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