2012 report

This year saw some of the most dramatic and significant transformations in our ministry since coming to Russia in 2007. What our life and my ministry look like going into 2013 are radically different from when we started, but it's not because of any major surprises. It's actually panning out pretty much according to the vision (as I understood it) that God gave in 2006. What is that looking like?

My vision for citywide ministry and transformation became a part of my DNA while in ministry in Richmond, VA from 1997-2007. What changed when I came to Russia was my realization that building a team of citywide leaders from the top down was not the right approach. What God was leading me to do was use my background in counseling and coaching to invest in the personal transformation of people He would bring across my path: yes, leaders, but also simple Christians, and as many orphans as possible too.

This is what I did for our first 5 years: lead trainings that built on the curiosity factor for me as an American, a psychologist, and a trainer. Use these trainings as a means of building relationships, building people, and building trust. At the end of 5 years a good core of about 25 people had seen enough personal change in their lives that they wanted more. God was really good, for the stories of change were amazing and life-altering. Moreover, I didn't expect that there would be so many.

So I announced phase 2: would they be willing to form a group to build team while they continued to grow? Amazingly, almost all of these 25 have continued on over the last several months. As a result, I have shifted my focus from offering new trainings - in part since we have new leaders able to lead the trainings themselves - to investing in the personal growth of each of these new team members and into the development of the group as a group.

For comparison: I logged about 50 sessions of one-on-one mentoring/counseling over the course of the first 6 months of 2011, but 79 trainings and/or consultations with groups or ministries. This reflects my focus at the time on training as a relationship-building tool. Most individual sessions at that time were directly associated with those trainings.

For the last 6 months of 2012, however, the pattern is reversed: over 100 individual meetings (perhaps even a lot more I didn't even bother to record, as they are often spontaneous), and only 35 training sessions.

Until this past spring, I was the only one leading any training (with one exception on one occasion over the 5 years). Since April we have added 5 teacher/trainers who have taught 9 classes. As a result, our outreach to the community encompasses about 75 people currently being taught or ministered to in some way.

We have two people ministering full time: Inna Khan and Rustam (now Roman) Novikov. They are both very bright, eager, teachable, very well respected, and constantly growing themselves leaders. We only need seed money ($5000) to give him a transition until ministry activity can support him largely independently.

Our biggest event of the year was in May when we invited Dr. Ed Smith, founder and head of Theophostic Prayer Ministry to St. Petersburg. He led training for the community at large that our team organized, attracting about 200 in attendance. Then he led a three-day intensive for us and others from around Russia who had already been trained in this powerful form of ministry. Before this event, TPM was barely on the radar screen in Russia. Now it is becoming a recognizable ministry with growing influence.

In addition to the conference, I managed a translation project to get the basic workbook for TPM into Russian (almost 300 pages long!) which went into print early this year. I also had the basic seminar for Peacemaker Ministries translated into Russian, and led that event for the first time in Russia this year. Lastly, I partnered with Communion with God Ministries and had a series of 9 DVD courses translated into Russian. As you can imagine, this was a huge project! That's 11 courses in one year.

Our Orphans Reaching Orphans project has had some setbacks, with 3 people leaving the team, but the 4 of us remaining are re-grouping in 2013. Otherwise, our family ministry to orphan graduates continues. We are most closely working with 3 young people, whom we usually see at least once a week.

Our ministry facility is one of the biggest stories of 2012, so big in fact, that we made a whole video about it. God moved us as a family to a new apartment for New Year's 2012, giving us a new space for ministry, which immediately got used and increased ministry activity dramatically. Most amazing was the willingness of the Russians themselves (normally always looking for freebies) to participate in the big increase in our rent. 

St. Petersburg, 360

My friend Bill, who has lived here since the early 1990's likes to say, "St. Petersburg is real beautiful - if it's dark and you squint hard." Well, I found another view that makes it look good. This is an impressive project, taking panoramas of the city from various spots, all on the same day. Enjoy!

Freedoms in Russia in danger

I haven't figured out how to feel about the level of seriousness to take all of this, but this message from a Russian pastor here is more than worthy of attention and prayer. You decide.

Considering the general situation, evangelical Christians will be a perfect target. And those, who have connection to the West and the so-called detestable American sympathizers - BEWARE. Please, pray for our wisdom and courage under the unravelling situation. We knew these things would come. They are coming a little faster than we expected. I am praying for the safety of our kids in this police state. We are rapidly traveling back to the notoriously known thirtees. The same flavor, really, though a slightly different color. More brownish than red. No drastic changes at a time. But the notorious frog boiled alive in the water slowly heated. That is a perfect analogy under the circumstances.

THE SECOND PIECE OF THE PUZZLE We have also just read on Russia on-line news that each Russian citizen will be assigned a personal e-mail address for direct connection with the government. They try to represent it as a step toward more freedom and better manifestation of true democracy - after all we will be able to contact the government without having to stand in line or trying to break through a bunch of unconquerable obstacles. However, taken in context and especially in light of the general development and the flow of events in this country, we can see that it is but another tool for people to rat on each other like they did under Stalin, and also a way for the government to exercise tighter control of who is who and what he or she is doing. Fun, huh?

In light of all this we felt and wrote on FB that we were even more sure that we wanted to homeschool our girls to prevent them from political brainwashing. How great that homeschooling is legal here these days. We have actually just bought a book with all the laws on the matter....OK. Here is the punchline. I did write these exact words on FB, when all of a sudden….

