October 20, 2026
ORADEA, Romania – The Sammy Tippit Center for Christianity Under Persecution launched Oct. 6 at Emanuel University in Oradea, the only government-accredited conservative Baptist university in Europe.
Named for the American Southern Baptist evangelist whose international ministry often leads him to places where persecution is severe, the new Center was designed to strengthen persecuted Christians and those who minister to them.
“We are all believing that the Holy Spirit led us to set up the Sammy Tippit Center as an academic center for evangelism, discipleship, research and strengthening Christians who suffer for their faith,” Rector (President) Paul Negrut told Baptist Press. “Bearing in mind Sammy’s passion for evangelism and discipleship with a focus on areas where Christians suffer, and the Romanian legacy of prayer and revival during the Communist persecution, we believe that together we can make a difference in our generation for the glory of God and the spreading of the gospel.”
Attendees at the launch included alumni from throughout Europe and America, in addition to students and faculty on the stately campus of Emanuel University. It was a grain field when the church bought the property in the mid-1980s. Today, traditional red buildings with classroom and dorm buildings four stories high are set on a serene green campus sprinkled with maturing hardwood trees.
“The seed for the Center was planted before the COVID pandemic and recently promoted by some of our young faculty who are committed to continuing to build on both Sammy’s legacy and the legacy of the Romanian churches under persecution,” Negrut said. “After years of prayers and reflection, the prompting of the Holy Spirit is so clear and powerful that we cannot do otherwise.”
Emanuel University Oradea offers master’s and doctoral level education in a variety of secular and spiritual disciplines. It emphasizes developing spiritually even more than educationally, “to do more for God and together with Him. The vision and call to change the world in terms of the Kingdom of God require passion, work, diligence and perseverance,” according to its website.
Emanuel Baptist Church, which started the university in 1990, was itself started in 1909. Today it seats about 2,400 people in Sunday morning worship. It grew during a revival that spread throughout Romania in the 1970s and ’80s amid widespread persecution of Christians. The church started an underground “School of the Prophets” in 1986, to train pastors and leaders to spread the gospel in rural areas of the Communist-controlled country.
That underground “school” led to the formation of Emanuel University.
Evangelist Tippit first traveled to Romania in 1980, and soon after to other persecuted nations across Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. Negrut was a deacon at Emanuel Oradea when he met Tippit.
“God brought our hearts together in prayer and partnership for the gospel in difficult times,” Negrut said. “Sammy has demonstrated faithfulness, perseverance and commitment to work alongside his Romanian brothers and sisters under persecution. His personal testimony, ministry and legacy as a man of God with integrity must be known by the generations to come.”
Negrut said the Sammy Tippit Center for Christianity Under Persecution is unique in Romania and Europe, if not elsewhere, in that it provides “a comprehensive approach that responds to the need of the hour: fractured lives, families, churches and societies.”
Tippit’s newest book, written for the Center’s launch, The Smile of God in a Hostile World, shows how followers of Jesus can live with courage when the winds are against them.
Persecuted people are among the world’s most rejected people, Tippit told Baptist Press. When a person in a Muslim nation, for example, comes to know Jesus, they’re typically rejected by family, friends, and nearly everyone they know. That trauma needs to be ministered to at the same time they are discipled.
“Under the sovereignty of God, faith in the risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, I pray that in 10 to 20 years there will be a new generation of mature Christians who are passionate for the salvation of the lost, equipping the saints, engaging the secular/pagan ideologies, encouraging, strengthening and supporting those who suffer for their faith,” Negrut said.
“At this time Emanuel University has more than 3,000 graduates in 43 countries of the world,” the rector continued. “Just imagine in 10 years: What a mighty spiritual army for the work of the Kingdom of God!”
The Sammy Tippit Center for Christianity Under Persecution is to include curricula, conferences, global research, and academic papers.
“With the Center, we’re going to begin training leaders to minister to alumni and to current students,” Tippit said. “We hope next September for this to multiply out. We have a number of people ministering in Ukraine being a part of this, and the Ukrainian diaspora. One million Romanians live in London, and some of the larger Romanian churches are in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
“We can equip them to minister to refugees,” Tippit continued, by utilizing his ministry’s Digital Bible Institute, which provides online instruction in 20 of the world’s most dominant languages, which reach 3.7 billion people. “Everybody can go through the Digital Bible Institute [four 13-week modules] in their heart language.
“In most of these places – like China, North Korea, Vietnam – they do not have any kind of Bible college or a biblical seminary to train and teach new believers,” Tippit said. “Something needs to be provided for them for just basic theological things.”
Jolly Sidhu, a pastor in India, told Tippit about a young woman who had become a Christian. Sidhu asked her about her prayer life, and she assured him she prayed an hour every day. When the pastor asked her how she prayed, she said, “Hallelujah, praise you, Jesus. Hallelujah, praise you, Jesus. Hallelujah, praise you, Jesus. …” Repetition was the way she’d been taught to pray as a member of the Sikh religion.
“Instruction in what to pray and how to pray transforms their life,” Tippit said. “That’s critically important for new believers. In the persecuted church, much of it, there is no understanding of biblical truth at all, so when they come to Christ, the basics of Christianity and the Christian life are extremely critically important.”
Tippit said the research aspect of the Sammy Tippit Center will bring together in one place knowledge of what is taking place among persecuted Christians throughout the world.
“Emanuel gives us a model for this to be in other countries,” Tippit said. “The Brazilian Baptist Convention has expressed interest in this for one of their seminaries. They are looking for tools that are practical to help their students. … A center for the persecuted church is something we believe with our relationships we can build throughout the world.”
___
This story appeared in Baptist Press.
Share with others
