Category Archives: 2020

June – July 2020

CCSA Site Visitors January – June

 Acts 17:17 says, while in Athens, Paul disputed in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. Like a modern bazaar in Central Asia, the ancient agora was not as much a place for trade as a location where people came to socialize and discuss various ideas. The apostle was delivering the Good News – the most important news one should hear – at the very venue where people kept coming for the news. We have a strong belief that the Internet, as opposed to a supermarket, is the 21st-century equivalent of the 1st-century agora.

CCSA Site Visitors January – June

 was always an important part of our work, but never before was it as important as it is now at the time of quarantine, when most of other ways to reach people are unavailable, and many people are locked in self-isolation with the Internet as the only access to the outer world. We have dual focus at all our four campuses now:  meeting the immediate opportunities to spread the message of the Kingdom and develop the content for future projects.

 The latest 6-month statistics of the online ministry proves how relevant that approach is under the circumstances for fulfilling our purpose to communicate the Truth to sceptics, strengthen the saints in their confidence in the Truth and equip God’s people to proclaim God’s Word effectively. Our main website – a resources hub – has been visited from 67 world countries (see the map attached), excluding those from the restricted areas who have done it anonymously through a VPN. May the Lord be praised!

Online Talks

 Since people of our culture prefer personal interaction to a group involvement (again, not much has changed from the agora times), we have been using my personal Facebook page with 6,650 followers as another ministry tool. We encourage our volunteers worldwide to follow the same model. At the same time, we have set up the Eurasian Apologetics Society group where they can share their resources and ideas. It includes about 700 members; approximately 2,000 posts were published there during the half a year! Additionally, roughly 200 publications were posted on each of the dedicated pages we manage on the social media most popular in our part of the world, i.e. Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and VK. Also, the online library received 1,400 book requests. Praised be the Lord!

Bible Study for teh Elders

 We are carrying on distance teaching – from the online Bible studies and leadership training to the Master Level courses (see the pictures attached) – and respond to the immediate challenges that God’s children face. After completing the online message series “Peace In the Midst of the Storm,” we discovered that many married couples experience Cabin Fever problems due to the unusual amount of time they are spending together in isolation. To meet the need, we have developed 12 talk series titled “The Art of marital intimacy. Biblical Reflections on the Intimacy in Marriage,” teaching couples to trust and serve each other. At the moment, we are working on a follow-up brochure on Christ-like sacrificial relationships between spouses.

Cross-Cultural Evangelism Online Discussion

Cross-Cultural Evangelism Online Seminar

 Though a major conference on cross-cultural evangelism we had planned to attend was postponed, some motivational seminars and discussions were provided in the online format (see the pictures attached). Please join our prayers for the Lord’s international heralds to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise people, redeeming the time, because the days are evil,” making the most of every opportunity, i.e. using the pandemic limitations for intensive training and spiritual growth on the one hand, and utilizing the options specific to their ministry during this time, on the other hand.

Cross-Cultural Evangelism Online Seminar

 Some say our today is very different from our yesterday because we do not know what is going to happen next. But they are wrong. Our today is different because now we do know that we do not know that (though earlier we had illusions we knew that.) But doesn’t the Scripture say: “Whoever thinks he knows something really doesn’t know as he ought to know. But the person who loves God is known by him.” (1 Corinthians 8:2,3)? May the Lord lead us in preparing His workers not to fall back into the “old mode” or to discover a “new old mode,” but to operate in the “new mode” continuously. That implies bringing out the new treasures from their storeroom (i.e. the skills and strategies developed during the time of pandemic), as well as the old ones (i.e. those they practiced previously), and always being prepared to develop new and effective ways of delivering the eternal and unchanging Good News to the constantly changing world.

May 2020

Radio M – Existance of God
Hope Channel – Genesis as History

Hope Channel – Genesis as History

 Developing resources for training and equipping believers in the restricted areas (where using regular means for Christian education is sidelined or even dangerous) has always been one of our priorities. We kept making videos of lectures and seminars, producing downloadable visual aids, writing and translating books to make them available via different channels and formats, exploring and testing various approaches to building up disciples, etc. And now that most places in the world have turned into restricted areas because of the quarantine, our resources are in great demand as never before!

ndividual follow-up
Q&A Session

Churches, missions and seminaries are turning to us as they look for ways to continue teaching and training under the new conditions, and we are always happy to help! We supply media resources to them, provide assignments, and help with feedback and assessment. Before the quarantine, we would provide one or two teaching missions a month. Now, given the current demand, we can manage multiple courses for several institutions at the same timeMay the Lord be praised!