THE THIRD PIECE OF THE PUZZLE, which made the picture almost complete. I called one of my daughers' teachers concerning some homeschooling logistics, yet, this is what I got from her: the Russian government is making a 6 day school week compulsory with kids being kept in school up to 4 pm, and is already passing a new law in its second reading about homeschooling becoming completely illegal in Russia. Yes, they are planning to ban it competely. Please, pray. They tried to do it before, but a major resonance on the part of the people in Russia, and worldwide made them relent and recoil.

Whoever is involved in advancing homeschooling in this country, please, contact and help us get in touch with people, who have any say in this matter, if you know such folks, and if you could help us to connect with them preferable in St. Pete, please, help us do so ASAP. We need good lawyers and also Christian schools principles in Pete, which might accept our kids while allowing us to teach them at home and have them come there for testing once in a while, whenever required.

THE PUZZLE COMPLETE. Taking this news in context of a couple of pieces of the puzzle everything becomes clearer, at least for those, who can read signs of times. Where else can your kids be best braiwashed? Bingo! In the public school system that has ALL of its SOVIET values, however disguised, shoved down your children's throat with no say on the parents’ part concerning what they are taught on a day to day basis. The water is slowly getting hotter for the notorious frog to boil to death slowly, slowly, slowly, without making any life-changing and earth-shattering jumps OUT. Now my first thought was - we are outta here. No way I am staying in this country, after all, we still have our visas for Europe and the US. But then the second thought immediately was - NO, NEVER, WHAT A FOOLISH NOTION! God did not call you to leave, Andre. You gotta remain and be here with the people, who He called you to lead, encourage, support, pray for and with. You need to serve them and suffer with them if needed. Keep your eternal perspective. I do believe, that together we will be able to do something. WE NEED YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT more than ever.
You may be thinking that, as an American, things are bad enough in the US, but things could change faster here than there. You pray for us, and we will for you. Deal?

Lyle: the video

One of my coaching students, also a student at the local Christian University, and also the wife of the pastor of the church we attend, made this video for her class on videography. I thought it was kinda cool as a study in what the Russians find noteworthy in describing a guy who came to live in their country.

У нас были две машины в Штатах, а здесь у нас нет машин вообще.
We had two cars in the States, but here I don't have even one.

Зато я могу километрами ходить каждый день и  к тому же это полезно.
But I walk up to several kilometers a day here, and that's good for me.

У нас был свой дом. Мы продали этот дом и практически все, что в нем находилось за один день.
We had our own home. We sold it in one day, and everything in it in just about a day.

Продали машины, дом. В Америке я получал за минуту 1,5 доллара, то есть 45 рублей, а здесь я ничего от вас не получаю,  кроме удовольствия!
In America I earned $1.5 a minute (that is 45 rubles), but here I get nothing from you but enjoyment in my work!

За 15 лет до нашего переезда в Россию, мы с женой знали уже, что Бог нас призывает в эту страну, но не понимали пока как, когда.
15 years before we moved here, my wife and I knew that God had called us to Russia, but we didn't understand how and when.

Прожив в России 2 года, я начал понимать, что борюсь здесь с определенным духом, я называю это духом сиротства.
After a couple of years living here, I started to understand that I was dealing with a certain spirit that I call an orphan spirit.

Сиротство – это не просто проблема определенных детей. Сиротство присутствует в любом народе, где есть проблемы в семье, где вообще не понимают ценность родительских отношений.
Orphanhood is not merely a problem of certain kids. It is a problem that any culture can have where there are dysfunctions in the family, where the value of parenting is not appreciated.

Часто меня спрашивают: «Откуда ты понял, что твое призвание ехать именно в Россию»?
People often ask me: How did you understand that your calling was to Russia?

 У меня был учитель в воскресной школе, он историк, он часто говорил, о том, как страдают люди в Советском Союзе.
 I had a Sunday school teacher who often talked about how people suffered in the Soviet Union for their faith.

 И что мы, в отличие от них не страдаем. Вот это и засело у меня в голове.
 And that we didn't suffer. That stuck in my head.

 Я вижу одно преимущество в русских людях, в том, что когда они понимают важность чего-то, они загораются этим и хотят изменяться и получать все больше навыков и знаний в данном вопросе.
 I see one advantage in Russians. That is that when they understand the importance of something, they burn with a desire to change and get the skills and knowledge they need for it.

 Они обучаемы. Здесь люди готовы глубоко вникать в суть вещей.
 They are teachable. They are ready to go to the very essence of something.

 Очень благодарен Богу за то, ч тоя твердо, без сомнений, верю, что я должен быть сдесь.
 I am tremendously grateful to God that I definitely, without doubt, know that I am supposed to be here.

 Конечно, не могу сказать, что здесь все обходится без проблем, но почему-то Бог благословляет.
 I can't say that we don't have problems here, but God seems to be blessing us.

Ministry video

One of our churches was planning a missions fair this month, and they asked for a video, so it gave us an excuse to try to put something together. Professional quality was compromised by the rush, but it starts to tell a story that may help some of you get more what we are up to here. Let me know what you think of it....

A testimonial video

This video is old, in that we made it in April of 2012 as an advertisement for our upcoming conference. However, now that I have gotten around to translating it into English and putting the captions in, it serves really well as a series of testimonies to the power of this ministry, as every one you see in this video went through our training last year. All but one are continuing to soak in what we are offering and deepening their ties to us as a community. These are really budding leaders!

Perspective

If you asked me a month ago what immediately comes to mind when I hear the word ‘Russia’, I would have given you the following adjectives: Mysterious, Difficult, Proud,  Impatient, Quiet, Controlled, Resolute, Hardened, Cold. 

