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This paper is a revised version of a lecture presented on October 16, 2018, in a conference entitled “Diminishing Church, Increasing Responsibilities”, organised by the Union of Reformed Ministers in Transylvania. The author, who is also trained in church law, experiments with interdisciplinary methods. He is active as a spiritual counsellor and mentor even outside the church. He argues that the main danger for the church is not its diminishing numbers but rather its disintegration and dissolution, loosing it main traits, attractiveness and impact. He points to fields where the church needs to change its perspectives and be more effective.

We are always seeking for the sense of the life, for ourselves and for the place in our family and community. Religion shows a new way to us, according to Jesus Christ’s principles. The son of God not only created a religion, but gave us an example how to live, and sacrifice himself for us. Sándor Karácsony reckons religion as a spiritual behavior, the base of our social contacts. We have to see into our lives and character according to the message of Jesus Christ. The right and appropriate personality can be evolved by individual training.

The views of Sándor Karácsony about religious education can be clearly discerned from his writings. The main task of reformed pedagogy is to activate continuously the divine notions in this continuously changing world. Protestant teachers must accomplish their daily work according to the Gospel of Christ. The Hungarian Reformed Church was a so-called “church of schools” for hundreds of years. This means that even between WWI and WWII it owned more schools than churches. The number of Reformed schools is significant even today. Sándor Karácsony claims that only Reformed people and communities are able to maintain Reformed schools by people who “are ready to serve and sacrifice themselves” for this cause (Karácsony, Sándor: A magyarok Istene. Széphalom Könyvműhely, Budapest 2004, 172).