What is your favorite Christmas activity in your church? For our family it is probably the Christmas Eve candlelight service. Truth be told, this is probably our favorite service throughout the year. It is also the best-attended service, and this year it was a huge success. Obviously, these last four years or so have been challenging for our church. First with the COVID regulations and then with the war with Ukraine breaking out. But this year it seemed like things were back to normal as much as possible. We had our largest turnout in a while - almost packing the lower area of the church. But more importantly the vast majority of those who came were friends and colleagues of our church members. For some of them, this was the very first time they set foot in any church. Needless to say, it was also the very first time they heard the Gospel.
It was the kind of night that easily lifted the spirits of our leaders. However, it gave them something more than just a boost of encouragement – it offered them a picture of what we are striving for in our church; every seat filled with people flocking to hear the Good News. Because it is one thing to talk about it, it is quite another to strive towards it always, but it all changes when you can see what it actually looks like. And that is what we talked about with our leaders afterwards – this is what our church should look like every Sunday, not just one day a year. In a way, the candlelight service was a dress rehearsal for what our church will look like in the future. At least that is what we are striving for at the moment.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
PS Overall the Christmas season in our church was a great success. Even so, we did not accomplish everything that we set out to do. That is why we’ve begun planning our next Christmas season a year in advance. But that is the topic of another newsletter.
THREE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please join us in praying for God:
- To bring peace to Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, ask God to use this conflict by bringing reconciliation and revival to both countries.
- To bless the start of our Sunday School for adults. We are launching our Sunday School for adults. Our first course will be a 12 week series on the foundations of the Christian faith that I shared about back in July of last year. Please pray that God uses this class to strengthen in faith those who recently converted and those who were walking with the Lord for quite some time but never took a chance to explore their faith deeper.
- To grant us wisdom as we begin to plan for Lent and Christmas seasons. Lent is rapidly approaching. We will gather the leadership team of our church in the next couple weeks to plan for what is ahead. But we will also use this time to start planning Christmas season next year since we want to take full advantage of it in utilizing opportunities to share the Gospel.