My husband, Travis, and I have been to Russia 5 times, having spent a combined total of 2+ months in country.  From high above Moscow in a hotel room, I’ve gazed many times out the window at the Soviet-era high-rise apartment buildings, wondering who lives there, what the living conditions are like inside, and what the people do, day in, day out.  I’ve watched people from the window of my hotel room in Tver, who go to the corner to pump water from a common well, or who make their way to an outbuilding to shave the stubble from their face.  “Is there no bathroom in his home?” I wonder.  The old man across the street sells items he’s carved from wood in a shed he probably built next to his home.  Likewise, there are old ladies sitting on the crumbled sidewalks of a busy intersection selling the mushrooms they’ve picked in the woods, or the flowers and produce they’ve grown in their gardens.  What is their life like?  Do they have hope?  I go to my computer and Google ‘Living conditions of Russian people’.  

Travis and I have walked the streets among the people, and traveled by subway beneath Moscow.  The stark contrast between the opulent subway stations and the people who wait against the artfully composed marble walls, beneath chandeliers whose size and beauty would befit Versailles, seems cruel.  The people dress in dark colors: brown, blue, grey, and mostly black.  Although there are people everywhere, it is quiet.  The buses, packed full of people, are quiet.  The 9-hour airplane ride to and from Russia is quiet, until the plane lands safely on the ground.  The eruption of applause seems to say, “Thank God.  We arrived in one piece”.  The visage of the people speaks of unhappiness, hopelessness, and despair.  I wish I spoke Russian.  I want to talk to them.  I want to know if what I see is real. 

Or, do I just misunderstand them?

Stereotypes are lasting, until you gain understanding.  The Russian people are so different from any cultural people I’ve encountered.  Travis and I, at times, just want to get out of Russia as quickly as possible.  This last trip we took in September, we rode a train to St. Petersburg, with a suitcase full of items to give to the Thomas family.  We could put our awful week behind us for 2 or 3 days, and learn more about the people we’ve been curiously observing over the last several years. 

Lyle was there to meet us as soon as we departed the train.  Yuri was not far behind, and met us inside the beautiful Moscovsky station.  Yuri schlepped a giant suitcase for us across St. Petersburg to lighten our load.  We hurried, as Russians do, down below the streets into another gorgeous subway station.  We talk to Yuri and Lyle, breaking the silence of the subway car.  A block from the Thomas’ apartment, Lydia, Lyle’s daughter, runs to Yuri and hugs him.  The Thomas’ love Yuri, although sometimes he “runs away” when he feels unworthy, and they don’t see him for a period of time.  The Thomas’ seemingly have love for everyone.  They’re the ones who are waiting with open arms when Yuri, and those like him, are ready to come back.  And, everyone knows they can come back.

My husband, Travis, and I met so many people associated with the Thomas’ over a period of 3 days.  What is evident is that Russians are starving for healthy relationships and healing from multi-generational affliction.  Not the stuff you and I have nightmares about, but the stuff they’ve lived through.  Such as fending for yourself on the streets at age 6 to beg for food.  Or, knowing you should have been aborted because your mother had already aborted more than 20 children before you came along.  What about knowing the life you want is unable to be obtained because of corruption?  Or, wishing for a family to adopt you and never getting one?  How about being told that the reason no one wants you is because you’ve always been told your presence makes everyone fall ill, and believing the validity of those claims? 

What did Jesus do?  What did He command us to do?  Am I doing it?  Are you doing it?  The Thomas’ are living examples of God’s command to love the despised, the orphan, the poor, the widow, and on and on.  Their family looks no different than the average, busy American family.  They home school their children, they work (Diana teaches online courses to kids through the Potter's School), they cook, they clean.  But their home is also their ministry.  And since home is where the heart is, there the ministry of loving others takes place daily.

Russians are hurting, and it only took us three days to understand.  There are still more questions and mysteries that loom in my head, and that leaves open the door to hopefully many returns back to Russia; Perhaps not to adopt another child, but definitely to adopt a nation of people into our hearts. 

Raising Rustam

Rustam is one of those prodiges that every mentor would love. He has been an enthusiastic learner for most of our five years here, and his learning has not just been about knowledge, though Rustam is an avid student of the Bible, and studies it in the original languages, and he studies everything carefully to see if it is true, trustworthy and of God. More than that, he learns to grow, to apply in his life and marriage, and he learns to be able to bless others. He is a genuinely thankful student, and he remains thoroughly teachable, humble, and thirsty for more.


Rustam has grown in his personal life, his marriage (to Masha, at right), and in intimacy with the Father. He has grown in leadership, favor, and responsibility towards his commission. He has come great strides in knowing his calling and in finding the faith to pursue God's will for his life. To this end, he and I have been working and praying over how to help him transition out of his full-time employment into full-time ministry, and we think we have a plan, a plan that requires an amazingly modest $3000 over the next year to make it happen. Why so little?

First, incomes here are extremely modest by Western standards. 
Second, Rustam's leadership skills have grown so much that his teaching, mentoring, counseling, and coaching are now growing in demand. Much of his income is going to come from local sources as he builds his base of ministry in the community through the kinds of work that we are doing - work that also fits within our strategic plan for the coming years as a team.
Third, Rustam's income has been good enough that when he finishes his current project (he is an interpreter), he will have a little buffer to help transition him into ministry. 

