A Seventh-day Adventist school in Romania was rededicated June 15 in a ceremony marking a new chapter in the school’s extraordinary 71-year history. The school in Brasov-Stupini, which will now house a lay training center, has been confiscated twice and returned twice by different Romanian governments, and over the years has been used as an army hospital, police school, and military base.

Built in 1931, the school originally served as an Adventist secondary school and center for ministerial training. Ten years later, during World War II, religious freedoms were abolished, the Adventist Church banished, and the school confiscated to be used as an army hospital.

In 1945 the school, badly damaged, was returned to the church, remodeled, and rededicated in 1946. For three years the school flourished again in a climate of unprecedented religious freedom, only to be confiscated again—this time by the communist government.

For the next 40 years the campus was used as a police school, training center for communist leaders, and military barrack. Without their campus, Adventists in Romania established a limited program for ministerial training conducted from different locations in the capital, Bucharest.

Following the fall of Romania’s communist government in 1989, the church began efforts to recover the school. A court gave the church legal ownership of the property in 1998. After extensive renovations, the school was dedicated, for the third time, on June 15—this time as a training center for literature evangelists, lay workers, and church leaders.

In 1997, the church built a new college 10 miles from Bucharest, where it offers three four-year programs, including degrees in pastoral ministry, Christian social work, and Romanian literature.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony, Carlos Puyol, secretary of the Adventist Church in the Euro-Africa region, drew lessons from the ministry of Jesus, saying: “Love is the basis of every educational process.” He challenged the first class of literature evangelists to develop efficient methods for distributing books and ministering to the spiritual needs of their customers. “We can’t use marketing and selling methods that are 100 years old,” he said. “This school is a place to generate and experiment with creative approaches, fine-tuned to the needs of a transitional society, which is rapidly assimilating Western lifestyle practices.”

Many Romanian literature evangelists are accredited as public health educators by the National Institute for Public Health, a government agency. Speaking to the participants, Dr. Radu Negoescu, NIPH director, expressed his appreciation for their unique role as conscientious promoters of a healthy lifestyle—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.

There are about 500 literature evangelists in Romania, and church leaders say the rededicated school in Brasov is designed to “enliven their walk with God, sharpen their Biblical understanding, and equip them for efficient book distribution.”