Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9412010007
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Oct. 12, Collins and about 15 other Virginia Baptists will leave for two weeks in Slovenia to preach, teach and generally encourage small groups of evangelical Christians. As in his other trips in the last 15 years, Collins will be sponsored by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board based in Richmond.
He and others in the party are going to the Eastern European country at the invitation of Baptist leaders there. As an experienced mission leader, Collins recruited most of his team, which includes the Rev. Charles Watkins of Roanoke, the Rev. Stuart Carlton of Salem, the Rev. Page Young of Fredericksburg (a former Salem resident) and the Rev. William Slater of Marion.
Each clergymen will lead a group of three or four adults assigned to specific duties in major cities in the 2-year-old nation formed when Yugoslavia broke up its unified government.
Unlike its warring neighbors, Croatia and Bosnia, Slovenia has enjoyed a more stable transition, Collins said. Its major problem - aside from the privation that affects all the countries that were once under Communist domination - is an influx of destitute refugees from the nearby war.
A Baptist worker in adjacent Hungary requested spiritual help for Slovenia, Collins said, because of a shortage of Bibles and teaching materials. For 75 years, evangelical Christians there have had little to encourage their faith and practices. The Southern Baptist pastor noted that Catholicism is the predominant Christian religion, but the decades of communism have made the people "very hungry for vital Bible study and prayer in communities."
He and part of the group will be in the capital city, Ljubjlana, which has about 300,000 permanent residents and is situated on what romantically is described as "the sunny side of the Alps." Collins has learned that it has been culturally influenced by Italians and Austrians as well as by Hungarians and the ethic groups that formerly were united as Yugoslavia.
Four Baptist congregations - the largest having about 70 members - will be visited by the team, Collins said. Other Christians meet in "house churches," much as the founders of the early Christian church did nearly 2,000 years ago.
Collins said he's as excited about this trip as any he has made, especially because this will be the first mission excursion by Baptists into Slovenia. But going abroad to changing countries is nothing new to the former Air Force chaplain, who retired 19 years ago as a colonel.
"I couldn't stay retired," Collins said. "I'm just naturally active, and now I think it keeps me young. But without my military pension, I couldn't afford to do this for the church."
Short-term missionaries pay their own way. The Slovenia trip will cost about $2,000 each. Collins and his wife, Mildred, have spent as much as $3,000 on some trips to more remote parts of the world.
These lands have included southern Russia last year, China, Kenya, Indonesia, Japan, Australia twice, New Zealand, Brazil, Tanzania, India and Mexico. They cover every continent except Antarctica, the pastor said.
He considers recruiting people to go the most fun of his travels. People are picked for their skills, as well as their willingness and ability to afford the travel and withstand unfamiliar living conditions. He said he invites them "one on one."
When Collins isn't traveling, he's usually temporarily serving a Southern Baptist congregation. Following his release from the service, he became pastor of a Lynchburg-area congregation, but soon chose intentional interim ministry. That means he contracts with a church to serve for several months while a permanent pastor is being sought. He counts Bonsack, Zion Hill, Virginia Heights, Tabernacle, Daleville and Catawba Valley among those temporary pastorates.
Especially at the small Catawba Valley Church in New Castle, supporting foreign missions has caught on in a big way. Collins noted that his time there resulted in the congregation's raising a substantial amount for the trip to Slovenia; a group from Tabernacle in Salem also has given money.
It will not help pay for the missionaries but will be used to buy Slovenian-language Bibles, he said.
"It will give us the greatest pleasure to see [the people's] faces when we hand the Bibles out."
by CNB