Over the years since first going into ministry in 1997 I have been involved in lots of kinds of ministry – counseling, coaching, spiritual formation at one end, and citywide coalition building, racial reconciliation, grant writing for ministry projects, prayer initiatives, pastor summits, training churches, with occasional preaching on the other. With age and experience,…
Each year we must give a report of our accomplishments to our sending agency, Novo, who then compiles them into a general report to give donors an idea of what God has been doing around the world through our nearly 600 staff who serve in 163 different countries. That report is available here. It’s always…
I have known Galina (Galya) and her husband Mikhail (Misha) for several years. They are some of my favorite people. He is a pastor, and they have adopted several orphans and are leaders in the national coalition “Russia without Orphans.” I thought her recent testimony about her experience in our seminar and mini course Real…
No crisis will slow down our work! Summer is normally a slow time anyway in Russia, but with Zoom, training has been growing, and most encouragingly among ministry leaders and pastors from a wide swath of Russia. Here are some of the testimonies we have gotten: Thanks to the tools and skills we got in…
Following is another in my series of posts from my course material, tentatively named, “The King’s Table” about how to build a true community that moves from learning how to love one another to loving those far from God. This excerpt is from a lesson on how to biblically bear one another’s burdens. Pretend that…
Lydia is finishing up studies at Wheaton College this term after three years there. She’s in a pre-nursing program that has her do the bulk of the nursing studies elsewhere. Her sense of call to serve in the area of human trafficking has not abated, but she wants to re-group this summer before committing to…
Although marriage counseling is not the center of my work here in Russia, it has always been close to my heart. It was the most rewarding part of my counseling practice in Richmond before moving here, and the way God has helped me grow as a husband is not a small part of my own…
We had no idea that coming up with a board game would be so big a project when we started back in August. The good news is that we are no less committed or excited about the potential for using a board game to help Christians grow in relational depth and to help create spiritual…
As I kept digging deeper into the nature of relationships and how we form them, I couldn’t find anywhere a list of all the places in the New Testament where we are given instruction on how to live with respect to “one-another.” I have since found others who have listed some or all of them,…
In my line of work, as is the case in life generally, you often have to sew seeds for many years before seeing any fruit. I sometime pursue a ministry or personal connection on nothing but a sense of God’s leading and don’t see anything come of it for a long time. Then suddenly, bam.…
Here is another sample from my course. In this case, it is actually little more than a Bible study with discussion questions on the subject of how we are to navigate agenda conflicts in conversation. The text we use is one that often gets Jesus in trouble, as it sounds on the surface like he…
I am thrilled to include a post written by one of our team leaders Sveta Alekseeva, who is now actively taking ownership of the need to raise personal support for the vision of our ministry. For three days we were given the opportunity to immerse ourselves in Scripture and understand God’s view of finance. …
Continuing my series of postsdrawing on material from my training course on building the relationships and the team work that becoming the Body of Christ requires, here are some of my thoughts on obedience. Obedience gets a bad rap. No one likes to obey. And though we have not yet used the word with you…
Continuing my periodic posting of excerpts from my course on building real relationships in the Body, I decided to post this portion from week four, which is dedicated to authenticity. Each week I discuss the topic in the context of the life of Jacob, which turned out to be a wonderfully rich life to study for…
I continue my series of posts based on material from my courses. I do this to give you an idea what we are covering, but it does a poor job of giving you the experience itself, because the theory is actually a small part of the process. Oh well, I hope the theory gives you…
