I’m still working on the next installment in the “Why American Christians Should Care about the Evangelical Church in Croatia” series. Budgeting & planning for 2020 has delayed that post.

But in the meantime …

Hot sports opinion: It’s absolutely insane to send a single person, or even a husband & wife team, to plant a church, especially in a tough place like Croatia. Never send a solo planter! Always at LEAST two, preferably three or more family units.

Croatia is one of the most discouraging places to plant a church. Unlike most of the Soviet block, Yugoslavia let the Catholic Church largely unmolested. Instead of overt persecution, the government pressured the institutional church to conform, and stigmatized participation. This left the majority of Croatians nominally Catholic.

The influence of cultural Christianity has numbed the people. Basically, the average Croat today is just Christian enough to think he/she knows everything they need.

According to a study by my friend Eric Maroney, the average conversion from Catholic to evangelical takes 7-8 years. Think of how that affects church planting. Think of how discouraging this resistance is for church planters, who pray and labor for ten years to see 1, 2, maybe 3 baptisms.

A cord of three strands is not easily broken. The bigger the group of church planters the better they can support one another and hold each other’s arms up.