 Still, the emphasis on Christian education is not only on information, but even more on transformation. My desk has turned into a “control centre” for group and individual discussions, Q&A sessions, fellowship and prayers online. Several radio stations and Internet ministries have invited us to produce live broadcasts or online discussions on critical issues of the Bible and the foundations of Christian faith (see pictures attached). Please pray for God’s wisdom for us to do this in the most effective way to promote the Kingdom.

 As usual, I feel a little uncomfortable because only my face shows up in all these programmes. I am sure you realize that this is the fruit of the work of our great team

Team

 and of many volunteers who collect information, develop content, maintain web and social media platforms, translate books and articles, produce media, etc. Moreover, we help various partner ministries in every way we can. For instance, we help the Zoom course (which uses an online platform to teach the principles of multiplying disciples and churches) to launch the Russian version of the training (see https://zume.training/ru/). May the Lord be praised!

 As a family team, we continue to promote online a model for family worship (see picture attached). This approach is quite foreign to our culture, but many have told us it has really helped them during their months of isolation. To God be the glory!

April 2020

Although all our mission outings and teaching trips have been canceled (both national and international), the focus of our outreach has intensified in other areas through the Internet. For instance, we were planning to run the final training course and presentations to complete the Bible and Logic crowdsourcing project this month. During the last six months, on various social media platforms, we kept posting the descriptions of individual informal logical fallacies people fall into in their preaching and evangelism, as well as the fallacies the atheists make to resist the message. The readers were supplying us with real-life examples of these fallacies. The result of our study was finalized as a book, a training course and PowerPoint presentations. However, since the events had been canceled, we posted the results as an online reference book (https://scienceandapologetics.com/logical-fallacies.html). Now we are going to produce the audio version of the book and the videos for each fallacy type. May the Lord be glorified!

Smog

Similarly, we are managing several ongoing projects on various social media platforms popular in our part of the world. Every week we put on line some video courses, e.g. The Biblical Strategy of EvangelismThe Biblical Model of Church LeadershipPractical Christian EthicsBible and PoliticsBible and ScienceThe Basics of Cross-cultural Ministry, etc. The video versions allow for flexible time of viewing, and we answer viewers’ questions through Zoom, Skype, Messenger and other apps later. Please keep this work in your prayers!

The overall apocalyptic mood in Kyiv worsened even more this month as a result of the terrible smog that covered the city for several weeks, because of the wild bush fire raging in the abandoned exclusion zone around infamous Chernobyl nuclear station. Sometimes air pollution exceeded the norm 10 times! (The photo attached shows what it was like on the day of Orthodox Easter!) That increased people’s longing for hope and comfort and made them particularly open to the message! We keep saying that these days are special not because we do not know what tomorrow will bring, but because now we know we do not know that! Before, we had a complacent illusion of knowing what was coming. Nevertheless, the Lord is always in control, and we should put all our trust in Him alone.

the weekly lessons on Romans

This is the main message of the weekly devotions I do on Sundays, introducing the national believers to the concept of family worship, which is quite foreign to many in our part of the world. There are several other new online projects I am involved in, for instance, the weekly lessons on Romans for the local church leaders (see the picture attached). Please pray for the Lord’s wisdom and guidance in this initiative.

Personal stories and testimonies are fairly alien to our post-communist culture. Generations of fear and totalitarianism made our people rather reticent and reserved. Also, people here get embarrassed when somebody else tells something about them. Yet, here is the story I can share now without hesitation. Actually, I can’t help but share it! This is a glorious illustration of how the Lord has been using our ministry’s strategy to identify, encourage and equip key leaders who can train and equip others according to 2 Timothy 2:2 approach.

The story started in the early 1990s, soon after the Soviet Union had collapsed. People were facing the shortage of food, clothing and other essentials. During the night, the city streets were filled with gang shoot-outs. We had just recently started a family ministry. A hundred-square-feet room served as our bedroom, warehouse, office and print shop. Some days we had no time to cook, because of the people coming and leaving. At nights, we kept half-sleeping and half-listening to the buzz of a dot matrix printer under our bed. When the sound stopped, it meant I needed to wake up and fix a paper jam. The tracts and brochures we produced had to be mailed from a public post office.

Dr. Vladislav Olkhovsky

There was no Internet or cell phones. Actually, having a landline phone at home was considered a luxury. Usually, people had to go to a phone booth at a street intersection in case of any emergency.

At that point I received the first letter from Dr. Vladislav Olkhovsky, Professor of the National Institute for Nuclear Research and one of the leading national physicists. He was wondering if it was true that we were sending out some materials that claimed to reconcile science with faith in God? We sent him everything we had. The immediate response was: “Thank you very much, but this is nonsense. Please do not send me anything like this anymore”. Nevertheless, the next letter came a year later: “Could you send me some more please?” We certainly did and very soon Dr. Olkhovsky committed his life to Jesus. It took time for a person of his position to reconsider the foundational concepts of his worldview!

