Want proof? Here is the official statement I got today (translated by yours truly for your convenience): The Commission of the Headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region for the recognition of foreign citizens or those without citizenship as native Russian speakers. DECISION April…

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,…