Archives for 2015

Time definitely flies faster when your days are full of exciting events, visits and conversations. I am already half way through my teaching trip in Russia, mainly in and around Moscow. My Orthodox Church ministry partners set up their dioceses missions and catechism conferences every night so that I could do my teachers’ training sessions in the mornings. On a couple of occasions – in Kashira and in Kolomna – I was presenting to a quite mixed audiences of public school teachers (mostly non-believers and nominal Christians) and priests in charge of catechism and education.

In those times, it was especially hard for me to present my material in a “politically correct” way without offending either side. I had to speak of Christians in the third person (Christians believe that…, according to Christian teaching…, etc.) addressing teachers and then switch to the first person when I make an eye contact with a person in the cassock (we believe…, in our Bible…, etc.). It was both fun and a challenging task to find the wording and the material that would be appropriate and powerful for these very different groups of participants in the same classroom. [Read more…]

Can one travel all over Russia while staying within the same time zone? I will attempt to do exactly that as I take off for my November-December teaching trip this afternoon. My geography this time will be limited to only three cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tver (half way between the other two) – on the same straight line stretching through almost half of the country – South to North. No jetlags, no cultural adjustments – piece of cake.

Well, some adjustments will have to be done as I will, as always, address sometimes very different audiences in terms of their openness to the Gospel message and their different religious backgrounds. I will be teaching a class in Missions 101 at a Russian Orthodox Seminary to future priests and share my faith with general public in the city history and arts museum. I will train public school teachers (mostly non-believers) in using the historic evidence for Christ in their classrooms and I will preach at a Pentecostal church. I will have an informal Q&A forum with a Baptist youth group and I will speak to the unknown radio audience on the matters of rational foundations of Christian faith via a Catholic radio channel. Our material – FaithSearch Discovery – allows for such a variety of formats and target audiences due to its non-denominational nature and its extremely flexible and easily adjustable media. I am looking forward to these challenging and exciting experiences!

I am thankful for being able to spend this Thanksgiving Day with my family and I want to thank all of you, my dear ministry partners, for the honor of being your missionary to my home country and to the people of Russia!

Oh, what a week it was in Krasnoyarsk! This was my fourth visit there and my hosts already knew what our FaithSearch ministry is about and what impact it makes on different audiences – school teachers, youth, church people, lay leaders, etc. – and planned my days accordingly. That meant early wake-ups, and two—or even three—events per day, ending with a well-into-the-night conversation, usually in the kitchen. On some days, I would travel to a small town three hours each way to conduct a training for their public school teachers and lay-leaders and then have another presentation on that same evening to a youth group in the church back in Krasnoyarsk. These young people do not care about sleep at all and are willing to continue our discussion until the sunrise. My last one with them ended less than thirty minutes before my train to Novosibirsk—and five of them even squeezed into the car in order to continue our Q&A session right up until my train took off.

This time around, apart from the FaithSearch Discovery CDs and the Surprised by Faith books, I was bringing a special gift to the Krasnoyarsk Lutheran Church, carried from Minnesota: a church bell. It was not actually a gift, as they paid for it. They had it delivered to me and asked me to bring it to them in my suitcase. These things are insanely expensive in Russia these days but they found and bought one on eBay™ very cheaply. I agreed to deliver it right to their door – if they would pay me back for the delivery by putting together a good week-long teaching schedule for me in their city. The deal seems to have worked for both parties. In fact, they must have overpaid me by far!

I hope to catch up with some sleep now in Novosibirsk as my visit here is planned out not by “crazy Russians” but by a British missionary – very properly and orderly. So far, I have done one presentation last night at a Pentecostal Church, and I will be doing one per day on most of the days here to a variety of audiences – secular, Baptist, Orthodox. As always, I expect some “unexpected” additional ministry opportunities to present themselves as the word gets out about the FaithSearch Russian Ministry being in town. Of course, I contacted local churches, ministries, Bible schools and universities ahead of time but – oh, Russians! – many of them do not believe I even exist until they hear my voice on the phone from their train station.

It rains all day today in Novosibirsk and it is good to stay inside until the time of my presentation tonight, and to answer some E-mails from home. I am trying now to remember what the weather  was like back in Krasnoyarsk… but I can’t. I would fall asleep (even if for 15 minutes!) each time they put me into

a car to drive from place to place, from town to town. But I clearly remember their faces – shining from within with excitement and with interest to learn more about Christ!

My September teaching trips are usually the hardest to plan, as the planning period falls right into the summer break and vacations times in Russia. Teachers and students don’t even want to think of what they will be doing in the September and October! Luckily, some ministries and churches work hard all year long, and I only have to fill a few days with teaching-the-teachers events.

My geography will again be partially dictated by the incredibly inexpensive air tickets within Russia these days due to the falling ruble. I will first fly to the Eastern Siberia city of Krasnoyarsk for a week of teaching in Lutheran and Orthodox Church communities as well as the local Christian Teachers Association. I will then make my way back to Moscow, stopping for a week of teaching in Baptist and Pentecostal Churches and state universities in Novosibirsk. The last week of my trip will involve training clergy and lay leaders in and around Moscow region, with a possible quick two-day run to Tatarstan.

I can’t wait to meet my audiences and try some new presentation material I have developed since my last trip in July.

Please continue your prayers for the last-minute changes, corrections, and confirmations. Russians don’t like to plan so far ahead as even a couple of weeks (see more about that and some other cross-cultural Russian-American perspectives in my recent article in the Star Tribune.)

MSP-JFK-SVO-SVX. 15-hour long flight carried me over 10 time zones from Minnesota to Yekaterinburg. Three more hours in the car with Pastor Viktor brought me to the town of Bogdanovich – my first stop on a two-weeks-long tour all over Northern Urals. There were no air conditioner or mosquito nets in their apartment but I was too exhausted and jet-lagged for it to bother me much. Twelve solid hours of sleep and I was ready for my first presentation of FaithSearch Discovery at a Pentecostal Church on the next morning and an informal promo presentation for local pastors and lay leaders around the dinner table in the evening.

On Sunday, back in Yekaterinburg, I presented my seminar back-to-back at two churches and was put on a six-hour-long red-eye bus to the town of Karpinsk. I paid my first visit to their church back in December but they insisted that I come again and present the whole FSDiscovery once more so that they could bring their non-believing friends and family members to see and to hear it this time around. I was happy to oblige.

I was even happier to meet a pastor in Yekaterinburg who share how much his church appreciated the training I did for them a couple of years ago. They have been using our material in various outreach and missions projects all this time and found it especially effective in bringing to faith the most skeptical and stubborn folks – young and old, educated and not.

My next stop, in a town of Novaya Lyalya (“Lyalya” is a native name for a beautiful river, meaning “slow, calm”), allowed me to serve in a very small church community still hurting from their pastor recently and unexpectedly leaving them and having to develop their new leadership and ministry vision for the future. What a special blessing it is indeed to be of encouragement and of help to the people in real need and in a small town hardly ever visited by speakers! I will never forget their shining eyes and their beautiful faces as we studied the Gospel with Evidence together.

Three hours on the bus and I am in Severouralsk (“Northern-Urals”), a coal, gold and ore mining town with a vibrant Evangelical community and an amazing Orthodox Church almost next to each other. I am teaching here for two days which will allow me to try on some new historic and archeological materials I have added to my presentation recently and to invite my audience to discuss what they will have just learned. From experience, I am not expecting many questions on the material itself but mostly – on the practical application of faith in real life matters. Please keep me in your prayers but also pray for these dear people’s real life issues and questions they face every day.