The Simple Church

One of the great things about being on the road is the opportunity to do some reading while in transit. During our recent trip to Cleveland (TN), I saw a book at Pathway Bookstore that caught my attention. The Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

To be honest, most of the writing was done by Geiger and Rainer was his mentor in a research project. Although they do a well grounded statistical study, Simple Church is an extremely readable and sensible book about church growth.

Geiger and Rainer found a statistical relationship between growing churches and the simplicity of a church's process of discipleship. Below is a brief outline of the book. In the second half of the book, one chapter is dedicated to each of the four points.

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A simple church is designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth. The leadership and the church are clear about the process (clarity) and are committed to executing it. The process flows logically (movement) and is implemented in each area of the church (alignment). The church abandons everything that is not in the process (focus).

• Clarity – the ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people.
• Movement – the sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment. (It is how someone is handed off from one level of commitment to a greater level of commitment.
• Alignment – the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process. Without alignment, the church can be a multitude of sub ministries. In this case, each ministry has its own leaders who are only passionate about their specific ministry. They rarely identify with the entire church but are deeply committed to their own philosophy of ministry. As a result, everyone is competing for the same space, resources, volunteers, and time on the calendar.
• Focus – commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process. That often means saying “no.” Focus does not make church leaders popular.

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Pastor Moves to ETSM, Introducing Gennady Zagrebin

ETSM welcomes Gennady and Ina Zagrebin as new dormitory parents and student dean. During the tulmultous early 90's that faced Russian after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gennady's personal life was collasping. After experiencing the disillusionment of drugs and alcohol and disasterous family life, Gennady gave his life to Christ in 1993. Within a few years, the changes that God had brought into Gennady's life were enormous.

In 1996, Gennady married Ina and the Lord has blessed them with three children. In 2000, Gennady planted and pastored two thriving churches in Tsimlyansk and Volgadonsk (near Rostov-am-Don, 800 miles south of Moscow).

In addition to serving the seminary, Gennady has a desire to plant churches in the Moscow area. Ina is a lawyer and has begun to work at the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, a Christian based law firm that specializes in helping churches and ministries caught in legal battles.

Family and Marriage Seminar in Moscow

In September, we held an intensive seminar on Family and Marriage for our residential program. Although the course was mandatory for all students, it was a trial run of a new track that ETSM will offer this December. In December, we will begin offering a special track (a professional sequence) in Family and Marital Ministry in our Moscow Extension . we have already had final exams and graduation exercises, that doesn't mean that the spring semester is over. We have had a couple of intensive "block" courses. The goal of the course is to equip students/pastors to

1. Formulate the Biblical foundations of marriage\family
2. Know contemporary theoretical approaches to analysis of family issues
3. Analyze marital dynamics skillfully using methods of research (PREPARE\ENRICH) and counseling techniques that are in line with the Bible
4. Receive experience of counseling of families at the mid-professional level (to know how to begin, continue and end a counseling session)
5. At mid-professional level do premarital, marital, second-marriage, post divorce\divorce counseling
6. Organize Marriage and Family Ministry in a church (formulate goals and aims, direction and methods of reaching the goals)
7. Be able to conduct theoretical and practical sessions with couples in church and society: training, meetings, evenings, services, etc.

ETSM: Students Go On Missionary Tour

This report was originally written by our provost in Moscow, Ilya Okhotnikov. Please keep our students in your prayers.

The Seminary in Moscow started this weekend (as of October 10, 2008) a Missionary Week: it is when students are sent in 2s and 3s to different churches of Church of God in Russia and Ukraine to:

1. teach and preach in the churches \ or learn from pastors in the field;
2. get to know the family of Church of God in Eurasia;
3. witness about Jesus and why and what did the Seminary do in their lives, they become the living letters of Christ and the Seminary.

Students will be back in 7-10 days, and we will hear many good things about their missionary travels and ministry in remote places of Russia and Ukraine.

Your prayers are needed for the students and those souls they will minister to!

Claudia's Visit with the Department of Homeland Security

We've been quite busy the last couple of days. When we traveled to the States in July, the officials at the border suggested that Claudia should apply for a Travel Document to ensure her green card status. Furthermore, we learned that this is a different document than the form for missionaries (or their spouses) who do not want their time abroad to be counted against them for naturalization purposes.) It seems that the Department of Homeland Security have revamped several laws regarding immigration during the past couple of years. (Which isn't too surprising when one remembers the immigration issues with the 911 perpetrators.)

We began the paperwork for the travel document during our stay in the States. However, the USCIS indicated that Claudia would have to submit her biometrics while in the United States. However, the appointment that was given to us was after we returned to the States. After delaying the appointment once, we were informed that Claudia had to submit her biometrics at the Atlanta application support center.

Thanks to years of collecting Delta miles, Claudia and I were able to fly to the States for less than $17. But it was a bit frustrating that the American Embassy / Consulates in Germany were not authorized to take her picture and fingerprints.

After 30 minutes of the 8:00 AM appointment, the rest of the weekend we spent in Cleveland, TN. After taking care a couple of business matters for the schools in Moscow and Bulgaria, we pretty much sequestered ourselves to my parents retirment home in Cleveland