We Need More of ROM - Renewing Our Minds

Dear Friends,

Many beautiful things happened during the summer months of 2017. First, we feasted for almost two weeks as we celebrated probably the best annual EDI – Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum under the leadership of its cofounder Justin Kagin. Forty young professionals, from more than 12 countries gathered in Fuzine, Croatia at the end of July to embrace the principles of healthy business and economy shaped by the teachings and example of Jesus.

Our next newsletter will bring you a more detailed report on the impacts of EDI 2017 on its participants. However, at this moment we would like to focus on the 2017 ROM - Renewing Our Minds Gathering of young leaders that took place in the weeks following EDI 2017, namely between 11th and 27th August, in Fuzine, Croatia too.

ROM 2017 was an international group of seventy young and seasoned leaders from fifteen countries who lived and grew together for more than two weeks in an intentional learning community. Among them were political and social activists, community leaders, founders and directors of various non-governmental organizations, professors, journalists, artists, faith leaders, students eager to make a positive contribution to their societies, and a group of refugees from distant and conflict ridden countries seeking a new home.

Most of us came from the Balkan countries (Southeast and East Europe) like Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Moldova. Some came from more distant places, such as Iran, Afghanistan and South Africa. A few came from more sophisticated places, such as Norway, UK and USA. We all came to wrestle together with hard issues that are hurting and dividing our countries, communities and the world.

We talked in our small groups about the rise of nationalism, fascism, hatred, and intolerance.  We wrestled with the sins of modern day slavery, ethnic and religious discrimination, and increasing threats to human rights, freedom of conscience and religion, and to the peace in the world. Through it all we focused on Jesus as the source of healing, personal and social, and the answer how to uphold the dignity and integrity of human life. We discussed at length on how to become the agents of forgiveness and reconciliation in our communities.

What distinguishes ROM (its umbrella organizations Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation and its sister project EDI) from numerous other leadership development initiatives, is that we believe that the only humanism, social engagement and entrepreneurship that make a lasting difference in the world are those sanctified by the transformative power and example of Jesus Christ. The underlining understanding behind the ROM philosophy is that only those leaders whose lives are moved and instructed by the power and example of Jesus, who through the cross embraces the whole world into His forgiving and healing embrace, are able to spread their hands in the loving embrace of our fellow men and women. Consequently, only the people with their minds renewed by Jesus Crist are capable of being the true ambassadors of genuine renewal in the world. Romans 12:2. Hence the ROM motto “Ambassadors for a Better World”.

If one is to single out the most powerful and transforming moments at ROM 2017 it would be hard to do justice to the abundance of powerful moments that made this ROM Gathering stand out. We ought to mention a few, however: Agape Dinner, a welcoming dinner at the beginning of ROM; Refugees Morning and the Persian Night – special moments when refugees shared their stories and cultures; Empathy Night, a powerful evening that opened our eyes to the hurts of others; and the feet washing moment at the end of ROM that powerfully demonstrated the power of being a humble leader. However, the most individually transformative times at ROM 2017 were the afternoon small group activities.

Asked in the survey what they were taking home from ROM 2017, most of the participants said: “a genuine demonstration of love and service, friendship and transformation, a fresh understanding of leadership, powerful human stories, motivation to be deliberate in serving and loving others, better understanding of the centrality of Jesus, and of how one’s faith in Jesus informs one’s actions in society.”

A special gift to the ROM 2017 generation were the seven refugees who attended the gathering from the beginning to the end. Two refugees joined the ROM 2017 summer team. The other five attended ROM for the first time. One of them, a professional taekwondo sportsman from Iran, recently received the residence status in Croatia. The other six are caught up in a lengthy and tiring process of waiting to receive the final decision about their legal status in Croatia. Three of them, Christians had to leave Iran due to religious persecution. Two of them, Muslims from Afghanistan, left their country due to ongoing tribal discrimination and persecution. All of them are beautiful young people whose life stories, their attitude of service and gentleness have moved and enriched everyone attending the Gathering. All of them were also profoundly moved by the kindness, acceptance and love they received from everyone attending ROM 2017. “To us you are not refugees. You are our friends, brothers and sisters. We are your family, and you are our family,” those were the words of encouragement they often heard at the ROM 2017 Gathering.

To summarize this report one needs to say that the center of everything we did, taught or practiced at the ROM 2017 leadership and reconciliation gathering was the person of Jesus, and our objective to encourage everyone attending to follow Him and emulate Him. One of the participants said a few days the ROM 2017 was over: “I was worried I would get depressed in the days after the gathering. But I did not because I see myself now as a person on a mission”. Another participant wrote: “A broken hearted and frustrated girl turned into an inspired, happy and full of hope person. The best gift I am taking from ROM 2017 are many friends who share the same values and love for Jesus.”

