Tag: ministry in Molodova

Socrates Club

Moldova

For some, the name Socrates Club will conjure up images of a fan club devoted to a certain Brazilian footballer. For most though, it will give rise to thoughts about one of the world’s most famous philosophers. Indeed, this is the origin of the name (sorry, football fans!)

The Socrates club however is not so much named after the man himself, but a method of analysing things to reach a critical conclusion, the Socrates method as it were. This basically involved someone presenting an idea, ‘the world is round’ for example and then by a process of question and answer, with someone representing an opposing point of view, investigating the idea to try and get to the bottom of it as it were, ‘But why don’t we fall off?’, ‘Have you seen it’s shape?’, ‘How does it rotate?’, ‘Isn’t it supported on the back of a tortoise?’ etc.

The idea of Socrates clubs was probably first made famous by the Socratic club at Oxford university. This particular version of the Socrates club had a big help in creating its fame due to the fact that one C. S. Lewis, a renowned Oxford University professor and darling of those who like to share insightful Christian quotes on the internet, was the first president. It met from 1942 until 1972, but its most popular period was inevitably up until 1955, the years when C. S. Lewis was an active participant before his move to Cambridge.

Since then, many have endeavoured to take this Socrates club concept and create their own version. Such attempts have even made their way to the Republic of Moldova! Hence since the beginning of 2018 the IFES student ministry here (otherwise known as CSC, the community of Christian Students) as been organising their own version.

In true post-soviet cultural style and taking heed of Isaac Newton’s famous idea of standing on the shoulders of giants, the Socrates club (Sokratov Klub as it’s locally known) in Moldova is based on a combination of three concepts. There is the aforementioned Oxford Socratic club, but to this is add the modern-day TED talks concept and mixed in with a Russian idea of 15 by 4 talks, and hey presto ‘Сократов Клуб’.

TED talks involved a speaker giving a short talk on a topic of general interest. The 15×4 format is popular in the Russian speaking world. As the name would suggest it refers to an event where four speakers have 15 minutes to present a topic of interest (as opposed to 15 speakers having four minutes – that would be quite an event!). Finally, the element of the Oxford Socratic club that has been carried over to Moldova is  the fact that he talk is analysed using a question and answer methodology (in the Moldovan case, thus far, the audience serves as the questioners rather than an invited expert).

Hence the average Sokratov Klub evening in Moldova addresses four different topics with four different speakers. The speakers are free to choose their topic, but the evening’s moderate discusses with them beforehand to make sure the topic is suitable. Because the Sokratov Klub is organised by the previously mentioned CSC student group, the speakers are often, but not exclusively, students. Other speakers have included politicians, Catholic priests and even famous footballers! Following are some examples of talks that have been given by students:

–The awkward Czech language.

–The History of the Evolution of Learning

–Spirited Away by Comics – I am the ruler of the world!

–Two Kettles

One important aspect of the original Socratic club from Oxford that has been partially carried over is that this first Socrates club was created with the aim of discussing ‘the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular’ Thus, our Moldovan version includes at least one presentation that addresses a topic connected to Christianity.

Just as the first Socrates club at Oxford university has spread to other places and developed different guises, so to has our Sokratov Klub in Moldova spawned a relative. The things written above related to the first club in Moldova which was started by the CSC group in Moldova’s second biggest city, Balti. However, since then the student group in Chisinau, the capital city has also started up their own version of the club. The format is similar with the main difference being that they have a theme for the evening and all the talks are related to it.

Some quotes from students who have been involved in the Sokratov Klub in Balti:

“The Socrates Club has helped me become less shy and given me much knowledge that I didn’t have before. I have learned to be more eloquent, succinct and responsible. It has also helped me find like-minded people, with whom you can have interesting conversations and share your life experience.”

‘’It was interesting, and the atmosphere was relaxing after a hard day. The subject presentations were exceptionally interesting. At Socrates club, there is always something new and instructive. New in the sense that although we know many things, often we haven’t discussed or touched on their nuances. Socrates club however does.’’

“I enjoyed being here. I found out a lot of things. It was interesting. There was a pleasant atmosphere where I could find out the answers to my questions”

“It was very interesting. Thank you for the evening!”

Student Ministry in Moldova Summary

Moldova

The concept of student ministry has been around for a long time. Some use the example of Daniel and his three friends in exile in Babylon as an example of the first Christian student group.

