Romania – Radu Cimpean

Hello, my name is Radu Cimpean, and I am one of the pastors at Bethany Baptist Church in Sibiu, Romania and also serve as the Coordinator of the local Christian high school. I also travel five hours from my home city to the Baptist Seminary in Bucharest where I have the privilege of teaching.

For over 8 years I have had the blessing of knowing YMI trainers and being exposed to their teachings regarding youth ministry. In fact, I was trained by the excellent professors of YMI and then took over teaching the Youth Culture and Youth Discipleship courses. Even though I was a youth pastor, I had no specific training before being exposed to the curriculum of YMI.

These courses have truly helped my ministry and I now understand more about the necessity of knowing the culture in order to reach it and win it for Christ. I and my church have started to work more on these programs so that we can have a clearer focus of reaching the youth in Romania.

Not only have I been personally encouraged and more equipped to work with youth, but now I can help train and equip youth ministry students in Bucharest, and abroad. Through teaching these youth courses I have found that they are beneficial for both my students on campus and online.

I could share many examples of how YMI courses have helped my students, and me, but I would like to highlight the Annual Youth Leaders Conference that was held in May this year.

Because of the pandemic situation the conference had to be held online, but it turned out to be a blessing. Around 300 youth leaders from all over Romania and beyond registered for the conference, almost a 100% increase from previous conferences. I hosted two webinars and contributed a pre-recorded session. I was very much encouraged by the participants’ engagement through their questions and interactions. Moreover, I was encouraged to see, for the first time in our evangelical history, significant research being done regarding the youth in the evangelical churches of Romania.

Youth ministry in Romania does not have a very long history and we did not have any previous surveys. Now we can work with that data to know how to reach youth more effectively.

I would also add that from this conference, there is a vision to start a networked youth leader coalition that could provide help and support for all of us in Romania interested in working with youth. This new coalition is working strategically to help the youth leaders of Romania in several fields: apologetics, counseling, sociological research, and media. The need for this coalition network is huge and we pray that God will provide strong passionate leaders who will be devoted to carrying out this vision.

I see that God has provided tremendous opportunities for Christian youth leaders in Romania through YMI, and because of that, we are blessed to be able to say, THANKS FOR BEING OUR PARTNERS!