encouragement from a world away

As I promised, this is an update from my Russia trip. To fully understand this post I must first cover a bit of a history lesson. To understand the Russian people in the clearest way, their past must first be known. Russia has been free of Communism since 1989. This may seem like a long time, however in the scheme of history 19 years is not long at all! It takes a long time for the people to recover from such a horrible political system. Marxist Communism was staunchly atheist. As a system, it believed that religion empowered the common people with ideas of individual rights, something Communism stood against. Because of this control of religion, The Church in Russia was oppressed for many years. People were not allowed to go to church, or worship freely. The government spread propaganda about every religion explaining them away as silly cults built on lies and myths. To this day, Baptists are considered a cult in much of Russia because the people have not been educated as to what Baptists truly are yet. (Because I come traditionally from a Baptist background, much of what I say will pertain to Baptists or those that hold to a similar theological framework.) Therefore, there has been much for The Church to overcome in the past 20 years or so. Again, we were in the obelisk (state) and city of Bryansk, in southern Russia. You could call this the "Bible Belt" of Russia. The Churches here are very conservative/fundamental in nature. In fact, they closely resemble the American Church from 50 years ago. There are many arguments going on in church hierarchy about what is to be allowed in worship, what is to be worn to church, what social activities are "allowed" or not, etc. It is a fight that has been going on for a while. They are strict about these issues because they fear unbiblical theology will invade the church if they don't draw the line way far to the right. This leads to an unfortunate situation. The Christian Russian youth don't feel as though they can worship as the Lord is leading them to. They want to sing more contemporary songs, and dance along. There are many verses in Psalms where David speaks of dancing before the Lord, however, the Russian Baptist Convention feels that dancing leads to debauchery. So instead of education on the good and bad types of dancing, they outlaw it all together. This same battle was waged in the American church not long ago. So the church that we helped launch (mostly made up of people from 13-around 30) is struggling because of persecution from the Convention. They want to play "rock" worship music and dance along because they feel led to by the Lord.

All of that had to be said to express this. We were able to come along side the pastor of this new church and bring encouragement to him and his congregation. We were able to share with him the history of the American church on many of the subjects that he was being persecuted with and show him that grace wins in the end. That true worship stands firm and nobody can keep you from it. It was also a great time to encourage him to seek the Lord to make sure he was biblical in leading worship. They were so thankful that the Lord had brought somebody who could encourage them through a trying time. It was also good for my heart to be able to encourage them. I hope and pray to this day that the Lord would continue to give grace to the people of Russia and the churches there. That the Church there would strive to worship biblically and trust Scripture for their conduct. Please pray for them as well.