Prayer
Requests:
· Wisdom in handling the increasingly tense political
climate, while we renew visas and try to field questions from Russians who feel
that Russia is being wronged by the US/EU sanctions.
· Bill’s student at SPCU defends a Diploma paper on
“Worship in the Psalms” on May 15. Bill reviews another graduating student’s
paper on “Oaths”.
· Pray for Karina as she says good-bye to “Russia as
home” in June to start college, studying French Horn at the Wheaton College
Conservatory of Music.
· Safety in summer travel to supporting churches and
CRM’s World Conference before getting Gillian and Karina squared away at
Wheaton.
· Liam will attend a Mission Aviation Adventure Camp in
June to see where his passion for flying might lead him.
Holy Spirit Conference:
Bill
presented a paper on the "Role of the Holy Spirit in Spiritual
Formation" at the conference on “The Person and Role of the Holy Spirit in Theology,
Church History and Christian Practice”
in April at Saint Petersburg Christian University (SPCU). I defined “spiritual
formation” in short as “the influence of the Holy Spirit on the human spirit”.
Bill
used John 14-16 to demonstrate that the goal of spiritual formation is for the
believer in Jesus to participate in the eternal life of the Trinity. I then
mapped out the progressive work of the Spirit, and applied it to the definitions
and limitations of the human spirit, which the Holy Spirit helps the believer
overcome and transcend.
Spiritual
Formation for Missionaries.
For the sake of confidentiality I cannot mention the
specific location or the names of the people and organizations involved, but I
can convey the following story as an example of the way that the Lord is
leading us and expanding the ministry of Imago Christi.
A young missionary couple in Central
Asia contacted us last fall. They were at a critical juncture in their
spiritual lives, and approaching a critical juncture in their ministry. And
they needed companions to help them process and discern God’s call and leading.
So I organized a “Virtual Discovery”
seminar” over 10 sessions They had to do some assignments and retreats as
homework, and they took pictures of their assignments to send us in between!
The Discovery material helped them discover
what God was doing in their hearts and how they could best and more
intentionally cooperate with essential aspects of their spiritual journey.
This
attention to our deepening relationship with Jesus provides the source of
spiritual strength, authority and longevity for ministry!
Then we coached them
in some of the ways they would like to deepen and focus their ministry. When
the husband described to me how the treks impact the waves of short-termers that
come through, we came up with a way to combine spiritual and physical
preparation for the treks with a devotional during the trek, and debriefing
sessions both at the end of their trek and for further debriefing in their home
churches. The result was a packet of material for groups and the churches
sending them, which is already having an impact on the spiritual lives and
effective ministry of these teams!
In addition we are
talking about not only the challenges of ministering to people with a 60%
illiteracy rate, but how to empower the spiritual lives of these tribal peoples
in a way that keeps them in their context and provides them with concrete ways
of contributing to the health, safety and preservation of their people and
culture.
Pray
with us that God will lead Imago Christi’s ministry to have more of this type
of “exponential impact” with missionaries worldwide!
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