Giving Your Testimony

Greece is a country of about 11,000,000 people. Of that 11,000,000 there are only 30,000 Protestants. That is less than %.001. The Greek Evangelical Church is struggling to survive.

I shared my testimony here at the Bible Institute (the only Bible college in the whole of Greece) last week in chapel. Afterward, I had so many people come up and pat me on the back and ask me questions. People here love to hear testimonies. It gives them hope in the Gospel's power to transform hearts.

Part of the reason that testimonies are so powerful among Evangelicals here is the predominance of the Greek Orthodox church. For many people to be Greek is to be Orthodox, but that doesn't mean having a relationship with Christ. Also, many of the university students we've talked to are atheistic, agnostic, or simply believe in the concept of God. Their definition of church and Christianity is highly ritualized, traditional, and bound up in the Greek state. That's reasonable because there was never a Protestant reformation or enlightenment here. Church is Greek Orthodox. That's all. The young people don't have a leader and they don't have a community. They are angry and confused - you can tell this by the riots that have been happening over the past few months.

It's no wonder that testimonies about the saving power of Jesus Christ inspire the people at the Bible Institute. They love to hear stories about a personal God being at work in the lives of people.