For the shortest description for our ministry I have ever managed to give, click here.

Our goal is nothing less than the reformation of society through bold mature Christian
leadership. To this end, nothing but intense investment in key emerging local leaders will
get us there. Moreover, we don’t just want to find individual leaders, we seek profound
levels of teamwork from these leaders so that a synergy of gifts and complementary
ministry can happen.

Our target audience, currently, is change-hungry Christians from across the
denominational spectrum. We have had conservatives, Pentecostals, and Lutherans in our mix. Russia has an orphan spirit that creates both literal orphans and destroys the fabric of family.  Spiritual fathers beget healthy biological fathers who create healthy families.  By creating a team of leaders (fathers), we seek to partner with Christians in leadership in every sphere of the community to bring visible transformation. The whole Church must take the whole Gospel to the whole of society.

We are already seeing lives radically impacted, marriages saved, and even miraculous
physical healings. We teach, model, and practice discipleship of spirit, soul, and body. The result is a completely new level of peace, freedom, and effectiveness in life. Our primary strategy is a new training series that Lyle has written to create intentional Christian communities that grow into mission teams. This curriculum is a year-long program that people from various churches have taken, and entire leadership teams from different churches have been trained. The results so far have exceeded expectations in terms of group health, vibrancy, speed of change, and teamwork. As one woman said, “I feel like I have learned what Christianity is for the first time.”

As part of the worldwide mission of Novo (formerly CRM), “we are a team of teams, determined, innovative, and responsive to the Spirit, cooperating in tandem with God’s Kingdom purposes for Russia. We are disciples, deeply committed to knowing and following Jesus. We are fire starters, multiplying our impact by equipping, empowering, and collaborating with others. We are risk takers, rising to new challenges, willing to lay our lives on the line for the cause of Christ. We share the best we have to multiply gospel movements. And we believe that nothing is as important as reaching the nations with the Good News of Jesus.”

Ministries we coordinate from our local base in St. Petersburg, have included:

• Real Talk seminar
• leadership training experience “All for One”
• church ministry conferences and trainings
• Christian life coaching
• professional life coaching training through Lifeforming Leadership Coaching
• personal prayer ministry, individual or family counseling
• prayer minister training through Transformation Prayer Ministry
• Master Classes over Tea
• Citiwide pastors’ roundtable
• Conversational evangelism
• Direct ministry to Christian leaders and churches on an as-needed basis, such as intensive multi-disciplinary interventions or trainings we provide on site around the country.
• Board game. As a complement to our Real Talk training, we are in the final stages of developing a fun interactive way to practice its concepts.
• Business chaplaincy is a new project that started this summer, where we have formed a team of Christian business coaches and consultants who will be offering professional services to businesses with the aim of reaching unsaved owners, managers, and staff with the Good News through serving their practical needs. Eventually we hope to actually have “pastors at work” for some large companies.

All such ministries fit together into our overall vision from God:

“We pray and work together towards the day when the name of Jesus will be so renown in Russia that every sphere of society will be seeking to answer the question, “what does the love of God look like in this place?” and as a result Russians will be known worldwide for their love of each other through the Holy Spirit.” We hope and pray for the day when the way Russians speak and relate to each other is completely transformed by the love of Christ – at work, home, church, government, and business. Thus, the focus of our attention is relationships, and relationships have horizontal and vertical dimensions. How we relate to each other and how we relate to God (and understand how God relates to us) all impact each other.

Novo Russia’s mission statement:

“Our team mission is to form, develop, and spread the culture of the Kingdom of God into every sphere of Russian society.” We are building a team of teams who live out the love of Christ in community and model that love to others, inviting and training them to join a movement that multiplies that love in every sphere of society. We focus in five areas:

Strategic Prayer = asking the Lord where to focus, what He is already doing, and how to cooperate with Him.
Cultural Outreach = strengthening and mobilizing existing churches and investing in emerging leaders in other areas of society
Strategy, planning and organization = providing the structure for our other teams to function within
Care and Oversight = making sure all the other teams are healthy and growing personally in faith, love, and effectiveness
Pioneering Initiatives = investing in the creative dreams of leaders who make and multiply disciples

To this end our team is divided into four sub-teams:

The Prayer and Worship Team

The mission of this team is “form, develop, and spread a culture of prayer and worship of Jesus into every sphere of Russian society.” To this end, its strategic priorities include the following:

• Foster prayer and worship for the people and activities of Novo Russia and for the places to which we are called
• Learn to listen collectively to God for his heart and priorities for the places to which we are called
• Organize “spiritual intelligence” research projects to understand the “high places, gates, and pathways” requiring targeted prayer
• Initiate and multiply partner and daughter groups throughout the places to which we are called
• Coordinate information sharing with other Novo teams and participate in any inter-team projects necessary for advancing the broader mission

The Care and Oversight Team

The mission of this team is to “oversee and foster the spiritual, emotional, and structural health of the other Novo teams in and their leadership.” To this end, its strategic priorities include the following:

• Personal care for team leaders (priority) and team members (secondarily) on an ongoing basis
• Ongoing training and development of leaders for Novo teams and for the Body of Christ as a whole in four areas:
  • Spiritual formation (Hearing God’s Voice, Discovery)
  • Counseling and prayer ministry (Transformation Prayer Ministry)
  • Life coaching (Lifeforming)
  • Relationship and team development (All for One)
• To the extent that this team serves individuals and organizations (primarily churches) outside of Novo, such ministry must be done without any hidden motives or expectations, but this team should work with the Strategic Team for choosing ministry opportunities, developing partnerships, and seeking new team members through such relationships.

The Strategy, Planning, and Organization Team

The mission of this team is to “pray and think through, plan, and provide the necessary structures for the formation, development, and multiplication of Kingdom culture into every sphere of society.” Such work will require close cooperation with the Prayer and Outreach teams. To this end, its strategic priorities include the following:

• The development of concrete ministry strategies and projects based on the priorities and information gathered from both spiritual and community intelligence (Prayer and Outreach teams)
• The provision of organizational support and leadership for the realization of specific ministry projects
• The development and dissemination of materials (printed and online) for strategic ministry growth and influence

The Outreach Team

The mission of this team is “the formation and development of creative new ministry projects with the potential of becoming movements that spread the culture of the Kingdom of God into every sphere of society where Jesus is not Lord and Savior.” To this end its strategic priorities include:

• Working out best practices for initiating spiritual conversations with people far from God
• Working out best practices for engaging persons of peace
• In conjunction with the Prayer and Strategic teams, initiate new projects in high places, gates, and paths
• In conjunction with the Strategic team and Lyle, describe what a generic Disciple Making Movement (DMM) looks like in a Russian context so that its DNA can be creatively replicated in all kinds of new contexts.

Support Novo Russia (formerly Orphans Reaching Russians).