What will he be doing? First, he is and will be leading training in counseling and coaching. For example, right now he is working with another member of our team to save a marriage under my supervision. Early results are very encouraging. He also helps me in providing those direct ministries to members of our team, students, and the public at large. He will be helping me as I reach out more to the church community and offer training on location for pastors and their leadership teams. Lastly, but not at all least, Rustam has a longstanding interest and experience in orphan ministry, and he is a part of our Orphans Reaching Orphans team, and a critical component at that. This kind of work, of course, does not pay, as most orphans have no income to give for his services, so this is the side of his job that will require ongoing support.

If you are only half as excited about this project and this young man of God as I am, then consider contributing monthly or towards our one-time start-up costs of $5000 to get him stabilized in ministry. The link for our Orphans Reaching Orphans donation, through my mission Church Resource Ministries, is here.

Honoring a father - my father

You've GOT to go! was all my wife had to say to the news that my brothers wanted to organize a surprise 80th birthday party for my daddy. In my typical fashion I started analyzing the options, the costs, the benefits and what I could dovetail on such a huge trip. I'd never left my family for so long (two weeks), and never gone so far away. Thank the Lord for journaling, where I can get straight to the heart of matters and hear what the Spirit is saying directly - bypassing all my "stuff." Here is what I recorded on Feb. 5th:

Your father is one of your biggest cheerleaders. He loves you deeply. He is proud of you. He gave you your foundation. Do you want to show him your thanks for all he has done for you? He was always ready to show you off, to promote you, to advance your cause, to get behind you. To be a dad who stood with his boy. I bless him for that, and you can bless him too. He was a bright light in the community, and many are grateful for the love and encouragement he gave them. He was a pillar in the community, for he was a man of integrity, of courage, and even of affection for those he led. He loved his students, and he gave himself for their success. He is a man who used what I gave him, and he advanced that, multiplied it, carried forward and outward, and many now love music solely because of him. You see the negative sides so easily, but you can learn to see the gift he was to the community. This is your chance to connect with that gift, and to connect with those who want to bless him, to those who want to also know the blessing he gave in fathering you and your brothers. You boys have much to be proud of, for you have been given many blessings. They are your gifts, and you can see better how to steward that legacy by being there.

What could I say to that? And it was everything described above and more. The highlight was a concert organized at the city auditorium where he was brought on the pretext of it being an awards ceremony for his brother-in-law. Three bands played, and of course I joined in with my brothers and old friends from all the years. Daddy was the local band director from 1959-82, an incredible legacy. When my brother Casey brought him on stage and handed the baton over on the last piece, I lost it completely. It was an incredible blessing to see so many people honoring him.

 It was hard not to be able to share it with my family, but they joined by skype, barely being able to stay awake (it was 1am by then) to see the moment when I appeared out of the audience to greet him.

Some historical pics of him are here.

A deeper walk - much deeper

As if it were not enough to have had an intensive month of preparation for our counseling seminar last month, my team has a voracious apetite for growth, so we went on a retreat this month. The opportunity came up because my teammate in our mission CRM, Bill O'Byrne is preparing to leave for a one year sabbatical, and I wanted everyone to experience a seminar he leads that had a major impact on me four years ago called Discovery. (It's regularly offered in the US, btw.)

The setting was a beautiful old Finnish Lutheran church (1861) an hour outside the city. The goal of the retreat was to understand our spiritual journey in the context of my entire life and a universal understanding of spiritual growth and hunger. For me, it was a critical part of helping my team grow in spirit, soul, and body - the three thrusts of my first phase of ministry here in Russia. And indeed it exceeded my expectations for them, and they gave awesome testimonies of how the three days radically impacted their own lives and thirst for growth. As a result we decided to move forward as a team in deepening the principles and practices we learned for ourselves as a group and as a foundation for ministry. After all, ministry founded on works is dead, but founded on our relationship with Christ is a sure foundation.

Hosting Ed Smith

I have written elsewhere about the wonderful impact and incredible push forward for our ministry that we experienced last month through the conference we hosted here. Another side of the blessing from this was the fact that we as a team, and my family in particular, got to host a great man of God (and his son) and soak in his wisdom and incredible experience for a whole week. I'm speaking of Dr. Ed Smith, founder of Theophostic prayer ministry - the organization and the approach to personal transformation that has revolutionized lives worldwide over the last 16 years.

I first got trained in this method in 2001, and it immediately revolutionized my counseling practice, though I had been successful at that using a more traditional biblical counseling approach (Jay Adams et al - which I continue to use as well).  Now that the ministry has spread on it's own to over 160 countries worldwide, demand for Smith has only grown. But as he explained to our students while he was here, he was far from eager about the idea of coming here, especially as it was coming on the heels of a trip to Austria when he would already be tired after two weeks of training there. To me his proximity was an advantage; to him it was a detractor. But as he told our group, "Lyle wouldn't give up  on the idea of my coming, and when I said I didn't think it would work, he merely asked me, 'Have you prayed about that?' and that made all the difference."

However it worked, I was thrilled it did. It was a huge inspiration and motivator to our group, and we are busier than ever with people turning to us for help. But for me it was a huge blessing to host him and his son Josh in our home during that week. I got to see a guy that is truly unfazed by challenges, and I got to interact on a professional and intellectual level with a man whose thinking on just how change happens biblically has shaped hundreds of thousands of people and is gradually influencing the entire arena of Christian counseling. We got to talk shop on subjects such as demonization, the emotional roots of doctrinal error, and raising kids who can stop lies from entering their lives.

