Nations Worship in Bulgaria
How Collaboration Transforms Communities
Sep 22th, 2025 | Ashley Hendrickson
At One Collective, we often say that when people work together and follow in the ways of Jesus, the result is real, lasting change. In a small town in Central Bulgaria called Tulovo, we’ve seen this model exemplified in a blossoming music ministry that has brought different nations and cultures together to worship God in unity.
Empowering Community
Sam Jung joined One Collective’s team in Bulgaria in 2022. One Collective workers have been deeply involved in the community for nearly 30 years, investing especially in Roma and ethnically Bulgarian youth. They have fostered partnerships with a local church and school and developed a ministry center called The Gathering Place that hosts various outreach, mentorship, literacy, and youth groups. It was within this collaborative, community-centered environment that Sam met a teenage boy - Filan - whose budding desire to learn the piano grew into a ministry of music, unity, and worship.
Sam recalls, “Filan, one of the teenagers who is really close to my heart, gave his life to Christ, and God started to bring up gifts in him.” Soon after, Filan asked Sam if he could teach him a few chords on the piano. “I never planned to do worship ministry in Tulovo, but I thought, ‘Sure, sounds good.’”
With Sam’s encouragement, Filan learned quickly, and the two started to play worship every Friday evening at the youth group. Soon, other teens were drawn in as well and began to discover their passion for music. Andres joined as a singer, and Ivan as a guitarist, and a little band formed itself.
Sam shared, “We really saw God was opening up a door here. We started to pray and seek, ‘Where is this going?’ We started to write and translate songs, and then the idea was born to record them.” With the help of a Christian music producer friend and a local pastor who opened his private studio, the group had everything they needed. Within weeks, they were recording songs together.
Their first EP of four songs was soon followed by a full album titled Nations Worship. The name reflects its heart: 11 musicians from German, Bulgarian, Roma, and Persian backgrounds coming together to praise God in 5 different languages. Sam reflected, “It amazes me to see how God used the wish of a boy to play a few piano chords to unite nations and cultures to praise him. It amazes me to see how teenagers discovered through this project that they have gifts which they can use to serve the Lord. And my prayer is that through this, Tulovo will be transformed.”
True Collaboration
This story is a beautiful picture of what happens when ministry is deeply collaborative and community-centered. Sam didn’t arrive in Tulovo with a pre-determined plan to start a worship ministry. Rather, his posture was to build relationships, listen to his community well, put his own skills to use, and come alongside what God was already doing in Tulovo. With this posture, Sam was able to bring people together to encourage the gifts of local young people and watch God weave together something that no individual could have orchestrated.
True collaboration means not relying only on our own ideas, but recognizing and joining what God is already doing in other people and places. We collaborate to honor and empower one another’s God-given giftings because these giftings reveal how God is working and what his loving vision is for each of the communities we work in. Emphasizing a diversity of voices and empowering others is an important value for One Collective because it allows us to know and follow what Jesus is doing in and through others and center our ministries and relationships around him.
In Tulovo, following Jesus has allowed people to work together, teenagers to recognize their God-given empowerment to serve and love their communities, and nations to worship side by side. And that is the kind of lasting transformation we all long to see.
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