That ROM is much more than just another event to be quickly forgotten is demonstrated by the intensity of interactions between the new friends who now think alike in the days following a ROM gathering. Debora Salgau from Romania wrote on her Facebook page a few days ago: “There were participants from many countries, of different backgrounds and different age groups. They slowly became my friends, and all my walls came down, and my prejudices were gone. So now, countries like Afghanistan, Iran or Serbia are more than just a point on the map”. 

Violeta Altmann blogged: “I came to the (ROM) table hungry, dehydrated, discouraged, and then I was served clarity, encouragement and wisdom in the most unexpected ways. What I loved the most about ROM 2017 is that not every attendee was a Christian. If we don’t dine with the nonbelievers, when will we witness to them? I loved the way there was room for respect and conversation, understanding and love at the table.” You must read the entire text of her blog for a profound ROM 2017 story.

Let me complete this report with the words of William May from Houston, TX who attended the 2017 ROM Gathering with a group of four representatives of the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church. He shared at the ROM 2017 Closing Banquet: “The words can never suffice to explain the profound impact of ROM and the need for this ministry to grow in the world. We need ROM in the US too.”

It is very hard to explain the passion and transforming impact the Renewing Our Minds ministry has on everyone who comes in contact with it unless you’ve seen it and tasted it yourself. The main reason I have myself stayed at the helm of the ROM leadership for so many years (since 2001) is that I am continually witnessing the work of the transforming power of God in the lives of the hundreds of young people who have allowed their minds to be renewed through its ministry.

This is why I am finishing with the line many of you have heard many times before: Please, help us move forward. We still have some bills to pay to cover all our current expenses. And we have the next season to plan, and the seasons ahead of us. ROM is a kind of ministry that is continuing to be increasingly needed in the world in distress.

Thank you and may the Lord bless you.

Tihomir Kukolja

Renewing Our Minds, Director

Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, Executive Director

Renewing Our Minds Generation 2017

ROM 2015 Photo Album

ROM 2015 Photo Album: Renewing Our Minds Gathering 2015 – ROM 2015, August 1 - 16, Fuzine, Croatia. Several outstanding features make this ROM stand out in a special way. The first one was the outstanding quality of the group. This was a very much engaging group. Our small groups demonstrated this well. Although small groups are given 1.30 hours a day on average to meet, they would all meet for two hours, even longer, eagerly discussing the daily themes and questions. The second outstanding feature was the high quality of speakers and engaging nature of presented materials from the very first day to the last. This summer almost 50% of our speaking corpus were ladies. The third outstanding feature was the quality of prayerful support witnessed every day at ROM 2015. A vibrant and sizable prayer group met every day at 7am, before all the other daily activities would start, to pray for the participants and the team, and all daily activities to follow. These few sentences and over 300 pictures presented here (out of 1600 photos) are only beginning to tell the story of ROM 2015. 

EDI 2015 Photo Album

Get a glimpse of the EDI 2015 experience as you visit this photo album

EDI 2015: Miracles in Sun-Scorched Lands

Visit the EDI 2015 Photo Album

1 Kings 17:16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.

At EDI (Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum) rain poured out in Fuzine, Croatia.  It poured out on the participants and the team of EDI 2015.  This was not a literal rain but a spiritual rain that God gave to all of us who attended these 11 days together this July in Fuzine, Croatia.

The current reality of our countries cannot be glossed over; all are experiencing some types of crisis.  For the majority of participants and team coming from Southeast Europe a recession with no end in sight has gripped their countries.  The happiest thoughts of the young people are to flee to a Western country (this were the actual desires of several participants when they first arrived at EDI).  Although this is not necessarily bad for them, what about the countries they would leave behind?  Will they continue to be dried up, sun-scorched lands?  Even prosperous Western countries like the US and Norway, two other countries represented this year at EDI, have their own cultural, financial and spiritual crises.  At EDI we did not gloss over these realities but neither did we let them determine our present and our future.

God impressed us during the days of EDI 2015 that we will be those who hold the rains of blessing, the joy, the flour and oil that will not run dry no matter what happens to the surrounding around us.  We are the “7000 that will not bow our knees” (1. Kings 19:18) to circumstances and the winds and ways of the world, but are emboldened by Jesus and his principles to make a difference together.  To bless our nations financially, culturally, and spiritually acting out the principles of Jesus together, determined to speak, walk, act, and love differently.

At EDI we were encouraged and taught by well selected professionals in business, economics and politics.  Robert Maricak, former CEO of General Grafik in Croatia, encouraged us to avoid corruption, to pay our taxes, be people of integrity, to be entrepreneurs and take risks.  Eimert van Middlecoop, former minister of defense in the Netherlands, taught us about the values and traditions of Jesus that can be brought into politics. Samuilo Petrovski, National Director at IFES for Serbia and Montenegro, spoke on leadership and diplomacy.  Gerti Bogdani, an Albanian politician, reiterated that we can have the miracles of peace in the midst of storms, with God fighting on our behalf.  Others that filled our jars were Jack Fallow, former CEO of UK Gasforce, who spoke about maintaining the flow in our work life and through literature from authors such as Plato and Tolstoy taught us what it means to be people of integrity. 

