ROM, A Life Changing Initiative

Renewing Our Minds (ROM) Gathering 2013 was the fourteenth annual ROM Gathering held in the picturesque township of Fuzine, Croatia. Since the first gathering in the summer of 1999, ROM has remained consistent with its vision -“Developing leaders transformed by the person of Jesus in a divided world”.

A two-week long ROM Gathering 2013, 13^th – 28^th July, attended close to 60 young leaders from 15 countries. They came from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Northern Ireland, as well as Australia, New Zealand and the US.

The 2013 ROM program, designed to be intentional, relational and transformational, majored on friendship development between young leaders of different faiths and ethnicities. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Muslims, and agnostics were present. The program focused on leadership of service and on leading young leaders to their own personal transformation in regard to forgiveness, reconciliation and peace building.

ROM Gathering 2013 was uniquely impacting and transformative in the lives of all attending. The intensity of mutually encouraging communication that has flourished between all participants since the end of ROM Gathering 2013 two months ago, as well as the contents of journals and surveys, witness to the depth of the impact.

“Initially when others told me that ROM is a life changing experience, I did not believe them. But now I can say that ROM 2013 has been a life changing experience for me”, said a participant from Romania attending a ROM gathering for the first time. “I am excited to be in relationship with world changers who long to participate in creating a world that transcends history of brokenness, fatalism and despair”, wrote a ROM 2013 participant from New Zealand.

A participant from Albania said: “This is what inspires me! In our own society to create the same society of genuine, loving friends that we had there in Fuzine, by loving each other with the great love of God!” And a 2013 team member from Macedonia reflected on her first ROM experience four years earlier: “I felt the infinite and unconditional love of God, given to me through the organizers and speakers at ROM 2009. I decided then to follow Jesus, and this was the beginning of my spiritual journey that truly changed my life and healed my past.”

One of the successes of ROM Gathering 2013 is seen in the number and quality of presentations delivered by young speakers emerging from within the ROM community itself.

While ROM Gathering 2013 enjoyed the contribution of a number of academically proficient professionals in the fields of peace building and leadership development from the world and the region, the strength of this gathering was the quality and variety of themes covered by speakers who were ROM participants only a few years ago; most of them from the Balkans.

Their presentations included themes such as human trafficking in the Balkans, serving the least in our communities such as the poor and children with special needs, and fighting the evils of ethnic and minority discrimination. Moreover, the prevailing themes at ROM Gathering 2013 were – leadership with personal and corporate integrity, forgiveness and reconciliation, and following Jesus of Nazareth as the best example in leadership and peace building.

Another success of ROM Gathering 2013 was the official launching of the first five Forum (ROM and EDI) Southeast European Representatives; the project had been in formation for a few years but came to fruition in 2013. Their role will be to coordinate the follow-up of ROM and EDI activities, as well as to assist the vocational and spiritual growth of ROM and EDI alumni across the Balkan region. Another four Representatives will be added in the summer of 2014 to complete the process of adequately covering the needs of ROM and EDI communities across the entire Balkan region.

In summary, every element built into a two-week long 2013 ROM program played a deliberate role in helping the process of education and transformation of all attending. Some of them were the Empathy Night, sharing evenings, lectures, workshops, various group activities, Café Dialogue, Trinity Forum, and purpose driven film nights and excursions.

In the heart of the 2013 ROM Gathering, however, were well-structured small groups. We had five small groups that met every day for two hours. It is within the privacy of a small group that the change of heart and transformation takes place in the lives of ROM participants.

In the past years ROM was governed by its founding organization, Life Center International (LCI) from Rijeka, Croatia. Since the end of 2011 ROM, as well as Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum, are governed from Seattle WA, USA by a new organization, Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation (Forum), while LCI remains to be the key regional partner in the ministry of ROM and EDI in the Balkans.

ROM initiative in the Balkans and beyond is unique in that it brings Jesus and genuine demonstration of His love into the heart of its reconciliation, peace building and leadership development curriculum. Therein is the secret of the high transformational impact of ROM demonstrated in the lives of hundreds of young leaders who have encountered ROM .

Tihomir Kukolja, Renewing Our Minds, Director