The first chapter of the book of Daniel tells us that these four young men were to be trained along with other fine young men who had been taken captive from Israel in the language and literature of Babylon. This was obviously a challenging situation for these Jewish youngest as the Babylonian way of doing things didn’t necessarily match up to God’s law. Thus, Daniel boldly asks permission to not defile himself with Babylon food and wine and the first student fellowship is formed as Daniel and his friends are tested by the royal guard, eating only vegetables and drinking water.

Over the centuries not much is not known about Christian student fellowships until more recent times. From the later part of the 1800’s there is information that suggests God was starting to stir the beginnings of what would eventually become worldwide student ministry under the banner of IFES (the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students). A prominent example is the CICCU Student Christian Union at Cambridge university.

CICCU was officially formed in 1877. It was a group of Christian students at Cambridge university who desired to make Jesus known to their student friends. Not to be out done, OICCU (the Oxford version) was founded soon after in 1879. Gradually, a number of such Christian student groups began popping up throughout Great Britain and even the world!

The British Christian student unions eventually formed a national organisation to help unite and coordinate them all. Today this is called ‘UCCF’ (the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship). In 1947, representatives from ten such national Christian student movements came together in Boston, USA where they decided to form an international organisation to help link all these national movements. This was the beginnings of IFES.

The work of IFES was not just to help and oversee already existing Christian student movements, but also to pioneer new ones. During the days of the Soviet Union this was hard in the individual states that made up the Union, but after its fall, IFES style student ministry began propagating throughout these countries.

In Moldova throughout the 90’s student contacts began to be formed by visiting missionaries until by the end of the decade there was already effective ministry taking place and a leadership structure formed consisting of both Moldovans and international volunteers. By 2004, CSC (Community of Christian Students) as it was called, became officially registered. After this the ministry spread and became established also in the Northern City of Bălți. This resulted in two student ministries, one in Chișinău, the capital city, and the other in Balti, the second city of Moldova, which function even until this day.

The aim of the two CSC groups, as in any ministries one would hope, is to do evangelism and discipleship, with the IFES specific of this being concentrated on students. There are a number of means that are used to try and obtain these goals, which will be presented shortly. Before that it is worth mentioning that something that probably makes the CSC groups different to other similar ministries is that the emphasis is on student leadership. After all who is better placed to reach other students than students themselves. Thus, the intention is that each CSC group will be led by a group of Christian students with the help and guidance of a more experienced staff worker.

In Bălți, here are some of the ways we are trying to achieve the aim of doing discipleship and evangelism:

Socrates Club

Over the past couple of years, one of the most popular events in our student ministry has been the Socrates club. This is a monthly evening where 4 speakers (often but not always students) share a topic for 15 minutes and then answer questions on it.

The most recent Socrates club was attended by 41 people and there were talks on ‘the principles of love’ and ‘everyday Metaphysics’ sandwiching a presentation of our CSC activities and a talk on the difference between grace and legalism. Some photos here!

Bible and Life conference

The conference is based on different levels of training. The first presents the basics of the Christian life, the second is on the topic of preparing and leading manuscript Bible studies and the third level is about discipleship. An encouragement for us is that we have five people from Balti have completed level three and so we now have five members of our student group who have been through all three levels of training! Next semester, we will have to do for the first time ever in Moldova level four or get them involved in helping run the seminars of the other levels! Here are some photos

Rethink! Mission Week

The main evangelistic event each year is to organise a mission week for students during the autumn term. Here is some info about the most recent one last November:

After much planning, the event finally arrived in early November. The first evening (4th November) took place at our office and was a preparation time for Christian students and other helpers who were taking part in the event. Then, from 5th to 7th November, each day we went out to start inviting students to come to the evening talks, which were held in the festivities room of a local and well-known hotel. We invited students by giving out flyers and attracting their attention by playing songs on the guitar. One group had a particularly interesting experience as the director of the educational institute that they were visiting called them into his office. Initially, he was very angry, and they thought that he was going to call the police. However, after they explained that they had come to tell people about Jesus and invite them to an evening event, he all of a sudden, and almost miraculously, changed and said that they could go around all the classes taking place and give out flyers!

We had three evening talks, each on a different subject: Why does suffering exist? / Was Darwin right? / and what is the secret of happiness? We had planned for 80 people to come and were nervous that there would be nowhere near that number. But actually, on the first evening there were nearly one hundred people. On the second, over a hundred and on the final evening around 150! Of these, 86 people left their contact details and on the last evening, 26 indicated that they had prayed together with Slavko Hadzic, the speaker. There is a video of one of the days here and some photos from day two here

We also have other regular activities such as English club, Bible studies, Kino Klub and special events!