Southeastern Europe Field Expands to become new Central Europe Field

During annual meetings in Northern Ireland in April, leaders in the Eurasia Region proposed the realignment of several fields as a response to increasingly demanding staff workloads, leadership changes, and missiological developments.

The changes also are a response to a significant drop in the Eurasia Region's budget over the past four years, as a result of the incremental reductions in the World Evangelism Fund, and because of the drop in purchase power of the U.S. dollar against the European Euro and the Swiss Franc.

The director of Global Mission, as well as the jurisdictional general superintendent, approved the new plan.

The plan includes creating a new field that consolidates pioneer and developing districts of Northern Europe with the pioneer works of the Southeast Europe Field.

This new field, named Central Europe Field, will include Hungary, Poland, and Scandinavia, along with the current districts in Southeastern Europe.

The rationale for this decision is that Hungary and Poland have a different history of Nazarene church development than the other districts in Northern Europe. In addition, Scandinavia has now expanded to be part of a broader pioneer "Baltic Connection" and it will require a similar missionary strategy of pioneer and developing works in the region.

The countries in the Southeast Europe Field include many other relatively new works, such as Albania, Kosovo, Croatia, and Romania.

Jay Sunberg, the current field strategy coordinator for the Southeastern Europe field, will be the field strategy coordinator for the newly consolidated field; he and his family will move from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Budapest, Hungary.

--Eurasia Regional Office

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