Strengthening Partnerships
25th Anniversary Service of the St. Petersburg church of Christ, May 2017
2016 and 2017 have been unusual milestone years for us. After over thirty years together in the full-time ministry, we took a self-funded sabbatical year as we came to the end of our commitment to the UK churches in Birmingham (summer 2016). In addition to our main goal of insuring our son’s successful spiritual transition out of the family home and into university, we made a temporary home in the Seattle church (near our son’s university) and devoted a year to writing, archiving and research projects that we have longed to do, and to building and strengthening our network of relationships for the next chapter of our lives. We made two visits in 2017 to the Dallas church, primarily to spend time with Todd and Patty Asaad, Derik and Leigh Anne Vett, and connect with Eurasian missions supporters in the church there. As members of the ICOC Teachers Service Team, we took part in the ICOC Spring Leadership Meetings.
The Novosibirsk Mission Team in 1992 -- mostly made up of one-year old Christians or younger
Adding to the Toolbox : Grief Recovery and an MDiv
One of Tammy’s goals for our sabbatical year in the US was to research the handful of recommended programs available in various churches for people dealing with grief, and determine which, if any, could be translated into Russian. The Russian- speaking churches continue to lag behind their English-speaking counterparts in available resources for spiritual strengthening and shepherding. We have long felt the need for programs like Chemical Recovery, Grief Recovery, and other courses to more effectively minister to those who are hurt and discouraged. After researching several programs (Journey to Hope, GriefShare, the Grief Recovery Method, Grief Journey by Dr. Timothy Sumerlin ) Tammy completed her Grief Recovery Specialist® Training in May with the Grief Recovery Institute (www.griefrecoverymethod.org). Since then, she has brought over 70 people through the program in Russian, in Kiev and in Moscow, and is working hard on overseeing the translation of the Grief Recovery Handbook and training materials into Russian.
Andy has resumed his graduate studies with Abilene Christian University and is pursuing a Masters of Divinity, which he should complete in the middle of 2019. He has been working on an analytical article about the ICOC growth history pre-2003, which should be published this month (January 2018).
Three 25th Anniversaries:
St. Petersburg’s 25th and the first Eurasian Youth and Family Conference
We were thoroughly impressed and so proud of the standard of excellence of every aspect of St. Petersburg’s Youth and Family Conference, leading up to their 25th anniversary celebration weekend. Vitali and Vera Logunov opened the Y&F Conference by introducing all their family members who are disciples (photo, left), including Vera’s mother, who was still damp from her baptism, just the day before! Guest speakers from the US like the Vetts — deeply beloved and respected as church founders — and Gowers, brought tremendous depth and maturity. Moscow guest speakers Sasha Kotz and the Zhuravlyov family and newest-evangelist-on-the-block Nikolai Morozov were enlightening, educational, convicting and inspiring. The culmination of the Sunday worship service was jubilant, with prominent involvement of the children and youth of the church, as they concluded the Youth and Family Conference with their 25th anniversary celebration. We hope to be able to spend some time with the church in Minsk, Belorussia in 2018, and were glad to be able to get reacquainted with the Sinitsins who are leading there. We spent time with the Sokolkins and their family, the interns, staff and some small group leaders.
Kiev’s 25th Anniversary and Ukrainian Residence Permits
Hanging out in front of our apartment building in Kiev, with Misha & Eka Matitaishvili and their son, Luke, from Tblisi, Georgia; Lynne Green from Berlin/Seattle; and our then-pregnant daughter and our grand puppy
Now that we are officially financially retired, our hope was to be able to apply for some type of long-term residence permit in Russia. Unfortunately, this door has not opened easily. We face increasingly Cold-War-like conditions as we apply for Russian visas. Tougher sanctions now require Canadian citizens, like Andy, who plan to stay longer than two weeks in Russia, to register and pay for every night of their stay in a hotel (see this Radio Free Europe article from October 2017 on the Magnitsky Act for more information). Given that we have a daughter and son-in-law in the ministry in Kiev, we investigated and learned that it was very easy for us to gain long-term residency in the Ukraine. We bought a one-bedroom apartment in the same building as our kids, and planted ourselves in Kiev for the five weeks required to secure our residence permits. The beginning of our five-week stay coincided with the Kiev 25th anniversary conference, Hope Singles Corps, Eurasian Council meeting, and Kiev 25th anniversary celebrations, which were a total joy. We both taught on the conference program.
