My story

Pastor of the Reformed Church of Tušice, married with Lenka, father of two children.
His favourite hobby is work, but he is also interested in economics and history.

I didn’t consider myself as an atheist, but I lived quite far away from living faith. When I was 16, the Velvet Revolution occurred. It was an astonishing event for me and I was happy. My relationship with God kept staying at the same formal level as before.

Back them I was very interested in economics. I considered it a means to make social life better. I was particularly fascinated by a handbook written by a person named Jozef Kučerák, a well known economist and politician after the Velvet Revolution. In this dimension I saw the real sense of my life, my life vocation. I thought a good economic system improves people’s existence.

I didn’t want to become an entrepreneur or company director. I was attracted by the field of macro-economics. I remember I dreamt of a job at the central bank. My passion for economics got deeper during the first year of Economic University. The teacher of the main subject matter (General Economics) was a lector from the USA. He had a completely different approach than anybody else. Thanks to his teachings I was deeply interested in that matter. He just had a smaller group of students (about 30 students) from the total number of 200 students in our grade. He had debates with us, polemics, and we also wrote essays. He taught us to reflect in an economic way. I was full of enthusiasm. During summer holiday, when I was in the first year of University, my life breakthrough occurred. What exactly happened? About a year earlier my sister had started to attend meetings of a Christian youth community in a nearby village. She invited me as well. And I said yes. I started to participate in several actions together with them. My weak Christianity met living faith. I sensed that that community of young Christians encouraged me to take God, the Lord, in a very serious way. I started to reflect. And I concluded that I shall be atheist. This was the way I considered myself and spoke with other people. And I really stopped going to church. I kept attending meetings in the youth community. I kept reading Christian literature and meditated about God more intensively than before (when I used to be a tepid Christian).

With a certain egoistical approach I followed this community of young people to a big youth meeting in Tošanovice, in the Silesian region. There, I experienced my Damascus, my conversion. The speeches of fr. Kaczmarczyk really impressed me and – in the blink of an eye – all my atheist thoughts fell down like a sandcastle.

I believed in Jesus Christ with great enthusiasm. I immediately wanted to study theology and leave my economics studies. It happened in summer 1993. In June I was an atheist, and in August an enthusiast believer and I was always speaking about Jesus to people around me. I had just one thing to tell my friend: all we learned about God is the truth. It is not just folklore, but something real. God is living even today. As I said, I wanted to quit my economic studies and I wanted to study theology. Before that, I perceived economics as something that can help people. After my conversion, I understood that the only thing that can help people is the Gospel. Even in economically successful societies there are many unhappy people, plenty of cases of depression and even suicides. It doesn’t mean that I started to consider economics as something bad, but I didn’t deem it as my future profession. My friends (believers) encouraged me to go on and finish my studies. I listened to them and, today, I feel thankful for their advice. It was very hard to study something that did not interest me anymore; and, on the other hand, I was sad I could not study something I liked. In our life we also have to make things we don’t like too much. And that was a good school for me. I ended my economics studies, but I never used it for work. Nevertheless, it gave me a larger view over life. I can reflect about economical questions also from a theological point of view. Economics concerns also everyday life. Christians are also involved in economical principles governing everyday life. The Bible also contains several references to economics. Thanks to my economics studies I was able to contribute to social discussion about economics, by also inserting reflections resulting from Biblical principles. On the other hand, even in practical life, in our Church community I could exploit some of my knowledge in order to manage accounting issues. Even the Church should manage its properties in a transparent, intelligent, and rentable way. At the end of my economy studies, I started to work as a teacher and studied theology as an external student. At the end of my theology studies I became a preacher of the Reformed Christian Church in Slovakia. Today, I work in the town of Tušice, about 20 km from Michalovce. Together with my wife we educate our children in the faith in the Lord. I had many chances to see that God is loyal and that we can always experience God’s help and blessing if we keep our faith in His Word in our personal life, in our family, and in our work environment. I try to lead people and encourage them to accept and follow Christ, because this is the best thing we can do.