Moreover, it was fascinating to get his outside perspective on life here in Russia. As we rode the subway together, he was entranced by watching the faces of the passengers. His comments:


"I was taken back by the facial expressions of the Russian people riding on the metro.  There was little to no eye contact.  No one greeted another. Little-to-no conversation between people that were even traveling together.  When I would try to make eye contact and smile or acknowledge a person they would quickly look away or seem offended by my gesture. There was what appeared to be a common facial expression of despair, hopelessness and apathy.  Their eyes seemed empty, untrusting, almost without life. It is difficult to put into words what I observed knowing that my impressions could be very incorrect.  However, what I witnessed felt like desolated and disconsolate saddness. 
However, in contrast, the people that have been experiencing Theophostic Prayer  displayed signs of life and hope.  Their countenances expressed inner joy and the presence of hope.  I believe as the Word of Life is brought to the hearts and minds of those dejected and cast down the Lord will raise them up."


It was at once a sad but affirming statement on the need for our ministry here. 

International Adoption: The American Dream?

This article from the local English newspaper is worth reproducing.

International Adoption: The American Dream? | The St. Petersburg Times | The leading English-language newspaper in St. Petersburg

Russian Daily Life

The following was written by a pastor with whom I have some association here in Russia.

by Andrei Furmanov

Daily life in a city for the majority of Russian men and women is very much the same. One gets up at 7- or 8 a.m. depending on his or her company business hours. A simple quick breakfast (usually just a sandwich with a cup of tea or coffee), and out of the door - one goes to catch a bus/tram/trolleybus/metro. Most Russians live in apartment blocks in the outskirts ("sleeping zones") of a city, and work in the center. An average amount of time people have to spend to get to their work place take from 30 to 90 minutes. That is if they do not travel by car.  

By the way, unlike in previous decades, nowadays many Russians do own cars, sometimes more than one. However, it is still a relatively new thing for an average Ivan or Maria. There is a downside to this new luxury - hours in traffic jams. That is why many still prefer to use public transportation, which is always overcrowded during the "peak" time, as they call the rush hour here. People are like canned fish, no private distance at all. No wonder users of pubic transportation are always unfriendly and irritated, yet a pregnant lady, a person with a baby or a small child, or someone very old will most probably be looked upon kindly and even offered a seat.

An average work day is 8 hours long with one lunch break and numerous coffee breaks – there’s poor discipline in state-owned enterprises, one can easily leave his or her job to take care of personal problems. Working for a private company means better discipline and a better salary, but also staying after hours rather often. Many people are working in shifts and hardly have time to get adequate rest at all.            

Leaving work at 5-7 p.m., an exhausted Russian has to make his or her way back home using the same overcrowded public transportation or standing in a traffic jam, which is a real killer. Yet, using public transportation makes one twice as tired. Living in St. Pete in the early nineties I used to go to my University by bus, and I can testify with confidence - public transportation totally exhausts you.

After arriving at her stop on the way back home, a woman usually goes to the nearest shop to buy groceries. Carrying bags home also doesn't make the woman relaxed - even if it's only a few kilos and few hundred meters (usually homes are within 1-2 miles from shopping areas), you still feel it.  

You arrive home completely exhausted. If you have a child, you must get him from the kindergarten on the way from work. A woman who has a family must prepare dinner. Cooking in Russia seems to take much longer than in the West, not only because of different recipes, but also because of the lack of worthwhile half-ready products. During our last time in the States we were overwhelmed at how easy you could fix a meal. Open a package, do a couple of magic tricks, and voila – it is all totally ready!

After dinner a typical family watches TV – the most popular past time – and then go to bed. Russians who used to be known for love for books read less and less. These days many consider reading to be the most boring and completely useless thing to do as it does not bring you any financial profit. Some people visit gyms, probably about the same proportion of population as in the West (which means most people don't). Worthwhile entertainment is expensive, thus usually entertainment means visiting friends or relatives on weekends.

Generally, the daily life of a Russian can be described as *home - work - home* or *home - work - shops - home*. You can say that it's pretty normal for the life in any given Western country, too, but there is one big difference: even small things in Russia require much more effort. The word "convenience" was not in favor when the current system of Russian life was designed.           

Another thing about Russian daily life - people do not really enjoy it. They wake up not to enjoy a new day but to cope with its problems. There is little comfort and contentment here. Russians are used to minor everyday difficulties that don't even bother them anymore. Russian daily life is tough, and it's probably the reason why you seldom see smiling faces, which makes most foreigners pause in wonder.

A Russian, living in Russia, might argue some of the points I have discussed here, but a Russian, living abroad, will surely agree with me.            

I believe the main difference in Russian and western way of life comes from those basic beliefs: western life is built around the “cult of enjoyment”. Life in our country is built on the basis of a popular Russian saying "God endured and commanded us to endure too". Westerners live to enjoy; Russians live to endure.

What can we say - Russians are survivors. This cultural paradigm can be demonstrated even by the difference in religious rituals in western and Russian churches: there are no benches and amphitheaters in Russian Orthodox temples. All through the 1-2 hour-long service people are supposed to keep standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a badly lit, stuffy, one-level room, where one struggles and strains himself even to see the priest. Many people choose to stand on their knees during the service. 

Russian Orthodox church service promotes humility through enduring; while a western Christian church service promotes integrity and joy. The very word "enjoy" has some indecent flavor in Russian: it is something that is not very appropriate, but done nevertheless. 

When speaking English to you a Russian will usually say "I love/like [doing something]" rather than "I enjoy" [doing something]. Therefore they love (like) some things but doing them does not result in the feeling of contentment - this is actually what I mean by saying "They don't enjoy it”, which of course doesn't mean that Russians don't know how to have fun! They do know how to have fun, and many Russians abroad miss the Russian limitless fun (as compared to reasonable, and appropriate western fun). Also, the English phrase "to have fun" is hardly even translatable into Russian, since Russians do not have the purpose "to have fun" or "enjoy" things. Fun is just something that happens sporadically when people are happy and act cheerful. 

