Adventists in Serbia have made meaningful connections with people through healthy activities. Health clubs have drawn a lot of interest from the community. Groups go hiking, exercise together, hold health lectures, and conduct cooking demonstrations.

If not for these activities, it’s likely that the participants might never meet an Adventist or be exposed to the Adventist message.

“Here it’s important to actually build friendships first and then you can say who you are. Otherwise they will reject you from the start.”

Personal connection is how Jesus ministered when He was on earth. So these church members are following His lead by implementing Christ’s method of ministry. This is key to building relationships, especially in the growing cities like Belgrade where people tend to stay focused on their own busy lives.

“This is a community that lives in big buildings. There are a lot of skyscrapers here with a lot of people, with 13 floors or more. It’s a big area to outreach to. There are a lot of people who actually live here and don’t know anything about God. They are not that religious.”

“People don’t want to learn and search for God. We live in that kind of society now where no one wants to know about God. It’s hard to actually talk about it with people who don't know or want to know about God. That’s the challenge here. It is a secular country.”

Just a few years ago, the area known as Novi Belgrade had no Adventist church. Any time church members who lived in this part of the city wanted to gather, they had to travel far to get to the nearest church. In 2020, a portion of your 13th Sabbath Offering helped establish a church in Novi Belgrade! They were able to get a space with two levels and are in the process of renovating the lower level to be an urban center of influence!

“It means a lot to us, because we have our own services, we can invite friends. The facility is very good and we are very grateful to God that it has two levels. The upper one, where we are now, where the services are held, and the lower part, which is very convenient for various activities.”

“This is going to be a center of influence and we are going to have the health clubs here. We are going to teach people how to cook healthy food and maybe some kind of crafts. There are a lot of people here who like crafts. Like making soap from healthy ingredients as well as decoupage and quilling.”

Your contributions to the 13th Sabbath Offering have already been received with gratitude. The new space feels like home to this congregation, and hopefully it will allow them to grow.

“I am very grateful to those that helped us, all the brothers and sisters from all over the world, because this is a big municipality where we are and where our church was not. Believe that we have prayed for over 20 years. We have prayed to have this church and that’s why we are also ready to give our offerings to those who also need to have their own church. I have so much gratitude. Thank you.”

“I’m grateful to God that He gave people the will to give. That He inspired them to give. That tells us we actually have to work and justify what we got. We have to pray for God to use us where we are and fill this building so we have to find another one.”

Please pray for this church as they soon open an urban center of influence in a new part of Belgrade. Thank you for giving to the 13th Sabbath Offering in 2020 and making this congregation’s dream become reality!

people will get used to it now that we have our own space where the activities that we plan to have for the whole municipality will be, they will get used to it and it will be the center where we will be able to work with people, of course, and then invite them to our worship services.

This is a big city, but not that big, and we quickly find some friendships, or some relatives, or on other grounds, so if a person has a need, we can easily organize ourselves to help that person. And we are very happy when someone finds us, otherwise the other way is to go and look for people, by advertising our lectures, then they come, and a good and friendly atmosphere is always created, and they are.

It’s good that there is a center here in Novi Belgrade because it’s a really big area that needs to be reached. There is somewhere people can come and do come. They find it on internet and come. It’s proven that it’s good to be here.

We actually love God and love people as well.

I would like to pray that we have love for each other and others as well. Through that people can see that we are actually God’s disciples. That why we can here. We felt that community, family love. They took us in. We can share that kind of love as well. People can feel that when you come to church you come home. That’s the kind of feeling I want for us to have. Only God can give us that so we should pray about it.