Return to Athens

September 07, 2014

Alexandros Pipilios, M.A.R. 2011

Alexandros (Alex) Pipilios graduated from Westminster with an M.A.R. in Biblical Studies in 2011. Since then, he has returned to his native country of Greece and has planted a church in one of the most challenging neighborhoods of Athens. We recently talked with Alex about how his studies at Westminster have helped him in his current context.

Alex learned about Westminster through three pastors in Greece, as well as through a developing relationship with Professor David Garner. Dr. Garner served as a missionary to Bulgaria, in a part of a network of churches on the Balkan Peninsula. For Alex, Dr. Garner was “someone who understood many things from the same context in which we were working.”

When Alex came to Westminster, he appreciated the consistent Reformed teaching. “While I was a member in a confessional Reformed Presbyterian church I did not graduate from a confessional college. While in many ways the theology and the professors [of my college] were Reformed, being in a country with less than 30,000 nominal evangelicals, the college had to be sensitive to various confessions. When I came to Westminster, it was really enjoyable just to find something that was very relevant to my church and the theology that I grew up with that was so profound and so deep.”

While he studied at Westminster, he came to love Dr. Tipton’s classes: Doctrine of Christ, Doctrine of Salvation, and The Theology of Hebrews. The apologetics courses, though, took time to sink in for Alex. “I appreciated the apologetics much more when I left. I didn’t like it in seminary, but it wasn’t until I came to work where I am right now that presuppositional apologetics meant so much.”

After graduating, Alex went back to his home church in Athens and was called to plant a church shortly thereafter in the neighborhood of Exarcheia, “which is billed right now as the capital of anarchy in Europe. It’s a neighborhood of about 25,000 people, and it also makes sense why presuppositional apologetics is important in a neighborhood full of well-educated anarchists and philosophers.”

Alex went on to talk about this neighborhood saying it is “an area that literally doesn’t have a presence of police, only SWAT teams – it’s a ghetto. It is guarded 24 hours a day, surrounded. Inside the neighborhood, you have about 20 different groups of anarchists that gather up daily. In some ways, the church can look at them and learn a lot about what makes community!”

“There was another church that was trying to start in Exarcheia, and the title of their first sermon as they were approaching this area (launching something that is not running anymore) was ‘Living at the Edge of Hell,’ referring to Exarcheia as the edge of hell. For us, Reformed theology in a good way explains common grace and common good. It was really helpful to come over here to take time and listen to the questions before you give the answers, give appreciation to what God has given to these people. We have succeeded in that we have not been a church that comes in to try and curse the city but one that seeks to bless the city. We have gained the trust of the anarchists, which is why we even exist. They know who we are, they know what we’re doing, they even come to our services, and we have had many moments of witnessing the gospel to them heart-to-heart.”

While a Reformed understanding of common grace has helped relate to the people of Exarcheia, it has also helped Alex maintain a solid ground to stand on as he speaks with the anarchists. Also, the presuppositional apologetics taught at Westminster has come in very handy. “My very first participation within the anarchist groups was going to one group where they host philosophical studies every Thursday. You could see, somehow, they were already doing presuppositional apologetics while reading their own writings - they read someone and they tried to figure out the thesis or belief. For me, getting into their different philosophers and different approaches, it has been really helpful just to listen to their theses, and then try and understand the thesis better than what they can do, show how it is a misconception of reality, and then try to give a call back to home. It has gotten to the point where there is so much respect on both sides. I remember one time they said, ‘Alex, we are reading Spinoza. Can you give us a lecture on Calvinism in the time of Spinoza?’ So I lectured on Spinoza, and about 100 people attended! They do have respect for different philosophies; at the same time you can really tell them and show them some mistakes.”

In many ways, Exarcheia is not unlike Athens of Paul’s day. Acts 17:21 says “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” Alex talked about how Paul’s experience in Acts 17 compares to his experience now in Exarcheia: “That was very much the reality, and it is now. We believe that postmodernism is something that showed up in our age, but you can see it even in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians of his time. . . . It was obvious that people were searching. They were searching for God, but they didn’t know it. Paul is trying to tell them even there that God is the one who created everything, but they haven’t heard the good news about him.”

“A second thing that relates is where Paul was daily in the market talking with people. There was a point of time where they invited him to go and talk, ‘We want to hear further.’ That has happened so many times in this area.  Instead of me trying to push hard and trying to get some chance to talk to them or, in some sense, force them to hear me; instead, it has been the opposite. Be who you are, say that you really appreciate people and that you do love people and that you do care about their common good. They’ve offered me the chance to talk to them, instead of me forcing them.”

While we have had converts from people within the neighborhood, none of the anarchists have come yet to faith in Christ. However, that has not been a discouragement for Alex. Instead, they have seen God do things that they could not have imagined. “In the first six to seven months of the church, we did see the anarchists as the ones that we had to gain their respect and their approval. They were the first to be there. We never hoped that anybody from the anarchists would even care about Christianity. That’s not the scenario anymore. From January of 2014, we’ve had a breakthrough; we cannot tell how it has happened. Many people from these groups come on Sunday mornings to church and also to other evangelistic seminars that we have. We hope that we will have some of those anarchists coming to faith; and we hope that, if even just one or two of them become Christians, it will make a huge impact to the rest. To be honest, we never thought that anarchists would come to our church.”

As Alex ministers to the church in Exarcheia, he is continually faced with the challenge of a people cynical about the power of the gospel. Please keep Alex in your prayers as he serves in this difficult corner of the world.