Will the Church Have the Guts to Repent?

A couple of weeks ago I heard that the Dossier Commission is about to disclose the records of priests and pastors' who've been agents of the Bulgaria's State Security and intelligence services in communist Bulgaria.

The Dossier Commission is the body empowered to scrutinise and disclose details from the archives of Bulgaria’s State Security and intelligence services of the communist-era Bulgarian People’s Army. It was legislated in December 2006 but until then many files and records of agents were destroyed.

The concept of the commission was to shed light on whether people in public life had backgrounds as having worked with State Security. The commission thus far had checked 144 000 Bulgarian citizens, of whom about 6000 had proven to have been collaborators.

Now, when the Commission finally announced that records of priests and pastors would be disclosed, this brought about worries in both the Bulgarian Orthodox church and the Evangelical Alliance. The latter called a meeting which had to announce the agents among pastors. The Orthodox church just said that this would be an interference within their deeds on part of the State, forgetting that these agents had been hired by the State to spy on believers and keep churches under control.

It is out of question that the Church in Bulgaria must go through this catharsis and set the record clean. To a great extent the impotence of the Church at present is caused by the lack of repentance in many leaders for having served an anti-Christian and anti-humane system like the communist state. In reality we've put 'new wine in old wineskins' (Matt. 9:17) and wonder why the gospel in Bulgaria is making so little progress. Who would believe clergy when so many of them have been working for the communist state?

Of course, this will be painful. It will perhaps lead to a temporary crisis in leadership. But this bitter cup must be drunk if the Church wants to become the spiritual leader Christ wants her to be.