Our New Vision of Cell Churches
The following article was originally published in City to City Europe’s “Word from the City” newsletter in December of 2023.
Despite a long history of ministry, it took me over a decade to realize something I had missed all along. In 2012, my wife, Anna, and I married and began a twelve-year-long journey in youth ministry. During this time, I studied urban geography and got my PhD in 2016, and my research topic was spreading a new economy throughout Budapest (we live in Pomáz, a suburban area of the city, with our three children).
2019 saw me beginning a full-time position in a well-established church in the center of city. After a few years, the youth ministry was flourishing, new leaders were taking up exciting roles, and a great number of young people were attending youth groups. Finally, in 2022 I felt God leading me to hand off this leadership to the new generation—and that He wanted to start a new period in my life and ministry.
That was when I realized something crucial that I had missed all these years: I barely met and talked with non-Christians. I served plenty of Christians every day, but I had moved further and further away from the unchurched people in my city and their culture. After realizing this, a desire to spread the gospel with people like this started to form in my heart again. Anna and I noticed that it was, of course, hard to reach non-Christians inside the walls of a Christian church, and so we knew we had to start something new out in the city itself.
I felt God leading me to leave what I perceived to be the traditional way of ministry and to plant a church that took a different form. We often said that this would be a “start-up church” and that we would need help. That was when I grew acquainted with City to City Hungary. Two years of Incubator training and being involved in this network of church planters helped me refine my understanding of living a gospel-centered life.
This new vision inspired us to apply the gospel to any given situation, not just those which are generally understood as spiritual or church-like—a skill we are still learning. During my first year of training, it was a great challenge for me to build a ministry design that would contextualize the gospel to the unreached people of Budapest, and I had to consider many different cultural, theological, and practical questions that I never had before.
The area that we want our church plant to focus on the most is the 13th district of Budapest, which has the biggest cluster of business offices in the country. We specifically want to connect with Millennials and members of Generation Z, as those two generations are close to our hearts and more than 30,000 people of these age groups work or live in the district. Our church plant’s name is yHive for two reasons: in Hungary, Millennials are called Generation Y, and it imparts the feelings of a start-up company in our workplace-centric context.
During our first year, we gathered our core group of eight people once a month to clarify our vision, build deeper relationships, and pray for the gospel to be renewed in our hearts. To fit our context, we opted to start a cell church in a very personal and grassroots way. More specifically, we began running a core group for twelve Christians, and the main aim of these meetings is to further our study of the gospel, our spiritual maturity, and our discipleship. Each of these members then starts their own cells: missional communities where some believers (four or five people) meet with their non-Christian friends or colleagues to talk about the faith.
Our hope is that, through these cell communities, those without faith in Christ will come to see the hope and truth He offers. Ideally, if new attendees come and these group grow large enough, they can create new cells and start the mission cycle again. All the while, we hope personal relationships will be built and the Lord will work in each person.
Now, our planting team counts eight people who meet every two weeks to have a Bible study. We have each learned a lot about ourselves, our weaknesses, and our strengths. We continue to seek more opportunities to spend time with our non-Christian friends.
I’ve undertaken volunteer work at one of the district’s youth centers for drug prevention and social work, assisting them by teaching math to elementary school kids. I’m grateful to God that my leaders and colleagues in this center are pleased with my work, and it is exciting for me to form new relationships with them and serve the city.
We are all so grateful to have these relationships with the people in the 13th district, and one of them has even started to personally study the Bible with me every Sunday. This is some of the first, exciting fruit of our mission. Our prayer is that in the future yHive will enjoy the company of even more who are open to visiting our church and hearing the wonderful news of Jesus.