So a member of ours from a church nearby – he’s a mechanical technician – he set up a recharging station for free and also Wi-Fi for free. Because for them they must use GPS because they walk. So they need it.

Then after January of 2016, the central European countries like Austria and Hungary, Slovenia – they started closing their borders and building walls. And they pressured the other countries like Greece and Macedonia to do the same. So in February of 2016 the border crossing was sealed, there were walls built, and refugees were trapped there. In the middle of nowhere up in the mountains – extremely cold weather, harsh conditions. And there were 60,000 people trapped there. It was not an easy situation. So we were also buying food and hauling food to them so that they would persevere in the night to keep warm. And then march 2016 there was an agreement between the European community and Turkey for Turkey to keep all the refugees within its territory. Which is still on and alright. It’s not working perfectly, but a great step.

A Christian refugee we met – he was approached by a Muslim couple and told them there are two families here that are Christian and they are having a hard time, because the Muslims are giving them a hard time. They should get out of here. So he approached the elders from my home church, and we had prepared these homes that still we are working on many more homes. And so they brought them to my village. But when they went to pick them up, these two Christian families, they said we are not going anywhere unless you take our Muslim friends also. So about 20 people came that day. The Muslim couple accepted the Lord and got baptized before they went to Athens. I drove to Athens for their baptism and it was the first time that the woman took off her hijab. So it was very moving, there were many tears.”

What would you say to Christians who are wary of refugees because they’re afraid of terrorism?

“They are not all terrorists. That’s a lie. That’s worst-case scenario. So they play on your fears. Most of the terrorist attacks that happened in Europe did not happen from refugees. None of them. They happened mostly from people that were born and grew up in Europe as Muslims. But they were not from refugees. So let’s read the news, let’s read the reality. Also, you guys in the States have more mass-murderers and victims from mass-shooting than we’ve had in Europe from all the terrorist attacks. I’m not saying America should take all the refugees, that would be foolish. But we are already in economic crisis. We should not have to take the entire burden by ourselves.

But, my biggest argument to them is, alright, granted – there could be some terrorists in there. I will accept that, yes. My question is, what would Jesus do? If I’m serious about my faith, what would Jesus do. How do I interpret the parable of the last judgement in Matthew 25 – “I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was hungry, and you fed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was in prison – or sick – and you visited me.” If they can answer that in any other way than what we understand it means, then I am with them. But they cannot. Christ would have received them. It’s lack of faith on their part. Like we said this morning, the opposite of faith is not atheism, it’s fear. And that’s where Satan plays. And granted, I’m afraid also. But what I want and what Christ wants is not the same thing. I’ve got to go against my human nature – that’s reformed theology.”

Pastor Melts also shared that he came to know several refugees who became Christians by being shown the love of Christ and who, after meeting them, he found out were terrorists. He said, “Many of them have found themselves with no hope and no purpose. If Christians look at every refugee with hate and fear -if we do not show them the purpose and hope they have in Christ – we will make terrorists out of them.”