Genézius

The Genézius Association university student ministry represents a community of 70 or so students and young professionals (but remember that the "middle class" here lives on an average salary of $100 a month). The main activities include a weekly Bible study, two week-long evangelism programs and three summer camps each year, and an outreach "club" that hosts lectures, discussions and media events that are of great interest to the non-Christian students in one of the most important university cities of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca.

Levente Baló, Executive Director
Zsuzsa Borbély-Bartalis, Administrative Assistant.

PREVIOUS PROGRAMS

# BIBLE STUDY GROUP. It is the main event of our community, a weekly event during which we study one of the books of the Bible, we have a discussion about it, we sing, we pray together, we keep in touch with each other.
# SMALL GROUPS. The Bible study group has many members and new members keep coming, thus we are unable to pay attention to more than a few people on each Bible study occasion. Therefore we split into smaller groups. Last year the couples of our community, i. e. the seniors agreed to invite into their homes 10-15 students weekly. On these occasions the members of the group read the Word of God and talk about their sorrows and joys, their problems in a familiar atmosphere. Small groups have the function to help people get to know each other and keep in touch with each other.
# MASVILAG (ANOTHER WORLD’S) CLUB. It is an alternative Christian initiative created with the intention to offer university students an opportunity to meet regularly, have discussions and constructive debates in an atmosphere of familiarity on a forum that is vividly present in the spiritual life of the town. Our belief is that otherness does not need to be a motive for excluding the other person, for turning away from the other, but rather it should be a source of enriching each other. We also believe it important to come to know and at the same time to make known the traditional values of the supradenominational Christian culture. We try to choose topics that interest students both professionally and existentially. Our guests are well-known personalities of the Hungarian cultural and scientific circles. (Among our guests have been: literary critic Péter Balassa; film aesthetician Gábor Gelencsér; philosopher György Tatár; biologist András Falus etc.)
# RETREAT. We usually have this quiet weekend, in a spot of nature at the beginning of the school year. On this occasion we seek the opportunity to be silent before the Lord and to pray together. We have two such occasion in a year, one in autumn, which is mostly a reunion of various ministries taking strength from the Word of God and sharing their experiences and one in the spring, which is dedicated to the students.
# UNIVERSAL WEEK OF PRAYER. There is a week of prayer held on the same week all over the country. We also organize this week of prayer for the students of our community. Prayer is the central event of the meetings and we also attempt to think over the true meaning of the expressions “the communion of the saints” and “the holy catholic Church”. The peculiarity of the event is that it is held ”in the time of need”, in the most difficult period of the student life, the examination period.
# HANGVILLA (TUNING-FORK), the student choir. It is an opportunity both to be together and to serve together. We ministered in several congregations, meanwhile we established new connections and renewed the relationship with our old connections. We learn how to praise God with songs.
# EVANGELIZATION WEEK. It is a week of lectures we organize every half-year in order to spread the Gospel in a wider range focusing mainly on the outreach to university students and young intellectuals. (Topics of previous occasions: Nature, natural sciences, faith; The Master and the Disciple; The Chances of Communication etc.)
# NATIONAL YOUTH CONFERENCE. Once every year we invite young people from every part of the country to a conference that helps people keep in touch and make new friends. The number of the participants is very high. On these occasions we choose topics that particularly interest young people, and we look for an answer especially to the question: how can we live credible Christian lives in these times.
# SUMMER CAMPS. Since each student goes back to his or her hometown/village when the university year ends, we organize summer camps, where they could meet again, so that community life should continue even during the summer holidays. We have an English camp whose aim is to learn English, get to know each other and in the meantime grow in faith. In this “Scottish” camp: native English speaking young people give English lessons to young people coming to the camps and also give testimony of their faith. In organizing the camp we collaborate with an organization called Eastern Europe for Christ (EEFC). We also have an intellectual’s camp that is dedicated to learning about the Christian values and tradition and making it widely known. Every year we have lectures and discussions about different topics of the present day.
FUTURE PLANS FOR 2003-2004
October 8. First Occasion of the Bible Study Group. It is held in the basement of the manse of Farkas Street Church every Wednesday at 7.30 PM. This year we will study the Gospel of Mark.
Worship for Youth. It will be held in the Tóköz Church monthly on Sunday at 6 PM. Next occasions: October 26, November 30.
November 3–9. Autumn Evangelization. Theme: "Dwell upon this land!"
November 15–16. Bible Study Group Seniors’ Reunion.
November 22–23. Retreat at Hidegszamos. Organizations doing mission work are participating.
Restart of the Másvilág Klub (Another World Club). Our guest on November 13th will be Luzsányi Miklya Mónika, Hungarian writer. She will speak to us about the problems revealed by the Holocaust.
In the meantime we will continue the film projections and discussions begun last year.
January 19–25. Prayer Week.
March 22–28. Evangelistic Week in the Spring.
April 24–25. Retreat. On our spring meeting we would like to spend a weekend with those young people who belong to our community. In the rush of the school year we would like to enjoy silence, to pray together, to be edified, to get to know each other better.
April 30–May 2. National Youth Conference at Zilah. Topic: "Alone it’s not working."
June 6. Garden Party.
July 26–August 2. Intellectual Camp at Hidegszamos.
July 31–August 7. Scottish Camp at Les with the EEFC.

We also have some plans which are still in the early phase: we began some social programs last year. We would like to continue and enrich them so that we form a ministering community.
More and more members of our community take part in the preventive work begun by the Bonus Pastor Foundation. An increasing number of high school students come to these occasions and we would like our community to have more contact with the teenagers, to serve more among them. We tell you this in order to ask for your help and prayer.