I recently watched an episode of House (season 3 episode 13 if you’re interested) where the patient being treated was a Roma, or Gypsy. Most of the complications in the diagnosis of his condition had to do with the fact that he was Roma and the many implications that came with that fact. The main implication being that they didn’t trust outsiders, and thus didn’t trust the hospital. I am currently working and ministering in an area outside of the capitol city of Macedonia that is well known as a Roma area. We minister there by providing food for around 50 children (some of these 50 are teenagers also) every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We hold a children’s church service with somewhere close to 75 kids every Saturday. We are also making plans to launch ministries aimed at reaching and discipling youth, and hopefully grooming some of them for leadership in the church.

The Roma are a people that you can find all over the world, hence their appearance in the hit TV show mentioned above. Unfortunately, they are severely oppressed everywhere they exist. As a culture they are looked down on. We all know that some people tend to cut themselves short and put up walls and limits around what they can do or accomplish in life. Working to break down these walls and limits you put up around yourself is a hard enough task. What happens though, when you have walls and limits that other people or entire cultures put up around you? Now you have to work to overcome these walls and limits. Most people typically come to a point where they have to face one or the other of these walls and limits. They either have to overcome something they put up or something someone else put up around them telling them that they cannot advance beyond this defined point so they shouldn’t even try.

The Roma in Shutka, as the area outside of Skopje is called, face a tough cultural dilemma. They face both sets of walls and limits. The adults couldn’t get a full education because it costs too much, and they can’t get decent jobs because they don’t have the education for it. What do they do then? A lot of them go and beg for money or food. Most of the beggars you’ll see in Skopje, if not all of them, are Roma. Some of them have somehow learned to fix minor appliances and will go looking through the garbage to find such appliances, try to fix them, then resale them. Some of them go through garbage to find bottles or cardboard that they can take to a recycling center and trade them in for a small amount of money. Often times, if people need workers for a day, they know they can find Roma to help because there’s always Roma that need work.

One of the walls and limitations the Roma have put up for themselves is a lack of a desire to work. They know they need to in order to feed their families so they take the random odd jobs they may be offered. As far as a regular job though, they don’t want it. I don’t quite understand why as I myself am an outsider, but I do know it doesn’t make sense. If you need a job, and you are offered one, wouldn’t you want to take it? Well, most of them don’t. This is simply a wall that they have put up. They don’t really want to work.

One of the walls and limitations that has been put up by outsiders is that they perceive the Roma are liars, beggars, and thieves. They see them as being dirty and poor. Nobody wants to hire them for regular jobs because they think they can’t rely on them. Ultimately, people look at them as if they are worth less than everyone else.

If you think about it, the two sets of walls tend to share bricks in a way. The walls were built so long ago that the two cultures have become deeply rooted in their views of what the Roma are capable of. Part of why the Roma believe they are limited is because of what the outsiders think of them, and part of why the outsiders perceive the Roma the way they do is because the Roma have been told so long that this is how they are and this is the only way they can be. They have become stuck by their own acceptance of the walls.

Now, there has been ministry in this area amongst the Roma for maybe 10 years. Missionaries have worked with the national church to try and establish a Roma based congregation and have invested much into the church body and its facilities, both monetarily, physically, and spiritually. It seems, however, that there is little to show for all of the work amongst the people of Shutka. Or is there? Has the ministry effectively brought around cultural change? Can the results effectively be measured by change that can be seen? Should that even be a projected goal of such ministry? This is the question that has been churning in my mind for this past week and as I approach new ministries and begin planning such ministries, this question will help shape and guide my thoughts and plans.

I am a firm believer of helping those that need help; and I am also a firm believer in the age old lesson that if you give a man a fish he can eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime; but most importantly, I am a firm believer that God changes people from the inside-out.

As I have been struggling to find my place in the ministry here in Macedonia, I believe that this last belief needs to be the focal point of my heart and mind in everything that I do. I have not been sent here to single handedly break down the walls that have foundations hundreds of years deep between two cultures. I don’t believe that I nor the ministry energy and money that have been invested in Shutka are here to bring around social change. Will it do so? I believe that it will, in time. Should it be our goal? I strongly believe it shouldn’t. It will come, eventually, but only after God changes the hearts of people on both sides of these walls. When the walls come down, it may be very subtle and gradual, or it may be quick and news of its fall may be bigger than that of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Only God knows. All I do know is that God wants me to share His love with people, and I’ll do that on either side of the wall.