A Generation Led to Jesus: Remembering Pastor Chuck, Part 17
Calvary Chapel missionaries from the United States banded together to reach out to teenagers in Hungary. The teens, hungry for God’s Word, crammed into their small apartment for Bible study as God brought the Jesus Revolution to the former communist country. Learn more about this exciting time in this story reprinted from Issue 98 (Winter 2024) of the print magazine.
Pastor Greg Opean shares Bible verses in Budapest. The Lord used Greg as a catalyst to bring many Hungarians to Christ.
Eastern Europe Welcomes the Word
The first two missionaries to go out from the castle Schloss Heroldeck in Millstatt, Austria, were Greg Opean, a young surfer-turned-youth pastor, and Rod Thompson, a plumber with a heart for missions. These men (along with Mike Harris, who was already in Yugoslavia) would be the first in a band of brothers—strengthening each other in the Lord, partnering in the work, holding each other accountable, and refusing to let differences or temptation distract them from church planting and discipling. As a result, they watched God move across Hungary and Yugoslavia, opening doors for the Gospel and new churches in city after city.
Back in the States, Greg had seen the Lord move mightily on his college campus, helped plant Calvary San Diego, CA, and served under Don McClure as a youth pastor. Feeling burnt out after five years in youth ministry, Greg had decided to take a break from ministry to work at his dream job—a sales rep for a surfboard company. But at the same moment he handed Pastor Don his resignation letter, Greg got a phone call from a pastor urging him to go to Hungary.
“I had never even thought of missions,” Greg recalled. The pastor urged him to go for six months and “see what the Lord might do.” Sensing a green light from the Lord, Greg got on a plane to Europe. At the castle, he met Rod Thompson, who was helping renovate the plumbing.
“When we got to Baja, Hungary, it was like being dropped off on the moon. The Iron Curtain had just fallen; they were 50 years behind the West in pretty much everything. We lived in a little communist apartment,” Greg reminisced. As he and Rod walked around the town, the teenagers were fascinated by the Americans and flocked to their tiny apartment. “To these kids who had grown up under Soviet communism, we represented everything they longed for, being from ‘the land of the free and home of the brave,’ ” Greg reflected. “We started leading these kids to the Lord right on our doorstep.”
Greg and Rod soon had about 80 teens cramming into their small apartment nightly for Bible studies. “These were the kids off the street, the hippies of Hungary 30 years after our hippie movement. The Jesus Revolution was happening in our apartment,” Greg chuckled. “It is just this whole amazing story that kept unfolding for years. We started to realize that this was the same work of God that had started in Southern California, and that God had called us to Hungary because He was extending the Jesus Movement there.”
Though the two Americans had originally come to work with a local Baptist pastor, he urged them to keep reaching these kids who would never set foot in his church. “He said that he could see that God had anointed us to reach Hungarian youth, and that God was going to do a new work through us.” That local pastor christened the new movement Golgota (Aramaic for Calvary). Today, Hungary has 23 Golgota churches, with dozens more in neighboring countries.
“Pastor Chuck Smith would often say that he felt like an observer, just watching God move,” Greg noted. “We felt the same way in Hungary.”
“Look among the nations and watch—be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.” Habakkuk 1:5
Pastor Rod Thompson was used by God to minister in Hungary and Serbia.
God began opening doors in other parts of Hungary. “Everywhere we went, we had been invited. That’s how it began,” recounted Greg. Within a few months, a Hungarian man knocked on their apartment door, speaking perfect English with a British accent. “He told us, ‘I’m from a town an hour away, and for the last 10 years, I’ve been listening by shortwave radio to Calvary Chapel sermons broadcast out of London.’ Through tears, he told us, ‘I have been praying that Calvary Chapel missionaries would come to Hungary, and I heard you guys were here. I’m trying to disciple six people by teaching through the Bible like Calvary Chapel does. Will you help me?’ So the second Golgota church was born in Szeged, Hungary.”
In our next installment, we'll share about Calvary Chapel believers and pastors continuing the movement in Eastern Europe.
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