The greatest event of the month was Good News Production Intl. regional directors meeting at Thailand (see the pictures attached). My trip there was safe and smooth – thank you very much for your prayers. The meeting was very productive time of discussing how we could use media more effectively for the spread the Gospel. We shared materials and experience with fellow media producers from India, Kenya, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, USA. It was extremely helpful in expanding the vision on how the Kingdom grows around the world and what is our specific place in that big picture.
On of the relieves we got during the meeting was finding out that many Christians all over the world face the same problem we do: young gifted believers hesitate to develop their gifts for using media in evangelism because they do not have the access to the kind of the equipment movies industry does. We got an encouragement from the brethren in following our vision:the equipment is never as important as the message. After all, isn’t most of videos are watched through the Internet nowadays? And the sites like youtube.com there is no difference whether the video was taken with high-definition camera or with the cell phone. The message makes difference. As a result we have decided to share that encouragement with many young gifted Christians by starting the contest for the best video on apologetics shot by the cell-phone. Please pray with us for this idea development.
At the same time it is great encouragement to see how the materials we have released before produce a ripple effect. A Christian cable TV network is going to be started in Galicia, Western Ukraine. We have supplied them with the complete set of our video materials (all in Russian) for the broadcast. They plan to dub them into Ukrainian and Polish eventually.
At the same time the chief editor of ‘Faith and Life’ conservative evangelical magazine printed in Russian by the ministry Eastern Light has asked me to write an interview for them on the problems and challenges of evangelism in post-communism world. The magazine has 100 000 copies circulation in 62 countries (including the countries closed for personal evangelism) and it is also a great opportunity to spread a word about the recourses we have available.
At the same time we have developed a new aspect of the ministry – ministry to the prisoners in the partnership with the Christian prisoners rehabilitation mission (the picture is attached). The mission helps the prisoners who are in jail, about to be released or were released recently to make proper documents as well as find housing and job after the release. Those people would be homeless jobless, without a legal status, and well could be return to the jail soon otherwise. We are supplying the mission with the appropriate materials to make not only social aspect but the evangelism aspect of it be more effective for the Kingdom.
A big sign of our work importance was the fact that Taurechesky Christian Institute, one of the oldest Christian Schools in the former SU has invited our representative to make a presentation of our materials at their 10th birthday celebration.
Regretfully our publishing project got slowed down for a month because of the regular out of order parliament elections in our country on September 30. All printers were busy 25 hours a day printing the rally material for various political parties (the elections is a harvest time for the printers, you know). However the elections dust is settled down by now, and we expect the printers to catch up with the scheduled projects pretty soon.
As for us, our autumn harvest time is at the hand, and the symposium Man and Christian Worldview is a key upcoming event. Except Zhenya presenting the paper, our team is responsible for the technical support. For the first time we are going to provide Wi-Fi Internet access during the sessions.
In general our prospective projects plan looks following way so far:
2007
October 12-13 – Uzbek ministry coordination retreat
October 18-19 – The Symposium
October 22-25 – Eurasian Accreditation Association conference on education
November 19-30 – Teaching at Donetsk Christian University; ‘The Lesson’ movie presentation for Donetsk region churches
December – ‘The Lesson’ movie presentation for Lugansk region churches
2008
January – ‘The Lesson’ movie presentation for Melitopol region churches
February 24 – April 6 – My studies at Asbury Seminary
April 11-19 – hosting MediaCallenge international workshop
April 21-30 – hosting MediaCallenge regional workshop
May 18-20 – Eurasian Apologetics Society regional coordinators retreat
2009
October – II Eurasian Apologetics Summit
Please pray for all that projects. Please pray with us also for our dream – a self-supporting multi-purpose resources center, where we could do all our intensive training ministries without wasting the funds for the facilities renting