THE ROMANIAN-AMERICAN CHURCH PROBLEM (CHRIS PRUNEAN – GUEST POST)

Chris Prunean is my friend and my dear colleague Nelu Prunean’s son. He is an MD (anesthesiologist) and worship leader at Bethel Romanian Pentecostal Church in Los Angeles, where his father serves as senior pastor. The article he wrote is impressive not only for his understanding of a complex matter but also because he is involved with young people all the time and grew up since early age in this environment. Here it is:

Recently, pastor Ionescu approached the problem of assimilation of Romanian American youth into the American culture.  This is happening to the point where these first and second generation Romanians are unable to speak nor understand their native language.  This is a significant problem from a spiritual standpoint because we have an increasing percentage of youth in our churches who do not speak Romanian.  The only exposure they have to their native tongue is at church, because at school and even at home with their family they speak English.

As dire as the problem sounds at first, things may not be so bad, at least for now in the current generation.  There are many young people in my church who were born in the States, who speak Romanian very poorly, but to my surprise almost all of them understand the language very well.  I watch their faces during engaging sermons, and guess what, they pay close attention.  I recently asked a 16 year old boy who does not speak a drop of Romanian what his level of understanding was from a Sunday morning sermon.  He responded by saying that he understood everything with the exception of a few words.

We should take note however that the youth I am referring to are God fearing people who were afforded the grace to be born and raised in church, who let Jesus be the Lord and Savior of their lives.  They sing in the youth choir, play in the orchestra, and participate in various activities that require them to come to church two services every Sunday and many times during the week as well.  That level of exposure to the Romanian language is not insignificant, in fact it has allowed them to develop an understanding of subtleties within a sermon.

Now, let us examine another scenario all too common within the Romanian church.  In stark contrast to the above noted exemplary families, we also have families who participate only once, maybe twice a month to church.  It is often these people who complain about the problem being presented in this article.  How does one expect a child or teenager to understand Romanian if he or she does not have contact with the language?  Not at school, not at home, not even at church because they don’t come to church!  It is these young folks who are at the greatest risk of losing their Romanian heritage and more importantly, not becoming saved.  So, their parents see the problem and start to go to American churches, where they encounter other problems such as the inability to fit in, liberal theology, lack of motivation to attend, etc…  Soon things begin to degenerate to the point where they rarely attend church… any church.  You’ll see them after a while and ask them where they attend, and they will give you a very generic answer: “We go la Americani…” which means “We go la Americani, rarely.”  Of course, there are those Romanians who have integrated themselves in sound American churches, and attend there every Sunday, but these are not the people I have a problem with.

A few years ago we started introducing English sermons in about half our services to help mitigate this issue.  Is it helping?  Maybe, but I still hold the position that our youth who rarely attend church, and as a consequence do not understand Romanian, and who may not even be saved will not necessarily pay attention to the English sermon, just like they don’t pay attention to the Romanian sermon.  I hope and pray that I am wrong on this point.

In the final analysis, we have a two fold problem in the Romanian church here in America.  The gradual loss of our beautiful native Romanian language, and the falling away from faith which leads to less or no participation at church, which leads to less exposure to Romanian.  This can ultimately become a vicious cycle which will lead either to complete integration in an American church (hopefully) or complete lack of church participation and eventual spiritual disaster.  May the Lord help us to avoid the later problem.