Kiev 25th Anniversary Church Service
This matryoshka displays a photo of the theater where the first church service in Novosibirsk was held in 1992
Novosibirsk’s 25th Anniversary and the birth of a grandchild
From August 20th to 30th, Andy spent ten days in Novosibirsk with Ron and Cheryl Hammer, Todd Asaad, Tim and Wendy Sherrill and others, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Novosibirsk church planting. The Novosibirsk church has enjoyed positive growth for nine out of the last ten years. During those ten days, Andy participated in a Eurasian Council Meeting, and an Eastern Russian Churches (Siberian Churches) Leadership Conference. Rostov-na-Donu leadership came to the conference as well.
Tammy remained in Kiev and did her first Grief Recovery Pilot program in Russian with a group of 20 members of the Kiev church, and was able to support our daughter during the birth of our first grandchild, Zahar Yakovlev.
Chicago Delegates and Service Team Meetings
Tammy began to take on the task of blog posting on the newly-created Eurasian Missions website — huge thanks to Christian Ray Flores in Austin, who designed the site to inform and unify the US supporters of Eurasian churches. Tammy is working on growing the database of subscribers to Eurasian good news updates and prayer requests (it is about 90 subscribers currently), which are sent now approximately every two weeks. We know of one family in California, not normally connected with Eurasian churches, who read the blog post on the church in Azerbaijan and was moved to make a special missions contribution particularly for that church. www.eurasianmissions.org
One result of the Chicago meetings was that Andy joined a subcommittee of the ICOC 3.0 Structure Task Force (the ICOC 2.1 variant).
The Month of November in Moscow
Andy, teaching Eurasian Mission School, Nov '17
We spent almost the entire month of November with the Moscow church. This is the first time we've been able to spend such a substantial chunk of time in Russia since we moved away, eighteen long years ago!
We managed to get a substantial discount at a hotel at Paveletskaya, practically the center of the city and less than five minutes from the Metro.
That convenient location made it easy to spend lots of time with lots of people. Not counting Andy's three-day retreat with the staff brothers pod-Moscoviye, we were able to invest a total of 305 volunteer work-hours into the Moscow church community (about 45 hours a week, conservatively). Lest anyone fret that we might not have been taking care of ourselves, or might not be sensitive to the very real concern of burnout among, particularly, the women on the church staff, rest assured that we slept well, worked out, took days off, enjoyed long prayer walks, soaked up culture at a jazz concert, and thoroughly enjoyed the holiday sights, even as Andy labored a bit over his MDiv midterm. The blessings of being empty-nesters!
55 young student in the Moscow Ministry Training Academy, Nov 2017
We loved every minute of reacquainting with the church at a deeper level. We began the month with Andy teaching a group of 55 young people (ministry interns, students), in the second session of the Eurasian Ministry Training Academy. He taught New Testament overview and then lessons from the book of Acts at student midweeks the rest of the month. He taught the church a Saturday Bible School on Maturing the Church. Tammy took two groups through the Grief Recovery Program during the month of November. We spent time with old friends and veteran disciples, people who have wandered away from the church, older people, younger people, shepherds, small group leaders, average disciples who have no leadership responsibility, and staff. We felt like it was the most useful time we have spent in Moscow since we moved away.
It was encouraging to note that the recently passed laws against non-Russian-Orthodox religion has not really changed the atmosphere in the city much. We ourselves had visitors at two church services and heard from the disciples that the laws have not caused much difficulty at all.
Holy Spirit Weekend in Tallinn
Newly restored Aivars Terauds and Petriina (one of original Tallinn Mission Team members from Finland, who still resides in Tallinn)
We spent December 8th to 12th with the church in Tallinn. Andy taught a Saturday Bible school on the Holy Spirit and miraculous gifts and met with several disciples who had questions about charismatic gifts in the Bible and in the New Testament church. It is great to see the children of the early converts now dreaming about the ministry and serving as interns. We met with the small group leaders and some disciples who had moved to Tallinn from the Moscow church and some who had moved from Zurich. A high point was our reunion with Aivars Terauds, the heroic Latvian athlete who had come on the Moscow mission team as a six- week-old Christian. After helping several notable disciples become Christians and planting the church in his home town of Riga, Aivars’ marriage had fallen apart and he had left the church for about a decade. In October he was restored, and he traveled to Tallinn to spend the weekend with us and the Tallinn church, who welcomed him warmly.
We look very much forward to serving to the best of our ability in cooperation with the Eurasian Council and US church leaders, whose counsel, help, and support in these churches continues to be invaluable. Thank you so much for your invaluable, continued support!
In His Service,
Andy and Tammy Fleming January 4, 2018