wfn.org | Early Methodist Lithuanian pastor dies at 98

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Jan. 31, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
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NOTE: A photograph is available.

By United Methodist News Service

A pastor who helped build the foundation of the Methodist Church in
Lithuania before World War II, and survived the Soviet and German occupation
there before moving to the United States, has died at the age of 98.

The Rev. Konstantinas "Kostas" Burbulys, who would have celebrated his 99th
birthday on March 25, died on Jan. 29. He lived in Glen Ellen, Ill., with
his son, Viktor, and daughter-in-law, Rose.

Burbulys attended seminary in Germany and Latvia and was ordained a
Methodist minister in Latvia in 1932. He spent six months as a pastor in
Taurage, Lithuania, before taking a two-point charge at Siauliai and Birzai,
traveling the many miles between the two cities by bicycle.

The pastor barely missed deportation to a Siberian gulag when the Soviets
occupied Lithuania in 1939. Because of his teaching abilities, he also was
spared by the Nazis, who assumed control in 1941. But in 1944, as Soviet
troops pushed the Germans out of Lithuania, he was forced to accompany them
and dig trenches as slave labor for the front-line troops. After becoming
ill, he was released and went to live with a friend in a town south of
Berlin and later to a refugee camp, where he worked as a pastor until the
war ended.

Burbulys and his family eventually settled in a Lithuanian community in the
Chicago area, where he continued to work as a pastor at nondenominational
churches for no pay and was employed full time in a bakery before retiring
in 1968.

The Rev. S T Kimbrough, an executive with the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries, said Burbulys was a translator of the Lithuanian New
Testament and published the only Lithuanian-language Bible commentary, a
multi-volume work. The revived United Methodist Church in Lithuania is
reprinting that commentary, he added.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Burbulys reclaimed the house that he
owned in Siauliai and donated it to the church after the Board of Global
Ministries resumed work in Lithuania. The United Methodist congregation in
Siauliai currently meets in the house, Kimbrough said.

The only pastor from the original Methodist church in Lithuania who is still
living is the Rev. Arthur Leifert, who resides in Germany.
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United Methodist News Service
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