The Balkans

 

The Balkans

[amazon template=image right&asin=1850786097]This book for me — the last of the Briefings — had the slight feeling of a circle being completed.

After ranging far and wide around the world, we returned to look at Europe.

And even more fun, in one of the first books I ever wrote for WEC International, the 1986 World Christian Starter Kit, I mentioned Albania as one of the places to which it seemed a hopeless task to try to obey Christ’s call to introduce the gospel to all nations.

Good job journalists aren’t paid by predictions fulfilled. In 2006 I was able to report on a small but fully formed Christian Church in Albania with a multiplicity of denominations, Eastern and Western, quietly doing its stuff.

It wasn’t quite so much fun to report on the role the Church elsewhere in the Balkans played in the wars. Today the cross is a symbol of Serb or Croat nationalism, not an icon of forgiveness or reconciliation. Sad.