Experts discussed relevant issues facing our countries.  Mihaela Kovacs, Director of Fundatia Baraca Sighisoara in Romania, Margareta Mihalic, project manager at Autonomous Centre (ACT) in Croatia, and Andrey Ivanov, Head of sector, Roma and Migrants integration at European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, taught us about the Roma situation in Europe using practical examples of reconciliation and love.  We also addressed the discrimination and empowerment of women, and the current waves of media manipulation. The later was addressed by Tihomir Kukolja, BBC trained radio broadcaster. Through it all we were given hope. 

Thanks goes to Drazen Glavas, Head of ET!K, a Croatian company committed to Education, Training and Kommunication (communication), and Camelia Popa, artist who also runs an art school in Romania.  They helped us explore our gifts and talents and we learned to write out and live our life goals as well as express who we are in art.  And through the second annual EDI creative competition, participants presented visions of change for their countries and committed to practical solutions for bringing hope to our nations.  For the team, who were previously EDI participants, EDI held its first series of advanced EDI courses where they could continue to grow through private mentoring designed especially for them.

In small groups, recreational trips to the Adriatic coast and conversations during breaks, participants and team members dialogued about our lives and cared for each other with sincerity and depth.  People were open about their difficulties as well as their joys, dreams and visions for their own lives, their communities, their countries and the world.  It was a time of refreshing and inspiration for all of us. 

By the end of this forum I felt that I had been amongst amazing men and women that will be God-made miracles in their sun-scorched lands, bringing rain where there is none.

Justin Kagin, EDI Director

This is What ROM is About

Since 2001 Allen Belton has been a speaker and mentor every summer at the ROM (Renewing Our Minds) Gathering which takes place in Fuzine, Croatia. Here is Allen’s brief report on the past summer ROM Gathering.

My time in Fuzine at the Renewing Our Minds Gathering 2014 was rich inspirational experience for me and everyone attending the gathering.

I would like to share one story that demonstrates that. It is about two young couples. Both couples were married just before ROM and both couples decided to come to ROM for their honeymoons. Shenaj and Erman Belegu are from Kosovo. Shenaj’s first time at ROM was in the summer of 2013 and she decided to bring her husband to the next ROM. When I asked her why they came to ROM for their honeymoon she said, “Because I don’t know of another place that has so much peace, that I can feel so comfortable and be myself. I wanted my husband to experience this place for himself.”

The other couple just married who came to ROM 2014 were Marko and Mateja Stupar, from Serbia. They have been part of ROM for a number of years. “ROM is our extended family and we wouldn’t miss it”, they said. They shared a joint wedding reception, together with Erman and Shenaj, at ROM Gathering 2014.

The remarkable thing is that not all is well between Serbia and Kosovo, and ROM is probably the only place in the recent history of Serbia and Kosovo, where one could witness two couples, one from Serbia and another one from Kosovo, celebrating their marriages together, in the same room.

This is what ROM is all about. Each person that experiences ROM is a change person. I am a changed person. ROM is a time to learn from one another, a powerful time of building relationships, learning about Jesus, a time to have our minds renewed and being challenged to home and make a difference.

As a speaker at ROM I felt that what God gave me to share with those present at the last ROM was well received, understood, appreciated with open minds and hearts. I had many one-on-one conversations, and God used me to help others see that Jesus loves them, and that in God’s eyes we are all ‘Designer Originals’.

Allen Belton, published by Balkan Task Force Newsletter, October 2014.

Highlights 2014

As we are coming to the end of 2014 let’s enjoy watching these two videos highlighting the two main gatherings that took place in Fuzine, Croatia in July and August 2014, Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum (EDI) and Renewing Our Minds 2014 Leadership and Reconciliation Gathering.

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

Meet the FLR Team – Neil and Linda Quist

Neil and Linda Quist from Seattle WA have over the years developed a sincere and profound friendship with the Balkan countries. Neil Quist, who is a board member of the Board of Directors for Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation (FLR), and Linda Quist, Balkan Task Force and Executive Team member of Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, Seattle WA, explain the reasons for their ongoing and lasting involvement with and commitment to the vision and mission of the Renewing Our Minds (ROM) initiative and the new organization Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation (FLR). Listen also to the webcast Dare to Be the Difference featuring Neil and Linda Quist, Ambassadors of Peace in a Divide World. 

REFLECTIONS ON 2012 ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY AND INTEGRITY FORUM

Justin Kagin, Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum Director, and the EDI 2012 team members Leo van Doesburg, Mihaela Kovacs, and Christian and Eunice Vatran, reflect on the Economic Diplomacy and Integrity Forum 2012 that was completed on Saturday, August 11, 2012 in Fuzine, Croatia.