Serbia

The Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession in Serbia-Montenegro

Who is the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession in Serbia-Montenegro and what are its ministries?

The Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession in Serbia-Montenegro (SECACSM), a member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), is the largest Lutheran church in former Yugoslavia, speaking the Slovak language. A local council governs each congregation, while the entire church is governed by a synod with the bishop as the spiritual head of the church. The largely rural membership of SECACSM is located in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, on the plains south of the Hungarian border. It was earlier a part of the Lutheran Church in Hungary, but upon the creation of Yugoslavia, it became an independent church body. Its pastors are educated at the Lutheran theological faculty in Bratislava.

Today, the SECACSM consists of 50,000 members in 27 congregations.

The main priorities of SECACSM include evangelism in congregations and on a national level, children and youth work, and media work, especially printed media.

A growing challenge for SECACSM is maintaining the Slovak identity in a majority Serbian environment. The widely-used Slovak translation of the Bible was completed in the 1970s. Close links continue with the much larger counterpart and namesake of the church in the Republic of Slovakia.

How do the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession in Serbia-Montenegro and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America accompany one another in ministry?

Through the churchwide ELCA Global Mission unit, the ELCA relates to and is in bilateral relationship with over 80 companion churches and institutions. The ELCA Global Mission unit stewards a church-to-church relationship with the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg confession in Serbia-Montenegro.

This relationship is deepened by a companion synod relationship in Serbia-Vojvodina with the Northwestern Ohio synod.

Serbia-Montenegro: the context where the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of Serbia-Montenegro serves

When Yugoslavia emerged in 1945 as a socialist federation under the communist partisan leader Josip Broz (Tito), the state was structured as a federation of six republics: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Kosovo and Vojvodina gained increasing autonomy within Serbia. Tito ruled the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) for 35 years, sharing power amongst Yugoslavia’s constituent nations. Follow Tito’s death in 1980, the state’s economic decline continued and the power sharing issue escalated. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. Macedonia withdrew from Yugoslavia after its independence referendum in September 1991, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. In April, 1992, Serbia and Montenegro adopted the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and formed a new state. The Montenegrin Assembly made a formal declaration of independence in June 2006, thus bringing the union between Serbia and Montenegro to an end.