The service at the field of the Lord is so exciting adventure – we hardly too our breath after the last year ending, and January is gone already!
Let me share the greatest news of the month first. Turkmenistan is the totalitarian Eastern tyranny country the most closed for the Gospel in Central Asia. No people or publications from the West can get there in a regular way. Nevertheless, personal contacts are the key to the Oriental culture. The personal relationships between the ministers in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan allowed the ripple effect of the Apologetics Society network penetrate the border of that country after all! Attached picture shows Turkmen minister receiving the books on apologetics from an Uzbek Apologetics Society leader (I am not sure it would be wise to mention their names in the Internet). It is amazing, how God provides the ways for spreading His messages in the places where the way is hard to find! Please pray for the fruits of the seeds planted.
At the same time the leaders of the Apologetics Society Uzbek branch are doing last preparation for the February ‘Education and Apologetics Congress.’ The words like ‘Christian’, or ‘evangelism’ are carefully avoided in the title and all the papers, but this is exactly what it is going to be about – first time in the history the leaders of various churches and denominations of the Central Asian country are going to come together for studies, networking and sharing experience of using apologetics and creation evangelism for the Kingdom spread in their context! Please pray for this project as well.
The list of the enrollment for the master-class on using video in the ministry we are planning for April (right after my return from the seminary) is almost full, and we have quite a geography represented there: Ukraine, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan, China, Russian Far East and Central Russia. It will be a great cohort to work with!
There will be two workshops actually – the international and the regional ones. Vadim, our coordinator is in charge of regional workshop arrangements. There has been done a good promotion among the churches of the region and many of them are interested to send their youth leaders to take part in the workshop. Zhenya, the project manager, and Lena, the office manager, are now working on all the arrangements with logistics and room & board for the international one. Please pray with us for the proper people, recourses and funds being collected in order the event had the greatest impact for the Kingdom both regionally and internationally.
Rev. Timothy Alferov, Russian Orthodox priest, former physicist, and now, after coming across with our materials – devoted creationist and leading Biblical apologist from Russia has came to work few days with our media team. He made some video shootage of the creation and Noah’s flood evidences at Novgorod area. Our video team is helping him with doing cut and voice acting and other postproduction for the Creation Evangelism documentary for Central Russia. At the same time we have took the video of his great workshop for youth on the moral and sexual purity – the issues teenagers have the most questions on.
While the production studio part of the new facilities is still under the construction, the media production team keeps working on the several other projects as well. We have produced our first apologetics Simply Essential miniature; the technical details for the Black Sea show Russian dub are sorted out and actual voice recording is done. One more DVD with the Symposium presentations is released.
The book publishing ministry has got a new start. There are five titles are ready for the press or in the prepress currently. All the books are dealing with the worldview foundation of the Gospel, but address different audience, addressing the same issue in different ways.
The first one is a Worldview – a Missing Dimension of Evangelism monograph for the Christian Schools professors. Introduction to Systematic Apologetics is a new edition of the textbook for their students as well as for all ministers, evangelists etc. – more and more Christian schools are using it for Apologetics, Evangelism, Missions and Practical Ministry courses. The Third one is CREATIO (translation from German) – a high school Science textbook disproving the naturalistic lie at the state textbooks and bridging the facts kids learn in the school with Creation right. A Protestant Girl is a novel by Rev. Timothy that raises in an indirect but honest way burning questions on the crisis of Christian identity and the unity in the Body of Christ in the post-communist culture. The last but not least one is Training Positive and Productive Kids by Rick Deighton, which deals with the passing the Biblical foundation of our worldview to the next generation.
Three of five books are ready for the press actually. However the crisis of the customs officers strike at the Polish-Ukrainian border does not allow the paper we have ordered for the books printing to go through the customs clearance. Please pray for this situation.
Since our target audience reads Russian mostly, the English pages of our website http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engln.html updates slowly. However some new materials are now posted there and you are welcome to take a look. Soon we will also post the information about Russian DVDs we have recently made available.
Lena and Zhenya are also working on the seminars they going to lead in April at the youth apologetics conference in Voronyezh, Central Russia, for Russian churches youth leaders. They will do the workshops on evangelism among counter-cultures and evangelism through the Internet. While Zhenya has already some experience of speaker at several conferences, for Lena it will be her first time presenting a paper. Please pray for her as well for other young leaders’ development at the field of apologetics and evangelism.
By the way, speaking about the leaders training among young apologists, last month I shared great news about 20 persons signed up for the Science and the Bible workshops leaders training course at Amur region. It was just a beginning! 50 persons signed up for it by now. That is 10 times higher of our expectations! This is the sign that the seeds were not planted in vain – a new great harvest is going to be produced eventually (Mat 4:26-29). Please join our prayers for it.
The last days of January were especially busy for the Apologetics Society (coordination/distribution) office – we have finally moved to the new facilities! The inner area (the conference room and recording studios) is not completed yet, but the distribution office room is, and we have finally left the decaying place we were renting for many years!
Among all the projects I have to set more time these days for completing my doctorate studies assignments I have to do before leaving to the Seminary on February 23. Please pray for my preparation, travel, studies.