In Memorian K.H. Ting Branko Lovrec K.H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Branko Lovrec, a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance®


(BWA) from 2005 to 2010, died on September 28, in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. He was 79 years old. Lovrec served the BWA in a number of other capacities, including


as a member of the General Council, the Executive Committee, the Commission on Doctrine and Interchurch Cooperation, and the Human Rights Award Committee. Lovrec had deep Baptist roots. His grandfather, Vinko Vacek, was


a founder of organized Baptist work in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes during the first half of the 20th


century. He was editor


of the official Baptist periodical beginning in the 1960s in Croatia, and was elected the first president of the Baptist Union of Croatia in 1991, serving until 2003, following Croatia’s independence in 1991. BWA General Secretary Neville Callam said that Lovrec had


“made his mark on the international stage” and that his “contribution to Croatian Christianity was immense.” While mourning the passing of the Croatian Baptist leader, Callam told Baptists in the Central European country that the BWA was “encouraged by the level of faithfulness and commitment to the cause of Christ that was so evident throughout his life.” Lovrec entered full time ministry in 1967 after being trained and


working in the field of medicine. He was especially noted as an interpreter for visiting preachers to Croatia, including Billy Graham, and as a translator of the New Testament and other Christian literature. He founded the publishing organization, Duhovna Stvarnost,


which, among other volumes, published The Handbook of the Bible and The Encyclopedia of the Bible in the Croatian language. In 1982 Duhovna Stvarnost published Knjiga o Kristu, the first Protestant New Testament translation in Croatian to gain acceptance among the wider public. During the last years of his life, Lovrec worked on the translation and production of Our Daily Bread, booklets with daily devotionals. He served as president of the Protestant Evangelical Council


and its antecedent, the Association of Evangelical Ministers. He cofounded the Croatian Bible Society and was elected its president in 1995. Lovrec was also cofounder and long time president of the Executive Committee of the Society for Religious Freedom, and was a member of several other organizations. In 1999 the Croatian government awarded Lovrec with the


Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Katarina Zrinski for his contributions to health, social welfare and the promotion of moral values. He is survived by wife, Mirjana, sons, Matija and Andrija, and


daughter, Iva. Funeral services were held in Zagreb on October 3. A memorial


service was held on October 9 at the Zagreb Baptist Church where he served as deacon and elder.


30 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE


Revolution who led a “post-denominational” re-emergence of Chinese Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s, died November 22, 2012, after several years of poor health. Hailed by some as a patriot and visionary, Ting, 97, worked


through 60 years of change in the world’s most populous nation. Ting was ordained as China’s last Anglican bishop in


1942, a position he never renounced and technically held until death, even though his church was effectively dissolved and merged with other Protestant denominations into the umbrella organization, the China Christian Council (CCC). The CCC also includes many congregations that were founded as Baptist churches. Ting served as chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the liaison between church and state in China, and president of the CCC, the official Protestant denomination. He became president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary in 1953. He lost his positions during the Cultural Revolution, but


returned to prominence in the wake of liberalizations following Mao’s death in 1976. In 1985, Ting and others set up the Amity Foundation, a


Christian faith-based organization that promotes education, social services, health and rural development across China. The foundation’s work includes the Amity Printing Company, a joint venture with the United Bible Societies launched in 1988 that recently celebrated the printing of 100 million Bibles. The Baptist World Alliance® has had close ties with both the


CCC and Amity. Representatives of CCC have attended every Baptist World Congress since the 1980s and have visited the international offices of the BWA in the Washington, DC suburb of Falls Church in Virginia on several occasions, most recently in 2010. These relationships were cemented following a BWA visit to China early in the decade of the 1980s. Subsequent visits by the BWA to China have been made, including the last visit in 2010. BWA General Secretary Neville Callam lauded the work


of Ting in helping to preserve and shape Christian witness in China. “The legacy of this outstanding Christian leader is a thriving church in a country that has one of the largest Christian populations in the world. He represented an openness and faith that enabled the BWA to have close and cordial relationships with both the CCC and the Amity Foundation.” Ting is credited with opening up the Chinese church to


the outside world, including Amity’s Teachers Program, which recruits people from around the world sponsored by church agencies to teach English, Japanese or German in Chinese universities. Farewell rites for Ting’s remains were held on November 27 in the city of Nanjing in eastern China.


With excerpts from a report by the Associated Baptist Press


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