Although basic routines of Russian daily life are pretty much the same, it would be important to emphasize that we, Christians, find our security and meaning in the Lord and doing His holy will. So it would be true to say that lives of genuine believers are strikingly different, even though we live in the same world and deal with the same things and issues. 

Conference Results

Here are some of the highlights from out conference and training on Theophostic  ministry in May here in Russia:

• Our public event, meant to introduce the broader Christian community to the ministry of Theophostic prayer, went better than I had expected. Nearly 200 people from all kinds of churches attended. About 6 other cities were also represented. As a result:
• About 60 of them signed up for training.
• About 60 (probably a lot of overlap) signed up to receive personal ministry from one of our trained team members.  

This has made our ministry apartment/office bursting with activity, and our students are getting motivated by all the lives they are witnessing being touched by God's love and healing.

Ed Smith, founder of Theophostic prayer, also led three days of training for those already trained and practicing. It was in-depth training and demonstrations for working with issues from eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, disassociation, etc.  There were over 40 in attendance, and they were all really encouraged and excited about moving forward.

Among the cases we have ministered to so far:

• a man with a background in the occult
• a young woman who is not even Christian, but just hungry for something. She had a terrible past, but Jesus touched her in a very personal way, and she felt his healing presence very tangibly.

As a side note, I found out that although TPM has been around since 1996 and spread all over the world organically, its materials are only translated into four other languages: Spanish, Indonesian, and right at almost the same time German and Russian. So I'm thrilled that God gave us the grace to have been a part of releasing this ministry into Russia, because I am confident it will have a major impact long-term.  

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Act. 3:17-19

Counseling Conference Coming

As I have reported through this school year, wonderful things are happening in our counseling training groups. People are getting set free from major and minor life issues, relationships are being healed, and even diseases are being healed. To say that my students are enthusiastic about what they are experiencing and about the possibility of imparting their new skills to others is a major understatement.

The material I have been using for counseling training over the last two years (though I have and use a number of other things as well) is Theophostic ministry because I've seen the amazing results, and I am convinced it is a biblical and Spirit-led approach to helping people . I have developed a relationship with the founder and leader of that ministry, Dr. Ed Smith, over the last couple of years as we have been working on the translation of their materials into Russian. Having learned that he would be coming to conduct a seminar in Austria this month, we asked ourselves, and prayed about the possibility of having him come over here at the same time to save money and time on travel. 

This is exactly what is happening. He will be leading a general seminar for the public on Saturday May 26th, and then leading an intensive training for those already trained in the basics from the 28th-30th. 

Please pray for all the many details, though I am amazed at the strength of our team in pulling this off. Very little has fallen to me to organize. Pray for a good turnout on the general session. This is what will determine if Dr. Smith gets adequately reimbursed for his time here. We are targeting two kinds of people: those who should decide to receive the training and those who could receive the ministry itself. 

There is already the faintest hint of resistance here in some circles to what we are doing, which I am not surprised about, as the ministry has generated some controversy elsewhere - understandable for how big it has gotten. But my prayer is that the Russian church would not divide over issues which are not really issues but misunderstandings and ignorance. Pray with me to that end.

Lastly, pray for long-term and nation-shaking results from this conference and the ministry that proceeds from it. The potential is no less dramatic than that. This nation needs ministries like this for it to overcome its orphan, traumatized, broken, and often rebellious heart.

Crying, "Abba! Father!"

The following is the text of a sermon I recently delivered while on a brief visit to the US. It concerns the orphan spirit that I suggested is not only responsible for the tremendous problem of orphans in Russian, but goes throughout society as a whole. Moreover, I suggested that it is a deep and growing problem in the US as well. 

Presbyterians love to exegete the Bible. I love to exegete people. Before I moved with my family to Russia 5 years ago, I was a Christian counselor. Understanding what the Bible says about how we tick, and how to pick the ticks off of us, as it were, has been a quest of mine for about 20 years now. When you move to another culture, you see your new culture at first through the eyes of your home culture, but eventually the follower of Christ has to start evaluating what he observes against a biblical grid instead. And so we find that every culture has aspects of it that are more or less God-honoring, and those that are not.

What originally drew us to Russia was one of its most glaring sore spots: the tremendous problem with orphans. There are of course many countries who suffer with large numbers of uncared-for children, and I began to ask myself what it was that created the spiritual conditions necessary to allow Russia to have a problem so large today, that it actually rivals the numbers of orphans present after WW2. And this despite the numbers of institutional orphans going down. 95% of Russian orphans are what are called "social orphans," which is to say that they may have a living parent, but parental rights have been terminated or even voluntarily given up.

Foster care is quite uncommon, though growing slowly thanks to some government initiatives. Neither adoption nor foster care is a cultural value to Russians, and those that do, sadly enough, fail to manage the challenges all too often: Russians love to criticize Americans when they hear of abuse, neglect, or the famous case of returning a boy back by plane. Little do most of them know that in one two year period, 2008-09, 30,000 children were returned back to the system.

You can't have these kinds of problems in a vacuum. For every family that cannot or will not raise its own children, there must be many more who are barely managing. There must be many more who manage, but with various levels of dysfunction. So I began to see that there was a biblical explanation for this trend: the orphan spirit.

