Romania-based Adventist Internet Ministry Continues to Thrive after 15 Years
by AT News Team
Intercer is an independent Adventist ministry that serves the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Romania and Romanian immigrants across Europe, North America and Australia. Through web publications and social media it delivers news as well as articles about technology and health, Romanian poetry translated into English, music and video clips, links to online educational courses and a friendship site. It averages 60,000 readers a month and is widely read among Adventists with a Romanian background.
In 1996, Lucian Mihailescu, a computer analyst for a power company in Romania and a member of the Adventist Church, first saw an Adventist web site: the It Is Written web page. The following year he created the first Adventist web site in Romania for his local church in Slobozia, Ilomita, and that launched the Intercer ministry.
“Our main goal was to get to the secular people, but also to give Adventist members a place to find current spiritual materials,” Mihailescu told Adventist Today. In July 1998 he added the Romanian Online Bible. “And over the years the website visitors' stats shifted. Our audience is about 70 percent Adventist” now.
Intercer publishes materials in Romanian, English and Hungarian. The majority of the readers are from Romania with smaller numbers from North America, Spain, Italy, Moldova, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. It has become a cluster of web sites, “some designed for Adventists, some for other Christians and some for secular people,” states Mihailescu.
Romania had one of the highest percentages of Adventists of any country in Europe a few decades ago and Adventist immigrants can be found in sufficient numbers to start congregations that function in the Romanian language in many cities in the United States, Europe and Australia. “The Romanian Diaspora appreciates our ministry,” Mihailescu reports. “It keeps them close to their family at home and with their local church back in Romania.”
Intercer is actually an inter-connected set of three organizations. International Christian Education and Relief Society (INTERCER) headquartered in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada; Lucian Web Service, Mihailescu’s private business since 2002 that does database development and content management services for commercial and nonprofit clients; and Internet to Heaven/Intercer Romania, the original web site operation. Intercer also publishes a daily Email newsletter with links to its own materials and several providers that it represents. The operation is a member of Adventist-Laymen’s Services and Industries (ASI) in the Romania Union Conference.
In recent years support for the Intercer ministry has become sufficient that Mihailescu quit his job with the power company and now works full time for the nonprofit and his associated consultant practice. “We did not get any salary for the first 12 years,” he told Adventist Today. In fact, he had to reach into his own pocket to help cover the expenses of Intercer’s operation.
“We want to thank God for His help all these years,” Mihailescu stated. “Also we want to say ‘Thank you!’ to our co-workers, sponsors, collaborators and website visitors.” You can see Intercer at: https://en.intercer.net/