{"id":10364,"date":"2022-03-17T16:34:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T16:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/?p=10364"},"modified":"2022-03-21T09:27:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T09:27:18","slug":"every-ride-is-a-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/every-ride-is-a-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Ride is a Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 March 2022 | Belgrade, Serbia [Vanesa Pizzuto]<\/p>\n

It was an unusually cold and snowy day in Belgrade, Serbia. Yet, that did not stop a group of friendly bikers from coming to meet me and sharing the story of their motorcycle club, combining their passion for Jesus, their love for the road and their penchant for sharing the Gospel in creative ways.<\/p>\n

Back in 2016 the Trans-European Division (TED) mission board allocated funds to support creative and innovative evangelistic initiatives<\/a> such as this. When Dejan Lukic got involved and founded the first Serbian Adventist motorcycle club, \u201cThree Angels\u201d, he did not know any other Adventist bikers or similar clubs existed around the world. \u201cBut a friend told me about Adventist Motorcycle Ministry<\/a> (AMM), and I realised I was not alone, we are a much bigger family,\u201d Lukic shared. In time, Lukic recruited twelve other bikers, and joined AMM, becoming the president of the Serbian Chapter.<\/p>\n

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Sharing the Gospel while riding bikes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their mission is beautifully simple: sharing the Gospel while doing something they love, riding bikes. They organise rides, invite their non-Christian friends, and allow conversations to flow naturally in the context of a loving, accepting community. \u201cPeople who never prayed in their lives before are willing to pray with us. We go to church with them, we ride together, we eat together\u2026 We do just that, nothing else. But the Holy Spirit works, and we have wonderful experiences,\u201d Lukic said. Their first baptism will take place in Macedonia this summer, in collaboration with AMM Macedonia.<\/p>\n

According to Lukic, one of the most beautiful aspects of this experience was discovering that God would use something he was passionate about to reach others, that didn\u2019t need to fit into a traditional mould. \u201cGod showed to us through this ministry that rather than napping on a Saturday afternoon, we can do much more, we go with our friends for a ride\u2026 which has deepened my relationship with God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lukic feels that AMM is also helping destroy prejudices against bikers, \u201cThey are very open to talk about God\u2026 We must go to them, to the motorcycle world, rather than expecting them to come to us.\u201d Above all, Lukic emphasises the privilege of seeing God, \u201cWorking through us and in us. It is something I don\u2019t have words to describe. We don\u2019t do something extraordinary, just ordinary stuff, but God provides the miracles.\u201d<\/p>\n

If You Save Me, I Will Serve You <\/strong><\/p>\n

In his early twenties Lukic found himself in a life-or-death situation. He had borrowed money from a loan shark and could not repay the debt. He also owed money to the electricity company and the bailiffs were chasing him. His only asset was a car, which he had received as payment for an ongoing job as a builder. When his employer suddenly cancelled the contract and demanded that he returned the car, Lukic knew he was at the end of his rope. So, he prayed for the first time, \u201cIf you are up there, God\u2026 If you exist, please help me! If you save me, I will serve you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following day Lukic heard someone knocking at his door. To his surprise, it was not the loan shark, but a family offering to buy his car. He sold it and immediately paid the loan shark. \u201cThen I waited for the other people to come and collect their debts\u2026 A day went by, and then a week, and then a month, and then a year\u2026 Seven years I waited, and nobody ever came,\u201d Lukic shared.<\/p>\n

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Dejan Lukic, president of the AMM Serbian Chapter [Photos: courtesy of Dejan Lukic and Vanesa Pizzuto\/Adventist Media Exchange CC BY 4.0]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometime after that, while Lukic was reading his Bible, he came across a proverb, \u201cWhen a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him\u201d (Proverbs 16:7 NKJV). \u201cI could not think of anyone who was my enemy,\u201d said Lukic, \u201cexcept for the employer who gave me the car.\u201d As Providence would have it, his phone rang while Lukic was thinking about this. It was no other than his former employer who assured him he had not forgotten the incident! Lukic offered to meet up with him and told him his side of the story. \u201cNobody did for me as much as you have,\u201d Lukic said to him, \u201cI would have never met God if it wasn\u2019t for you!\u201d The meeting ended with reconciliation and a renewed friendship that lasts to this day.<\/p>\n

Lukic became a Seventh-day Adventist roughly a year after God answered his desperate first prayer. He was looking for answers about the Sabbath, which led him to study the Bible and discover the Adventist church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The role that leather jackets, helmets and motorcycles play in sharing the Gospel in Serbia <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1592,1572,7],"tags":[1045,1044,1047,283,1046,78],"class_list":["post-10364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bosnia-herzegovina-montenegro-north-macedonia-serbia","category-evangelism-mission","category-news","tag-adventist-motorcycle-ministry","tag-amm","tag-creative","tag-evangelism","tag-innovative-evangelistic-initiatives","tag-serbia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10364"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10383,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364\/revisions\/10383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}