Now of course there is no such exact term in the Bible, but it comes close enough. What we do find is:

•   a spirit of fear or timidity (2Tim. 1:7)

•   a spirit of slavery (Ro. 8:15)

•   a spirit of adoption (Ro. 8:15)

Of course the first two are not from God, and the latter is. What ties the spirit of fear and the sprit of slavery together is found in Heb. 2:15. Fear of death subjects you to slavery. And all fear at its root is a kind of fear of death. Chemically, the brain has two classes of chemicals: fear based and love based. Every emotion and every thought related to those thoughts are driven by one or the other. The one is quite destructive to our bodies, and the other is not only healthy but actually regenerative in power - an amazing confirmation of biblical truth.

Paul develops the whole theme of slavery starting in Romans 6, and concludes his argument in chapter 8, verse 17,  by saying that "if we are children, we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory.

So putting all this together, we see that we may share in God's glory by sharing in his sufferings, which comes from being an heir, which comes from being his child, which comes from renouncing a spirit of slavery, which comes from rejecting a spirit of fear. I say this not to give you a formula, for God's grace is much more mysterious than that, but to help you understand that the essential nature of the person outside of Christ, is one of fear, which makes him a slave to those fears. This is what I am calling the orphan spirit.

Why indeed does God insist so many times throughout the Old Testament, and repeat it in the New, that our care for orphans is a critical indicator of our love and devotion to God? Is it because God is a bleeding-heart liberal who just feels bad for the kids? Well, I think God's heart does break for the kids, but the real reason seems to go deeper than this. It's because we were all orphans, dominated by fear before turning to Christ, and God's heart is for us. This is why John says you can't say you love God and not love your brother. You literally can't love God and not love orphans. God told the Israelites to care for the resident aliens in their land because they were once resident aliens in Egypt. So therefore we care for orphans because "there but by the grace of God go I."

And America can't say it's got all that much grace going for it right now either. I don't need to quote to you statistics on abortion, divorce, and absentee fathers to remind you how far we have fallen in the last generation. These are all direct signs, in our culture, of the orphan spirit. Orphans overwhelmingly reject their own children. And abortion is a rejection of your own flesh and blood, and fathers who sire a child without remaining through thick and thin have rejected their own flesh and blood. Only an orphan can do that. Why? Because fear drives them to do it. Fear of the future, fear of finances, fear of commitment, fear of rejection, etc. etc.

In Russia, it's much worse in many respects. In my counseling training just a few weeks ago I witnessed an amazing session where a woman named Irina came face to face with the fact that her mother had had 26 abortions. She couldn't see how she could possibly forgive her for being such a person, especially considering that she herself was supposed to be one of those victims. But by the end she did forgive, and the freedom it gave was as powerful as the bondage she had been in to fear and condemnation beforehand.

Do you think Russia is free of its Soviet legacy? How could it be when even today people have parents and grandparents that were torn away in the middle of the night by the secret police for no reason at all, other than to feed a slavery economy unknown before in world history called the Gulag, because of the wild aspirations of one demonically inspired man named Joseph Stalin. Fear was THE main driving force of Soviet society for over 70 years, although most particularly during Stalin's rule from 1924-1953. Families were destroyed systematically, and men in particular have never recovered to this day. Alcohol is not called spirits for no reason. It is a substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit in Russian society. Seeing drunk men lying unconscious or even dead on the streets is not something we were eager to expose our kids to, but they now have a good picture every time it happens of why we are there.

Our ministry is about restoring the hearts of the fathers to their children, which is the great promise of the prophet Malachi. And this requires restoring a sense of the Father heart of God. Let me read our main passage today and discuss it briefly as a way of understanding my mission in Russia more fully.

Gal. 4:1-7. Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything,

2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.

3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.

4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,

5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

From verse 1 we see that the only difference between a slave and a son is the fact that the son has something coming to him; he only doesn't have access to it yet. The child is an heir, present tense, but he doesn't really know it. Or if he does, it makes no practical difference to him. It's not that the child is a foreigner and then becomes an heir. His parents knew his destiny from day one. Score one point for the Calvinists.

But the point is not about God's foreknowledge, but rather about His goodness in providing a means of access to the goods. The guardians and managers of verse two refers to the law and the prophets, which Paul later calls the tutor to prepare us to be aware of our need for Christ. Our problem, as children, is that we are under bondage to the ways of the world. We are born into a culture, a time and space place, and we inherit the baggage of our environment. We are not to blame for this fact, but we do bear one, but important, responsibility: will we receive our adoption papers?

God didn't just stamp our heavenly passport. He actually sent a Special Envoy, uniquely qualified for the job, to go through all the red tape that getting entangled in a sinful world entails, so that he could file the paperwork necessary to buy our freedom from slavery, from the orphanage, if you will. And in the process, just for wanting to give us that freedom, just for coming to show his Father's love for us, just for wanting to buy us back from the auction block, when we were sold like mere livestock to slavery to the Massa, just for wanting to call us his Sons and Daughters, that Special Envoy from the King was not only rejected, but brutally killed for what he came to do - for us.

The ministry God has called me to do over these past five years has so far been largely about helping to reverse cultural and personal lies that say that God is not that good. We who grew up in America don't even realize all the blessings we have from inheriting a country with many Judeo-Christian assumptions about life and God. The typical Russian view of God is a very distant OTHER, who is capricious and harsh, ready to punish with little to no provocation. The result is a self perception that is full of shame and devoid of hope. Americans talk of feeling guilty over something. Russians talk of feeling shame. The difference is that guilt relates to behavior. Shame relates to identity. Of course we should feel guilty over sin, and shame is an appropriate response of one who has utterly turned away our Father's love. But our earthly Massa doesn't want our guilt and shame to work to our benefit, helping us to see the need for forgiveness and a new identity as a son. So I have been training leaders in biblical counseling and in the use of prayer to uncover and invite the Holy Spirit to replace lies with truth, which is the only foundation of real change. It is a complete work of grace, initiated and consummated by God, and we get to be co-laborers with Him.

