The greatest event of the month was the youth conference on the modern issues of Apologetics we made in partnership with the Apologist ministry founded and led by our former manager and current regional coordinator for Central Russia Andrey Goorsky in Kursk (Russia). The objectives of the conference were to help young Christians in finding the answers to the questions that concern their coevals, to show them the ways of better understanding the Scripture and applications of the Christian faith to daily life; to be encouraged in faith through other young people, participate in discussions in order to hear out other opinions and share one’s own.
The conference was planned for 100 participants; however over 200 young people from various Central Russia regions (Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Tambov oblasts) have came to take part in it. The final goal reached by the conference was establishing of Russian Science and Apologetics Society (RSAS) – a Central Russia brunch of our International Science and Apologetics Society (ISAS) our ministry coordinates.
The conference became a new milestone in reaching our goal of the teamwork and leaders development. It was a very first project for Zhenya in her new role as a manager on projects and development. Zhenya lead two seminars “The Role of Music in the Church History” and “The Impact of Christianity on Life and Art of Vincent Van Gogh” (see the pictures attached). The first seminar was especially interesting for the youth and there was a really good discussion afterwards. Zhenya was able to answer some questions about modern Christian and non-Christian music and its place in the church.
Also Vadim Tsaritson, our chief coordinator, was working first time without my direct or indirect involvement there. He was developing networking and shared experience of CCSA/ISAS for the sake of RSAS development as self-governed, self-supporting and self-propagating ministry. The most important discussion on the partnership development was between Vadim and Andrey (see the picture attached) since they will be the main bridge in the ministries work coordination.
Right after Kursk our team went to Odessa for Christian Schoolteachers Fellowship conference. The seminars we offered were providing the strategy on evangelism in the context of state school curriculum, especially on the Science lesson. The seminars were received with enthusiasm, and all the materials we had are gone.
Two major changes took place to our video production department. The first one is with the staff. Misha Klimov, a former part-time video producer became our full-time worker adopting also responsibilities of technical manager and distribution manager left after Timothy resigned. In the same time Mikhail Bankovsy, who was a head of the video production department as a volunteer for 15 years has also joined our staff. With having our own studio we expect soon with – God willing – the new office facilities remodeling, it will increase our production potential considerably.
Another change happened to our broadcast. Zhisa TV Company we partnered with for many years have been sold, its entire staff is fired, and the new owner does not care about local materials production and broadcast. Nevertheless the Lord has provided us the opportunity to have a deal on the same terms with another company – Neapolis. It covers the same residential audience (about 1.5 millions), however it has much better broadcast coverage at the Southern Coast (Yalta) area where millions of people coming for recreation every summer, and it increases our audience few times during the summer season!
The changes in the video production team give us more resources for the original production – not just weekly broadcast programs. The beta-version of the Urok (Tough Choices) video finally completed, and we came up with the ideas for some more changes, but we hope it will not take much.
The spring just started, but the summer is coming soon and we are involved already in the Young Defenders Camp ‘TVORETS’ (‘Creator’) preparation. We form the team; develop the program, searching for creative ideas.
My traveling schedule is following so far:
April 1 – 7 – teaching at Christian Leadership Center at Kiev
April 21 – May 6 – Teaching at Trinity Bible College at Kursk
May 16 – 19 – the Symposium
June 20 – 30 – the camp
Please pray for our ministry, for our team, for my family, for all the activities and projects we are planning for the year, for God’s guidance in everything we do.