Concert & Outreaches

Lydie, from band Heroic Nation performing this week in Rzyschiv, Ukraine

I can’t believe the month is almost over! Our friends from France have just left for the airport. We hosted a couple outreaches in Rzyschiv this week, one at Lighthouse, and the other in our culture building. Between the two events around 150, mostly youth, came out. 

Jeremie, with his son Roman sharing about the Father’s love for us.

I was hoping for more at our main concert, we could have done a better job inside the actual colleges drawing out the hundreds of youth that sit in their dorms. Always learning for next time! A lot of new faces however came out to both events. Our Mayor was so supportive as well, actually helping us advertise.

Diana, from Kiev is a young woman who has recently joined our Lighthouse team, performed her original song, “Stand” which will be on our upcoming LIT Album.

Those that came were treated to various artists from Ukraine, US and France. We shared a couple of short videos, and sewed seeds of hope in God’s love. A couple things specifically blessed me:

  • An official from the City has asked us to help organize the artists/bands for the town’s annual outdoor festival.  It’s a great opportunity to reach +1k hearts with Christ-centered music.
  • It was cool to see young believers from different churches slowly growing in number, together dancing & enjoying one another.
  • One family came to me afterwards and the husband looked fairly serious, I was a bit nervous. He thanked me for hosting the concert and explained that although he was Orthodox, he accepts that we are all serving the same God. It touched me, he was very sincere.
  • Sveta, who is on staff with us now as creative and admin help organized the entire event herself.  She did a great job taking the vision and organizing talent, logistics, the schedule, advertising. I’m so amazed by the capabilities of this next generation.
Forest walk with our friends. Our kids enjoyed having some new friends to play with!

Next Event: LIT Minsk, November 16

In a few weeks we’ll be gathering with 100’s of thirsty youth in Minsk for an evening of worship. For those of you that receive our newsletter, we will update you on the challenges and requests for prayer. We don’t post specifics on our blog. We have our friend Charisah again joining us, as well as Collins, and the XDN band from Minsk. Pray for Belarus!

If you don’t follow us on Instagram, go to @litworship do it! Lots of photos and videos there.
Last year at the Philharmonic was such an incredible moment.

What’s Next?

  • Christ for the Nations Texas missions director Bryan McLemore & his wife arriving tonight at 3am for a two day visit. We are networking to receive 3rd year missions graduates for intern placement.
  • We have hired two new staff at Lighthouse and prayerfully transitioning our business to integrate more with our mission.
  • Mir Ministry budgeting for 2019. We need more partners if we’re to continue to reach this generation for Christ – pray about monthly support please! Tax deductible giving at www.mirministries.org
  • I want to take the train to Slavyansk, Ukraine in Eastern Ukraine (towards the war zone). We have some open doors for worship, orphan / widows care program. Additionally, it’s a place a new partner is dreaming of of possibly opening a Cafe platform like Lighthouse. Pray for this! I am waiting for my shoulder to heal a bit more.
  • Widows Care, so much is happening! We are building an online database and system with World Challenge, and piloting for Russian speaking world. This ministry will double in 2019 and include Russia!
  • Continuing to look at Kiev housing for hosting mid week events for leadership community. Found one place we are praying about near YWAM base. 
  • Speaking of YWAM, will be teaching at the Kiev base in a couple of weeks, first time!
  • LIT first worship album is about 50% finished, we have 2 songs left to record in the Minsk studio. We hope to release it in the new year.
  • Visible Music certificate program has hit some snags as we register our Ukrainian students. The international requirements are costing our students $150 more than expected, which is a huge expense for them. We have 5 students, if you’d like to help sponsor one or two, please let us know! This is a Christian discipleship course as well.
Meet Andrew & Dar Draper from US – they found us via a CFN friend from 1993! Amazing hearts, serving transitional orphans and we’re praying about launching a Cafe together in Eastern Ukraine as a platform for discipleship and community.

Leadership Weekends

We have a series of Mir Leadership weekends planned quarterly and “Refresh” weekends through the New Year. They are similar ‘getaways’ targeting next generation leaders, with focused teaching on rest, grace, learning together and listening to the Holy Spirit. Whether leaders are working with us directly or indirect, our growing desire is to see the Church in the Russian/Ukrainian speaking world led by healthy, vulnerable, flourishing men and women.

“The church is not made up of spiritual giants; only broken men can lead others to the cross” (Bosch)

Meet Alexia, from Kiev. She’s a rather intelligent business woman whom God is using to provide consultation to businesses, and marketing strategies (eg. Crowdfunding etc.) to charities inside Ukraine that have great ideas but little funding. She feels drawn to partner with us in some way – and we do too!
Claire received a special gift from Canada last week for her birthday.
Finishing my Fuller Seminary paper, it’s the consummation of two semesters. It’s been a challenge to finish with all the activity and guests, and with a sore arm – but by the grace of God I’m 99% finished!  Now I have another paper due in 3 weeks on Biblical Missiology.

Enjoy some quotes from my past few months reading on character formation and leadership:

“Creating an emotionally healthy culture and building a healthy team are among the primary tasks for every leader” (Scazzero).

“When we release control, we entrust others to act in ways that may not fit with our idea of how they should act. We take the risk that whatever task or responsibility we have released will not be done in accord with our design” (Lingenfelter)

“Christian community is made of people who gather around the transforming presence of Christ so they can do the will of God” (Barton)

As a leader, our focus should be “Attending to the spiritual formation of each individual leader” (Barton 2012, 37) and “to make sure that each individual is on the journey from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight” (Barton)

“In the deepest mystery of his being God is an intimate relationship, a fellowship, a community of love” (Johnson)

“A spiritual mind is one that rejects all forms of deceit such as pretense, exaggeration, misinformation and lying” (Fryling)

“We often pray for wisdom while we are already attached to some outcome we think is best… Cultivating the habit of discernment means we are always seeking the movement of God’s Spirit so we can abandon ourselves to it” (Barton)

“Spiritual formation actually happens as each essential dimension of the self is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God” (Willard)