mission

The pastoral training and professional workshop named “Spirituality and Mission in the Church” held its conference titled “Spiritual Hunger 7.0” on March 2, 2023, at the Ráday House in Budapest. The topic of this was the problem of pastoral care. Márton Járay reported on the results of a survey conducted among Lutheran ministers in Hungary in his presentation titled “The Lost Shepherd - Lessons from a Pastoral Research”.

Vortrag, gehalten am 16. Oktober 2018 in Szováta, im jährlichen Konvent des Pfarrvereins der Siebenbürgisch-Reformierten Landeskirche. In der ersten Hälfte des Aufsatzes gibt der Verfasser je eine globale und eine lokale Lagebeschreibung. Der heutigen globalen Selbstgefährdung der Menschheit (einem Auswuchs des „westlichen“ Geistes) wird eine nicht minder sichtbare, aber jene zerstörerische Kraft weit übertreffende andere globale Macht entgegengestellt: die umfassende Macht des Geistes Gottes, repräsentiert durch die Gemeinschaft der Geheiligten, aber präsent nicht nur in der Kirche.

In this paper I examined one of the effects of László Ravasz’s theological thinking, namely the development of his spiritual life and its impact on his position as a scholar of theology. Due to the limitations of the scope of this paper, I present the lesser known views of Ravasz’s work on mission. Among others, John R. Mott’s lecture in Cluj-Napoca provides clues that the young Ravasz approached the tasks of pastoral ministry, preaching, dissemination of the gospel, theological education in a modern and relevant manner.

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.