This weekend, we welcome Rev. Rareș Călugăr as the guest preacher from Cluj, Romania.
Rev. Rareș Călugăr is the District Superintendent of UMC Romania and pastor of the Way of Faith UMC in the city of Cluj-Napoca, the second largest city in Romania, situated in Transylvania. Married to Ioana, they have 4 children.
Rev. Rareș is the first ordained elder in the history of the United Methodist Church in Romania. Way of Faith UMC was planted by him in 2010 as the first UMC in Romania to journey together with the Orthodox believers who are interested in exploring the Evangelical renewal of faith. 90% of the Romanian population is Orthodox. After 15 years as part of UMC, Romania has six UMC churches. HPCUMC has been in partnership with Way of Faith UMC since 2018.
Thanks to the financial support of HPCUMC, Way of Faith UMC was able to create a community center situated in the center of the city, called “Meeting Point” that serves the community in various ways.
Activities at Meeting Point run by Way of Faith UMC are ministries for those receiving treatment for cancer, working with orphans, programming for teenagers supporting their development, weekly worship and spiritual programming, support of Ukrainian refugees, camps, etc. Each of these ministries has helped us to strengthen church development by increasing the number of people we come into contact with and the circumstances under which we meet them.
The church’s ministries have continued to grow over the years in various projects; RAZA project is one of them. Thanks to the support of HPUMC in the last years, young adults are utilizing the rooms of Meeting Point to explore and learn to live independently (after aging out of the orphanages). Way of Faith UMC wants to see this community space to be a place to meet, to grow, to heal, and to connect, and being able to run all these programs through their corresponding nonprofits allows us the space to do these things.