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…]
