HI

A long time waiting

For more then 100 years baptists exist in Osijek,
but in their long history, they have never had an adequate space for their spiritual, pastoral, evangelistic and social outreach. They have started meeting in private homes and under hostility form society.
Only in 1956 were they formally established as a church and made one of theirmeeting places, a newly build family home whit a larger downstairs living room their official meeting place in 1964. This space of
ca. 120m2 the church is still using for their work and
outreach, although today it counts 85 members and has become a center of Baptst spiritual life and education in faith for the whole area of East Slawonia.

Several times the church has grown to borders of its space - some 60 members. When the breaktrough into a new and better church building has not succeeded, it started loosing membership until it was almost a house
group again. The main reason for such "failure" can be found in the communist goverment which had no ear for the needs of churches and did not consider helping their development. Financially, this part of Europe
has never been very privileged, so the potencial of members could not benefit building plans. The lack of
systematic teaching and surroundings that discouraged people's initiative, contributed to the feelings of smallness and inadequacy and this hindered dreams of bigger angagement outside one's own four walls.