Apologetic Conferences

That laid the foundation for our 25-year-long friendship and ministry partnership. As he impacted leading national scientists, Dr. Olkhovsky started one of the most influential chapters of our Eurasian Apologetics Society. From that time on, leading students, professors and researchers to Jesus became the main passion of his life. Vladislav took part in all the apologetic conferences, summits and retreats we ran (see the pictures attached), to encourage, train and equip national leaders for effective evangelism in the culture that had been misapplying science to worship atheism for decades.

Apologetic Conferences

The most tangible of Dr. Olkhovsky’s contributions was into our biannual Man and Christian Worldview academic symposiums – the short-term missions to the tribes of the post-soviet intellectuals. Leading professors of the former Soviet Union universities attended the event, and our task was to find the Christian opponents of the same academic and scientific level for them. The goal was not so much to debate, but to build professional and personal connections to be used as bridges for the Gospel message. It is hard to overestimate the significance of involvement of such national Christians as Olkhovsky and his fellows, considering their level! Dozens of professors, scientists and even some top functionaries of research institutes had a chance to be freed from the dogmas of the Soviet atheistic propaganda and reconsider their understanding of the Bible message! As a ripple effect, those who accepted Jesus influenced many of their colleagues and students. That included even those who did not change their attitude to the church, because it freed their schools and laboratories from the hostility to the message making others more open to it.

Dr. Vladislav Olkhovsky

Vladislav used any opportunity to speak of Jesus till the end of his days. He was a prolific author, and we are actively distributing his materials. In his late career, his professional interests spanned the problems of time in quantum physics, the irreversibility of time, the fundamental problems of quantum physics of the living organisms, the temporal analysis of nuclear fusion and the nuclear chronometry in the universe. In a peaceful sleep, Vladislav Sergeyevich Olkhovsky went to spend eternity with our Father, the Lord and Creator of time and quantum physics on the 23rd of April, 2020. We praise Jesus for the joy to be Vladislav’s friends and co-workers even on this side of the Kingdom and in the future eternity together!

February-March 2020

A short but very eventful month of February started with a new project – The Foundations series seminar at the ReFormat youth movement. What great joy it is to have fellowship with young people so devoted to Jesus and sharing His message with their peers (see pictures attached)! The fellowship was focused on the relationship between science and faith and lasted long after the program had finished. The next meeting has been postponed due to quarantine. But please keep in your prayers these children of God who love their Father with all their hearts, minds and souls, and please pray for the program to continue in the future.

Relible Foundations
TransWorlRadio

TransWorlRadioThe Reliable Foundations apologetics online club has been working for the sixth year in a row! We had no idea it would last that long! The February meeting still had some physical attendance (see picture attached), but the next one(s) will be for online followers only. The Trans World Radio interview on the difference between the political agenda of the climate change and the actual biblical approach to the stewardship of God’s creation did not require real attendees, either (see the picture attached).Praised the Lord for the technologies that allow us to spread the message despite the challenges!

Vinnitsa

Another great blessing of the month was the Bible and Civil Society seminar for they outh leaders at the city of Vinnitsa(see picture attached). I wish you could hear the stories of these young people: how the Lord found them, what He rescued them from and how amazingly He has been working in their lives! The more I deal with the post-exodus generation (those who were not born under communism slavery), the more optimistic I am about the future of the nations despite the broken record: “”Weren’t there any graves in Egypt? Did you have to bring us out here in the desert to die? Look what you have done by bringing us out of Egypt! Didn’t we tell you before we left that this would happen? We told you to leave us alone and let us go on being slaves of the Egyptians. It would be better to be slaves there than to die here in the desert.” (Exodus 14,11-12).This is the generation that will lead people out of the wilderness of despair and will build their life on the solid rock of God’s word! May the Lord be praised!

Our next mission was to the cities of Khmelnitsky and Dolinovka with the big program on the Biblical foundations of marriage and family. It included seminars at the churches in the area and a training course for the family ministries leaders of entire region and their spouses (see the pictures attached). It is impossible to overestimate the role of godly marriage in building strong families and churches as well as raising the next generations in accordance with God’s Word! It is exciting to see the grassroots movement for this strategically important case! Please join our prayers for it!

Our next stop wasLviv, where we offeredan intensive training for a small group of young missionaries going to Nepal, South and Central Africa, and Eastern Europe (see pictures attached). For many years, the Lord has been using Ukraine as a hub of Evangelism for the other regions of the Russian Empire. At the time when the Soviet Union collapsed, 90% of the pastors in Russia were from Ukraine! And now we see how this influence is spreading even further! Please pray with us for this new generation of servants of the Lord to be properly prepared to enter the mission field!

