What an incredible night! Final count, 1280 (mostly youth) showed up to worship Christ in the center of Minsk this past weekend. Only 860 were allowed in, max seating capacity in the Philharmonic.
The evening started with Collins and Angela opening up with an acoustic set. Beautiful to hear the voices echo in this historic place. Then, Sergei and Taras (500km runner) shared for a few minutes, welcoming everyone and reading the Prodigal Son parable from the book of Luke – in commemoration of the 500yr anniversary of the Belorussian Bible. These were incredible moments.
Yan and the XDH crew led the main time. It’s hard to put into words. Even the short video (from my iphone, more coming from better camera soon), doesn’t do justice to the sense of awe, unity, and faith encouragement that took place.
I got messages from Ukraine over the next 24hrs how LIT literally ‘lit up’ social media in Russian speaking world. So cool to scroll through and see the many photos and comments from this generation – they are thirsty for God’s reality. Many commented on how amazing this could be done in the center of their city.
My favorite comment was from the ‘grandmothers’ that work at the Philharmonic – they were greatly impressed with the audience of young people, and said how polite and respectful everyone was. An important testimony.
You can look at more pictures and coming video over at www.litworship.com if you’d like. Our prayer is that God would open up doors in Russia next, we’re praying about St. Petersburg as a location for Lit Russia. We don’t have the resources for this yet, contact us if you’d like to help see more worship in more places – Let’s do this!