Young Couples Fellowship - Strengthening Marriages in Romania
Close your eyes with me for a moment and imagine you are a young Romanian girl, on the verge of becoming a woman. You live with your family in a cold, cramped flat. The grey cement walls are drab and bare. Your father and mother have been exhausted for years, working their fingers to the bone to survive. There is little change in their routine lives and each morning they bury their hopelessness and face another day of grueling work.
You know you are one of the fortunate few whose father doesn’t come home drunk each night, but still he is frequently angry, gruff and defensive. Sometimes you feel like a stranger to your parents. Your family simply exists together without sharing their hopes, dreams, interests, likes or dislikes with one another. Long ago you abandoned such thoughts because they seemed useless in fact.
Every Sunday you trudge to church with your family. No one is really sure why, and no one dares to ask. It’s tradition and you don’t question tradition. You remember the mulish matron with furrowed eyebrows and thin lips who was in charge of the children when you were a kid. She sat on a stool in the small, dark room and snapped orders for the children to obey. Every week, she made you memorize some rules or facts and mindlessly repeat them back. You learned quickly that church is a place where it was important not to show vulnerability or struggles. Not much has changed since then, except that now you sit with the adults. The room is larger, but still dark, and the furrowed brows and thin lips have multiplied.
And then you fall in love. You enjoy his company during courtship and he offers an escape from the hostility of your own family. You begin to entertain the idea of hoping for a better life. Soon you marry him, thinking the family you’ll form together won’t be like your current home life.
But it isn’t long before you have your first disagreement and, without sharing with each other honestly, things go from cool to frigid between you and after awhile they turn hostile. You have no where to turn: you can’t follow your parents’ example, and you wouldn’t think about letting your pastor or anyone at church know you are struggling in your marriage. Their response would most likely be filled with stern reprimands and rules. The loneliness you feel is acute and your hopelessness is overwhelming. On the other hand, on the television, you constantly see Americans, laughing, looking happy and confident, joking about intimacy and immorality, and you begin to believe the lie; maybe that is the way to be happy…
ITMI’s Adrian and Ema Ban began the Young Couples Fellowship (YCF) several years ago when they saw the need for young couples to build their marriages on Biblical principles. Disturbed by the number of Christian marriages they saw ripped apart by infidelity or crippled by staunch tradition, they formed the fellowship as a safe place for young couples to experience Biblical community and receive Biblical marriage counseling before it is needed.
The first YCF was such a great success that Adrian and Ema began a second fellowship. Now they meet twice per month with each of the groups and have seen the Spirit of God do great things in the lives of future Romanian families. This is attributed to the meetings’ emphasis on prayer and discipleship.
Acts 2 gives us an amazing example for groups of believers to follow, “...they gave to anyone as he had need.” (verse 45) Needs were expressed and met through the early church’s devotion to fellowship. This rich fellowship is difficult to achieve because it requires sacrifice: the early church sold their own possessions to meet others’ needs.
One young man that regularly attends the YCF with his wife was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which causes him to shake uncontrollably. No one in Oradea would diagnose his condition as Parkinson's disease and therefore he was not able to receive government treatment.
During the prayer time at one YCF meeting last November, someone suggested they bring the situation before the Lord, even though the couple wasn’t in attendance. After the prayer, Adrian left the room and was followed by a young man who presented Adrian with some cash, saying he and his wife felt led to anonymously help provide for the needs of the suffering young man. Adrian confessed that the Spirit was leading him to do the same. Before the night was over, they took a collection for the afflicted young man. Many of the young couples, though struggling themselves to eke out a living in a failing economy, gave sacrificially.
Because the Ban’s ministry is helping Christians be free of family issues to serve others, the group provided some of the funding necessary for the young man to go to Bucharest. There he was diagnosed by a well-known doctor. Now he receives the proper treatment he was previously denied from the government. Adrian sees a marked difference in his life.
Adrian and Ema pray that their ministry will equip and encourage young families to end the downward spiral that so many Romanian families are facing by offering Godly counseling, discipleship, true community and prayer to young couples. But they want to reach more than just the couples in their group, and they want those already in the group to have a part in helping others. One way they’ve done this is by traveling with some of the couples to other towns and sharing with churches there how they too could begin such a ministry.
They also encourage the couples to involve their friends in the fellowship. Before their recent Christmas party, Adrian suggested that each of the couples pay for the dinner of another couple outside the fellowship in addition to their own and invite the couple to come and experience the YCF community. Ema and the young ladies cooked for days in preparation. Forty-four couples attended the party and experienced the joy of true, Acts
Chapter 2-quality community, some for the first time ever.
In addition to preemptively offering counseling to young couples before they need it, the Bans are involved with the children’s ministry of the church. They minister to teachers who impact approximately 500 children, hoping to reach them before they become convinced that Christianity is about rules rather than about a relationship with Jesus. Adrian and Ema disciple teachers who want to see children grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ, with a quality curriculum that is grounded in Scripture. They have personally invested in and equipped the teachers to provide a safe, nurturing environment for children at church. Their goal is that the children’s lives will be touched by the joy of knowing Jesus, and that this will carry them into a life of healthy relationships and Christian service.
Another facet of the Ban’s ministry is the opportunity Adrian has a couple times a year to travel to Eastern Romania and teach a group made up mostly of Pentecostal pastors how to care for their flocks through counseling, approachability, and loving responses to hurting people. It is unusual in Romania for Pentecostals to be interested in hearing from a Baptist, but Adrian’s willingness to cross denominational lines and his commitment to training leaders Biblically have won him their highest respect. Through this avenue, Adrian hopes that more young couples will have access to the emotional and spiritual support they need.
...and then, not a moment too soon, a friend invites you to a Christmas dinner to be held at their church. The meal is free and your friends seem excited about it, so you agree to go. You meet Adrian and Ema. You notice there is something different about them. You can tell they are still in love after years of marriage and you are instantly intrigued. You experience true community unlike anything you’ve ever seen before when the group openly shares their needs with one another and then prays about them.
By the end of the evening you know there is something different about these Christians. You don’t know what it is, but you begin to hope that the joy these people know might be yours too. Your hope grows when Ema gives you a warm hug and invites you to attend the next meeting of the Young Couples Fellowship.
Note: Adrian will be available for speaking in the U.S. during March 2007. If the Lord has shown you that this is a worthy ministry, will you serve Romanian families by asking your church, small group, home Bible study or Sunday school class to have Adrian share with them what Jesus is doing through his ministry?
Compiled and written by Summer Kelley
