Greetings to you from the Moscow Seminary!
Pastor Timofey Pavlov, who is a student-minister at the seminary, wrote this letter below.
I gladly forward his letter to you for you to have a sense of the fruit of proclaiming the Gospel in Russia:
My name is Timofey Pavlov. I was born in 1978. My father was never around. My mother died tragically – was beaten to death by a drunken crowd. My little sister and I were left to ourselves. No wonder that at the age of 12 I already consumed alcohol and smoked weed.
At the age of 18 I was drafted to the Army. That made a man out of me – I became a drill sergeant in charge of a platoon. And it was in the Army where I had my first encounter with the Gospel – my uncle sent me his personal testimony. Two months later my sister told me she became a Christian. I was honorably discharged from the Army in 1998 and returned back home … only to learn that my best friend embraced faith.
I felt myself cornered with all this preaching, worship and prayer going on all around me! And, I reacted – instead of going to church I joined a gang. I soon realized that being a gangster was, in fact, a life and death matter. Praise the Lord, in 1999 I chose life – accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour!
In 2001 I enrolled to a local Bible College. In 2008 I was ordained at a church in the town of Shelekhov (located 3,250 miles East of Moscow – that’s in Siberia, where temperature drops to –60° Fahrenheit and air freezes in your throat).
I am a full-time minister. But I feel my wheels are spinning … I need training! And so, I study at exactly the Moscow Seminary because
1) All kinds of junk readily available over the Internet causes people to adhere to ideas far remote from the Bible or to even lose their Christian faith and the seminary is widely known for its evangelical conservative stand,
2) Ministry in today’s educated society requires professional training and the seminary is licensed by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation to train Christian ministers,
3) I am a pastor and the seminary is definitely local church geared,
and
4) Master of Divinity degree from the seminary will allow me to teach at the local Bible College.
To support training of ministers like Timofey Pavlov at the Moscow Seminary you can make a cheque payable to One Mission Society, put 301710 Moscow Seminary remark somewhere on the cheque, and mail the cheque to One Mission Society UK 114 Holywood Road, Belfast BT4 1NU, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. (It costs the seminary £900 a year to train a student-minister. This investment is cost-efficient: It costs 40 times less to train a minister in Russia than in the United Kingdom and 80 times less than sending a missionary to Russia from the United Kingdom. This investment is secure: Statistically, 9 out of 10 students sent to the United Kingdom to study will not return back to Russia.)
To support me, Sasha Tsutserov, in ministry as the President of the Moscow Seminary, please, make a cheque payable to One Mission Society, putting 370410 Sasha Tsutserov somewhere on the cheque, and mail the cheque to One Mission Society UK 114 Holywood Road, Belfast BT4 1NU, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
(One Mission Society UK is a Registered Charity Number: No.SC042930)
Komentáře