About Us
About ReachGlobal and the EFCA
The Budapest City Team is affiliated with ReachGlobal and the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). Founded in 1950, the EFCA is an association of autonomous churches united around the same theological convictions, with over 1,300 churches and over 180 church plants in the United States today.
From its earliest days, the EFCA has been about extending the gospel into areas of need. And whether that’s next door, across town, or around the world, that remains our focus today. Over 550 missionaries serve in 80 countries with ReachGlobal, the international mission of the EFCA.
ReachGlobal understands that the diverse societies around the world demand a multi-faceted mission. Through a spectrum of ministry and service, ReachGlobal has an ambitious vision to impact 100 million people with the gospel over ten years. That vision is well on its way to completion through deep partnerships and empowered disciples who are making disciples in their own native contexts.
To learn more about the Evangelical Free Church of America and ReachGlobal, visit www.efca.org.
Our Mission
“Believing that true hope for Hungary is found in Christ alone, and that the church has been entrusted with His Gospel message, we labor in the Spirit’s power through intentional partnership for the transformation of the city and its people to the Glory of God.”
We know that Christ is the only true HOPE for Hungary. The cold, sterile, grey concrete buildings around us serve as physical reminders of the spiritual emptiness left behind by communism and fueled today by post-modernism. Hungarians are searching for something to fill the emptiness in their lives. Jesus Christ is the hope for the hopeless, and as modern-day prophets of hope, we will point people towards Him.
We believe that the CHURCH is God’s tool for transformation. As a team, we affirm our identity as a church-planting mission, as well as our desire to see transformational communities of believers multiply across Budapest and throughout Hungary. While our individual ministry activities may be diverse and varied, we desire that they have a direct line of sight to the local church, in whatever form it may take.
Our message is the GOSPEL. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16 (ESV)
Our POWER comes through the Spirit. Jesus reminds us in John 15:5 that apart from Him we can do nothing, that fruit cannot grow when the branches are not connected to the Vine. We realize that we will accomplish nothing of eternal significance apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us.
We work TOGETHER with others. God has entrusted to us the resource of many partnerships: committed partner churches and organizations in the US, Hungarian church-planting partners, and like-minded, Gospel-centered ministries in Hungary. We will be good stewards of the partnership resources God entrusts to us, and from a kingdom-minded posture, gladly share them with others.
We long for a TRANSFORMED city. We love our city and endeavor to understand it well. We believe that cities matter to God and have a special place in His heart and in His redemptive plan. Like the city of Ephesus described in Acts 19, we pray that God would make the city of Budapest a place where the message of the Gospel is known to all, a city where the name of Jesus Christ is held in high regard, and a location from which the Word of God spreads widely and grows in power.
Our Vision
In the city of Budapest, a metropolitan area of 3,000,000 and the center of cultural, academic, economic, and political influence for the nation of 10 million, we are asking God to raise up 300,000 disciple-makers, 3,000 churches/kingdom communities, and 300 ministry partners cooperating to bring gospel transformation to Budapest by seasoning and enlightening community life in the city and causing it to become a place of regional influence for the spread of the gospel.
According to the Operation World Fact Book, 2.8% of Hungarians understand and have responded to the true message of the gospel: salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. Statistically this means that in the metropolitan area of Budapest, it is probable that there are fewer than 85,000 believers. Practically speaking, this means that when a believer rides a city bus full of 50 people, she may be the only one. When a teenager makes a decision to follow Jesus, he may be one of only 15 believers in his high school of 500 students. In an apartment complex with 2,000 residents, only 50 may have experienced the hope that can be found in knowing Jesus Christ. It is entirely plausible that there are people living in Budapest today who have never before met a Christian. What’s more, it is likely that there are fewer than 200 transformational churches in the city — just one place of gospel proclamation for every 15,000 residents. These are the stark realities about a city in desperate need of the gospel.
We want to be clear that this vision isn’t a statement about what we will do, or what we can do, or even what we want to do. It is a statement of what we believe God will do in the city we love. We believe that God’s story of redemption is playing out in Budapest just as it is all around the world, and we are certain that this is God’s story, not ours. But at the same time, we are convinced that He has given us a role to play.
In May of 2015, we made a commitment to extend the physical presence and ministry involvement of the ReachBudapest team into two additional areas in the city by 2018, one additional location on the Buda side of the Danube, and one on the Pest side. We first began to realize God was calling us to look towards the city in a broader way in 2012, and in the years that have followed, He has given us greater clarity towards that call and has been enabling us to form a broader network of relationships across the city.
What we have learned over the years will be formative in helping us develop a vision for reaching these new areas. We don’t expect that God’s plan would include replicating what we’re doing now. But we do expect that what we have learned about working in cooperation with local churches and finding the most effective ways to engage people in the neighborhood in gospel conversations will prove helpful as we seek to be salt and light in other areas of the city.