Stagnation and decline following rapid growth in Turkish-speaking Roma churches in Bulgaria [microform]

A large accession of traditionally Muslim, Turkish speaking Roma (known as Millet) to Christ occurred in the early 1990's, but this church movement began to decline in the second half of the 1990's. This study explores the factors that people who left Millet churches, people who stayed in Millet churches, and Millet church leaders perceive to be involved in the stagnation and decline. A descriptive, qualitative, and ethnographic approach was used, and in-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with twenty active members and twenty people who had defected from four Millet churches to elicit their personal narratives of the processes of coming to faith, staying in the church, and leaving the church. Four pastors and two regional church coordinators were also interviewed for their perspectives on reasons for and factors in defection and decline. The study found that all except for one of the defectors saw themselves as still being believers in Jesus.

A sense of sin and shame was stopping many of them return to the church. The reason most often given by defectors for their initial defection from churches was being hurt or disillusioned by the conduct of church leaders; other reasons included work and other commitments, doubts about their faith, opposition from husbands, and conflict with another believer. People who stayed in churches had overcome similar problems with the support of other believers, and a key implication of the study is that such support---especially visiting church members in their homes---is needed to increase retention.