How does your church ministry impact your professional career? How does it give you a competitive advantage? We are not used to thinking of church ministry as something that propels our career or helps us improve our work. Quite often we think about what we bring from our work to make the ministry better but not the other way around. Moreover, we are used to thinking that perhaps the marketplace demands a level of competency and professionalism that is simply unmatched by Christian ministry. And yet these are great questions to entertain because there are a lot of things in our ministry that give us an advantage in the marketplace.
Recently we have seen this play out in Alexandra’s career and a new opportunity that presented itself. A couple of months ago, she was approached by the “Detsky Mir” charitable foundation. Now “Detsky Mir” (Kids’ World) has been the largest toy store in Russia since the days of the Soviet Union. This is one of those extremely rare store chains that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. Think about “Toys ‘R Us” before their demise to give you an idea of how large “Detsky Mir” is in Russia. They also own a chain of stores that sell pet supplies. So in some regards this conglomerate is like “Toys R Us” and “PetSmart” rolled into one. Their charitable foundation is in the Top 5 of corporate foundations in Russia. And Alexandra was approached for the position of Director of this charitable foundation.
We laughed it off at first because it just seemed like too good of an opportunity to be true. Yet she kept going through round after round of interviews. Altogether she went through 5 rounds of interviews including a final meeting with the company’s CEO before she got the job, thus becoming the next director of this charitable foundation. About midway through these interviews, we talked about how it was her ministry with the church and its charitable foundation that made her uniquely qualified for this job. “Detsky Mir” wants to see greater participation of its staff in the work of the foundation, which is exactly what she did in church ministry by rallying volunteers, not just from our congregation but also from other churches, to visit the children’s hospital and the nursing home. “Detsky Mir” would like to see better relations with other charitable institutions in Russia, also, and that is exactly what Alexadra did in her work in our church’s foundation. Step by step, it has become obvious that her church ministry is what positioned her to head up this foundation and, Lord willing, to take it to the next level. Needless to say, this is also a great opportunity for the Gospel as well. This is an excellent chance to share about the love of Christ not only with her new team and the employees of this toy store, but also with thousands of people who are receiving aid from this foundation.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
PS You may be wondering about our Candlelight Service since I shared about it last time and then quickly went on to share more personal news. That story is coming soon too. But before that, I wanted to begin sharing a little bit about the vision behind our capital campaign and next time I will share about the story of Moscow Bible Church.
THREE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please take a moment right now, after you fnished reading this e-mail, to join us in praying for God:
- To bless "Incubator for Church Planters." You may remember that I recently was certified as a trainer for "City to City's" ministry in Russia. We are in the early stages of launching this ministry which could be broken into three parts: education, faith and work initiatives and social projects. We are starting with education and will begin a two-year course for over 20 church planters from all of Russia at the end of February. The course is called "Incubator for Church Planters." Please join us in praying for the success and the impact of this program.
- To raise necessery funds for us to purchase our own building. I shared in my previous newsletter about our capital campaign that we just launched. Check it out if you have not yet and if you can please share about it with as many people as possible especially with the missions board of your church.
- To bring peace to Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, ask God to use this conflict by bringing reconciliation and revival to these countries.