We received a very special item of news from our coordinator Igor, who is based inthe Amur region of Russias Far East! They have successfully run the Camp called Search for Truth” designed for young Christian paleontologists. About a hundred kids aged 9–15 years from seven Sunday schools of that huge region had joined it. Igor writes: “The children had an unforgettable experience, and we hope that some of them will embark on the path of scientific research, harmoniously combining the science and the work of God the Creator”. May the Lord be praised!Our next stop had to be the big conference in Bila Tserkva (Central Ukraine) to conduct several seminars on international missions. However, it was rescheduled due to the pandemic. For similar reasons, our upcoming tripto the country of Moldova was cancelled. Our course on Practical Christian Ethics was meant to be an event to celebrate the commencement of the Master program at the seminary there.

Well, the trip has been cancelled, but the course itself has not to be cancelled at all! We produce media versions of our courses to equip the workers of the Lord in the restricted regions. Admittedly, the pandemic has made every region restricted in some way, so we are well prepared for the situation, thanks to technology! We supplied the students with the books to read by mail, with the online videos of the lectures, and with assignments. Obviously, this will not replace the actual interaction we would have during classes. Nevertheless, the students will not contact even one another and this is good for the quarantine situation. This is another example of how our ministry of media production and book publishing works for the Kingdom when other methods fail! May the Lord be praised!

We have quite a déjà vu now. In 2014, we managed to leave Crimea on the last plane, our team managed to send us our vehicles with the last train, and we, the Golovins, gathered all together in Kyiv. Now we managed to bring Dasha, our youngest daughter, to Kyiv with the last train from Lviv and we are all here together again. The country has been quarantined. All borders are closed, all public events are banned, all schools are shut down, all public transportation is cancelled. It looks like the Lord is humbling us again by reminding us that He is in control, not us. Now we have the time for fellowship, learning, praying, dreaming and developing the plans and the content for future projects. The ministry through the Internet and public networks is becoming our primary focus during this period. Please pray for Lord’s guidance for us in it!

January 2020

Trans World Radio

 Early this year we continued with our ongoing projects and launched several new ones. We are providing training courses and seminars as the Joint School of Christian Apologetics, conducting sessions of the Reliable Foundations Online Apologetics Club and spreading the Message daily through social media platforms and other means. Occasionally, some one-time events evolve into ongoing projects, like answering questions received from the audience of Trans World Radio (see the picture attached). We organize regular meetings for the re-Format Youth Ministry to encourage and equip them to bring greater glory to the Kingdom. Please continue to pray for all these missions.

 The crowd-sourcing project on informal logical fallacies that are most common in our part of the world started in August and it was planned to last for a couple of months only. Then we extended it till Christmas. And you know what? It is still going on! People keep sending new cases they have had to deal with. In February we plan to complete the research and develop the final products for public use – booksonline reference resources and a smartphone app. Please keep this exciting project in your prayers!

 We have also provided a three-day training seminar “Bible and Logic” at the Ezra Academy discussing issues with various ministry leaders (see the pictures attached). It was an extremely valuable experience. We plan to have the textbook completed by April and provide a week-long open intensive course on Logic at the Ukrainian Evangelical Seminary later. We intend to film a video version and make it available online for everyone, including the distant and restricted regions. Please pray for these activities as well.

 Our strategic focus is identifying, encouraging and equipping young leaders for effective ministry in line with the approach found in 2 Timothy 2:2. It is always a great blessing from the Lord to meet young people who have dedicated themselves to ministry and to learn how encouraging and helpful to them our resources have been. Yet, the meeting we had this month was very special. Mikhail is a young man from Donetsk, a city in the war zone.

Mikhail

Any evangelical activity is heavily restricted in his region controlled by the pro-Russia militants. Nevertheless, Mikhail is involved in active ministry online. When we had found out that Mikhail was coming to Kiev, we arranged a meeting with him and had a very fruitful discussion concerning the strategy of his ministry and the opportunities for our cooperation for the sake of the Kingdom. We were glad to provide Mikhail with the resources for his ministry (see the pictures attached). Later he wrote on his Facebook page (http://bit.ly/3bhSg6l): “CCSA’s work has played an important role in shaping me as a Christian, as well as in strengthening my faith. I am deeply grateful to God for this opportunity.” May the Lord be praised! While Mikhail continues his ministry, we are going to make him a part of our content-development team. Please pray for him: for his safety and for the zeal he has for the Lord! Pray for many more young people like him to be called to this strategically important ministry, for the harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few.

 Please also pray for our production team which continues the work in the restricted area under the radar. In addition to the regular videos and audios for the social media they make, we produced an excellent clip “Do You Know Him?” with the spoken word in Russian script inspired by Dr. Shadrach Meshach Lockridge’s message “My King”: https://youtu.be/lvbXNgKKJeE Please enjoy it and may the Lord be praised!