Last Month I had an opportunity to visit the Seventh Missionary Summit-forum of Russian speaking churches in Europe. The Summit took place on February 21 to 24 in Polish Baptist Seminary which is called “Joy”, near Warsaw. Over the course of four days, I rejoiced that I had fellowship with the brethren who responded to God’s call and went to various countries of Europe for preaching Gospel. Just like Apostle Paul, they heard the missions’ call: “go to Macedonia and help us.” (Acts 16:9) and they responded God to wholeheartedly obey the Great Commission.
The missionary field is vast. In some countries like Poland and Italy, there are more than a million of Russian-speaking immigrants. Countries like France, England, Spain, and Greece have about half a million immigrants. A considerable number of countries have about one hundred to two hundred thousand Russian-speaking Immigrants. According to various accounts, Europe has about 15 million Russian people. Many of them planned temporarily work abroad but ended up being long-time workers who aren’t planning to come back to the home land. Moreover, many countries do not have a single Russian-speaking church.
Some churches take seriously the responsibility of preaching the Gospel to their countrymen, their neighbors, and to the entire world. Apostle Paul was filled with special love for his countrymen (Romans 9:3). During his usual missionary travels, he first of all taught in the local synagogue to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles on the streets of the city. He was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, because [it] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16) We have the privilege of preaching the Gospel to our countrymen because we know their culture, language, and thought process.
During the summit, missions, educational facilities, and publishing houses offered different resources as help to the missionaries. Out of all the Slavic associations and unions, only two of them are constant in supporting the missionary ministry in Europe – they are the Ukrainian Union ECB and the Pacific Coast Association of ECB.
The summit was a time for spiritual fellowship and sharing of experience of opening new churches. Mick Stockwell who is a missionary IMB, shared about the necessity of the Holy Spirit to act in the life of a missionary. Igor Bandura who is a vice-president of the Ukrainian Union of the Churches of ECB preached about how the power of God is perfected in weakness. The acknowledgement of your own weakness in ministry is the starting point in God's beginning to show His power in the life of a minister. Vyacheslav Tsvirinko shared about the regularities in the life of immigration, the influence of society on different generations of immigration, and about the goals which we should have before us, the need to preach to all, including the local population. I was preaching about “the Holy Spirit’s Work in the Life of Apostles, and about the Life of Missionaries”. The Holy Spirit leads the ministry, removes all obstacles, gives the power for stability, upholds true unity, and shows us what is important and what is secondary.
I had an opportunity to meet with our missionaries from Italy. It was a time of fellowship, discussion of pressing needs and decisions that had to be made regarding the long-term ministry of our missionaries.
The signing of partnership relationship between Moldavian Union of Baptists and Pacific Coast Association was a special event in the summit’s program. For that purpose bishop of the Brotherhood of Moldova Ion Miron arrived to the summit.
The summit was concluded by communion as a symbol of unity of the Body of Christ, and a celebration of God’s love, which we are called to preach to people who do not know God.
As I was looking at this great country through a window of a departing plane I was seeing so many opportunities that God allows for ministry. I was able to get to know the president of a Polish Baptist Union, Mateusz Wichary who shared his plans to invite 30 pastors from Ukraine, help them in learning the Polish language, and give them ministry opportunities in the Polish Baptist churches.
Everyone is in need of the Gospel, including people from all cultures and languages, that is why the future of the multicultural and multilingual effective ministry in both Europe, as well as in America.
Ivan Mileyev
AT THE SUMMIT
Please click on the first slide to see photo slide show
{rapidgallery}_newsRelated/2017/mar-poland{/rapidgallery}