Once we have a person secure in their position with the Father as a son or daughter, then change accelerates. Until then, orphans can have really unhealthy attachments, or lack of attachments, to others. Blessed are the adoptive parents who get their child at a young age - usually before the age of three. For those raised in an orphanage in Eastern Europe or Russia, psychologists have come up with a diagnosis called Reactive Attachment Disorder. According to Wikipedia,

"The core feature is severely inappropriate social relating.... This can manifest itself in two ways:

•   Indiscriminate and excessive attempts to receive comfort and affection from any available adult, even relative strangers (older children and adolescents may also aim attempts at peers)

•   Extreme reluctance to initiate or accept comfort and affection, even from familiar adults, especially when distressed"

This is the phenomenon that makes Russian adoptive kids in America when they become teenagers so volatile and difficult. As I have considered this phenomenon over my several years in ministry, I have concluded that Reactive Attachment Disorder is the essence of the orphan spirit. I say this in literal terms as it relates to orphans, for it is unheard of outside of an orphanage background. It is also apt as a description of fallen humanity's hopeless attempts to manage life apart from a relationship with our true Father.

And praise God, we are finding that these empty strategies simply vanish in the lives of both the literal and spiritual orphans that we work with in Russia. I think of Ludmilla, who has suffered all her life under the burden of shame and guilt about her family life, feeling responsible for a host of problems outside her control. When we found the root in how she perceived her father's rejection of her, and she finally saw Jesus as giving her strength, love, and purpose, she threw off everything that was hindering her, and the sin that had entangled her, and she began to run the race with energy. Now she wants to start offering herself and her artistic gifts in ministry to teenagers to help them connect with the heart of the Father.

Verse 6 is the key verse. "Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" First, we see that God, from His eternal perspective, sees who we are before we see it. He calls us sons, and acts because of that fact. So based on who we are, who He has determined and called us to be, he sends the Spirit. If only we would recognize the power of this one fact - that we have the Spirit already in our hearts, how many questions, doubts, and fears would vaporize in an instant. But we try to talk God into doing something on our behalf, of giving us the Spirit, of blessing us, of hearing our prayers (for crying out loud), when he has already given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness - according to 2Peter 1:3.

Biblically, the heart is the seat of our spirit, and when we are born again, we are given a new Spirit, since our spirit was completely dead, which is to say, cut off from all hope of communication or communion with God. The word crying, from krazo (κραζο), signifies “a loud and earnest cry,” or “a public announcement.” Both of these meanings are actually significant. That the Spirit is making an announcement of sorts is attested to by the interesting connection with Roman adoptions, where the presence of a witness was required. And the Holy Spirit was traditionally associated with bearing witness to something. The more interesting aspect of this word is the loud and earnest cry, which literally derives from an onomatopoetic word describing the croaking sound a raven makes. That is to say it's a deep guttural cry that comes from the core of a person's being. A young woman, Yana, was sitting by merely witnessing some of the amazing transformation that was taking place in Ludmilla's heart just before I left to fly here, and something deep within just broke, and she began to weep like I have never seen her weep, crying out to God for a restored relationship with her mother. She had never even really wanted to be reconciled with her mother before that moment. But being in the presence of the Spirit's activity was enough to cause the fountains of the deep to open up, and the girls surrounded her in hugs and prayers for many minutes in a beautiful moment of shared thanksgiving and intercession.

I had heard before that Abba is an informal term for Father, but I had to check it out, to see if it wasn't some sort of post-modern spin, but multiple sources confirmed to me the amazing, almost too-good-to-be-true meaning of this word. Abba really is the Aramaic for the intimate term that we would translate best as Daddy. Why this is so incredible is seen in the contrast with Jewish usage, where it was acceptable from child to father, acceptable from adult father to his aged father, but never acceptable in reference to God, although the more formal term for Father was used for God. Jesus called God Abba, and Paul uses the term himself, as though to confirm and underscore its significance.

So God sends His Spirit to those who are His children, and this Spirit gives them the ability to have a heart-felt connection with Him that is so deep and profound that out of our inmost being can come a cry of "Daddy." This can happen for those who had no daddy. This can happen for those whose father was or is a terrible representation of God the Father. If you have a piece of paper, write down the following word pairs:

1.    potter - clay

2.    shepherd - sheep

3.    master - slave

4.    father - son

5.    friend - friend

6.    bridegroom - bride

You should recognize that all of these are biblical metaphors for our relationship with God. Notice also that they are listed in order of growing intimacy. Somebody should do a 6 part sermon series on each of these. I list them to show that there are various levels of intimacy with God, and that not all of them come naturally to each person. Even though our ultimate place is that of the bride, a point most strongly underscored in Ephesians and Revelations, the most frequent analogy used, and that by a long shot, is that of Father to son. My guess is that once you really can say, "Daddy" from your heart (like a crow!), then the rest will come. My ministry is focused like a laser beam on bringing a revelation of this core truth to everyone in Russia who will receive it.  My own growing awareness of God as my Daddy has impacted my personal walk with Christ, my sensitivity to my wife as a husband, my love of my children as a father, and my depth of interactions with people in ministry. May you start to connect more and more deeply with the Spirit within you that is already crying, passionately crying, Abba, Daddy.