Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2007

from a comfortable living. 46 Later, with the help of Rusjakov, Strahil managed to buy a property in Skopje. When he returned to Macedonia, Strahil began to look at the strategic interests of the church, and how to provide better growth. The small town where he grew up no longer had large numbers of Baptist believers. Large migration from rural to urban areas was taking place in the 1950s, which saw the urban population double by 1970. 47 Most churches throughout Yugoslavia were in the villages, which meant that many had stopped going to church when moving to the cities in the 1950s and AO 1960s. 1 There was a ten-per-cent drop in membership in the Yugoslav Baptist Union in a four-year span because of migration, mostly to North America and Australia. 49 In 1895, missionaries had noted that Skopje had a 40 Klemencic, The Former Yugoslavia’s diverse peoples, p. 256. 41 Wolff, The Balkans in our time, p. 552. 42 Ibid., p. 581. 43 John Allen Moore Letters, 2-6, Correspondence with his Mother (3, November, 1955), Skopje, Macedonia (The Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archive, Nashville, Tennessee). 44 Report, (1.8.1959), SG, UDBA. 45 Ibid., 5.4.1956. 46 Ibid., 1.4.1960. 47 John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 294. 48 McConnell, Indigenous Baptists and Foreign Missionaries, pp. 172-174. 49 EBPS, Feb 20, 1970; 70:48. 30 Journal of European Baptist Studies good central geographic position to reach the whole of the central Balkans, and, similarly, Strahil decided also that it would be good to move to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, which, in the long run, prevented the dying out of the Baptist community in the area. 50 In November 1960 he bought a house, with the aid of the Baptist Union, and decided to establish it as a centre for the Baptist mission in Macedonia. 51 Like his father before him, Strahil held services in a room in his home that he dedicated to the church for the next twenty-five years. This move, while strategically important, also helped him move away from the constant pressure of the UDBA which he was experiencing in Radovis. The local police officers in Skopje were not directly familiar with his life, and there were not many followers to be wary of. As was the standard procedure of the UDBA, they employed informants that were close to the suspect to monitor his activities. 52 This seemed like the new beginning Grozdanov was looking forward to, but the authorities soon threatened Strahil and sent him to court over the new property. UDBA inspectors, through Karamazov’s reports, learned about Strahil’s anxiety about the possibility of the UDBA confiscating the property, and were using this information to set up a meeting with him and threaten him further. Years later, it took a decision by the Yugoslav High Court not to confiscate the property, before the threats that it would be seized were stopped, which was no