I just received the following from Gary Timmerman, our coordinator:
SMP Ministry Projects in 2006
I) Kargel & Bedaeker Christian School
Goal: Support the compliance efforts of the leading Christian school in St. Petersburg and support a 3-way partnership.
Partner: KBCS is in a critical development period. It has finished its first full year in a state school building that they received a very reasonable rent from the St. Petersburg City Education Fund, a 3-story building abandoned a couple years earlier. It has needed a huge amount of work, and SMP2004 was involved in the first stages. Recently a Worldwide Christian Schools work team made contributions of classroom cabinetry. Parents and city officials have demands for the building to reach an acceptable level of standards, and KBCS is constantly working to catch up to those demands. Tuition funds don’t cover the costs; only 80 kids occupy the 200-pupil building; The key is to fill up the classrooms with paying families, and that means attracting them. Won’t a decent walkway leading to the school help the situation? CRWM’s aim to build up pedagogical leadership in the schools is helped when basic material needs are also addressed.
Projects:
1) rebuilding of front walkway entering the school building. It is broken up, dangerous; red ribbons around broken manhole covers.
2) make 80 cabinet doors to the 20 bookshelf units that a WCS team couldn’t finish in March 2006 (all materials already purchased by WCS)
Time Period: June 14 – 23
10 days total
7 working days
Target Group: 80 pupils, 30 teachers and personnel
***
II) Youth Christian English Camp - Moscow
Goal: Direct evangelism of youth through a church camp.
Partner: Yana and Peter Smirnov have gathered some students from Russian-American Christian University and other U.S. volunteers to offer a Christian English Camp. The the other US members (aged 50-65) will be the English teachers; we will support them and facilitate sports and music ministry. As CRWM, this will be a good experience to work with people who have 10-years experience in leading quality camps. For this reason, I can say that we are definitely gaining more than we are giving to this camp. Peter and Yana are my colleagues at RACU, and when our Christian library “was on the street” in February, I sought out alternatives for Moscow ministry, and am glad to connect with RACU at another level. A Calvin College professor soon starts working at RACU in the Social Work Department.
Projects:
1) We will support the N.A. teachers of English in the lessons
2) we will take some responsibilities in music ministry and sports program.
3) each SMPer will mentor and make friends with a small assigned number of teens.
Time Period: June 24 – 29
6 days total
1.5 leadership building days
4 working days
Target Group: 75
***
III) Tambov Church Camp -
Goal: Church community development and support a 3-way partnership.
Partner: Tambov “Christ the Savior” Church is a huge project of Pastor Reuben Nazarchuk, a missionary from Ukraine, and his wife Luba. (I don’t know a bigger Protestant church building in Russia!) Over the last 8 years, this church is has been developed with the help of Kuyper College (formerly Reformed Bible College). The mother church has about 300 attendees, has a Bible College and a Christian school to the 6th grade. It also provides leadership to 6 daughter churches in surrounding villages, from where some camp children will come. Reuben plans to include atleast 25% children from non-churched families. Reuben is a passionate missionary, adding dream after dream to his vision, but his leadership style can’t spread the responsibility to other community members. In this camp situation, there is a plan to force local leaders other that Reuben to be responsible! Pray for this! My NA colleague John de Jager (Partners in Learning Across Cultures) also supports this Christian school development.
Projects: 1) give secondary leadership to the 12-day camp program
2) provide subsidy for children of poor families to attend the camp;
- total 100 kids and 30 workers, leaders, volunteers
Time Period: June 30 – July 12
13 days total
12 working days at camp
Target Group: 130 persons, including leaders
***
IV) Moscow Christian Library Children’s Camp
Goal: Revive a Christian library ministry and invigorate a new partnership.
Partner: Moscow Christian Library moved in February 2006 into a small complex of two buildings owned by Evangelical Christian Missionary Alliance of Russia. They are now our partners, and hopefully someday they will adopt the library ministry fully.
MCL suffered great losses in ministry presence in Moscow when it made two forced moves during the last 12 months, and many former visitors find the new location too far from the city center. We are in a re-building process that can take a few years in this new, suburban neighborhood. Neighbors are spooked by the building, since the owners before 2006 were Korean Christians who were seen to be cultish and secretive (mac-tac on all windows, target of holliganism, etc). We are optimistic about rebuilding – we have removed mac-tac, children and adult passersby are dropping in and making compliments about the library. We have about 60-80 visitors currently per month; in 2003 at the previous library center, we regularly had 200-230 readers. ECMA has a great interest to use the library ministry as an instrument for evangelism, and they have a worker developing projects and publicity with us.
The largest part (40%) of the Russia program budget is spent at this library project, and we need to raise its presence once again in Moscow!
Projects:
1) give primary leadership to the English day camp program
2) provide all materials for craft, sport, drama, music and English segments of program, and light lunch for children;
- target of 50 kids and 10 workers, leaders, volunteers
Time Period: July 13 - 22
10 days total
2 days planning with ECMA
5 working days at camp
Target Group: 60
***
V) Pushkin Christian School -
Goal: Help open the doors of a new Christian school and support a 3-way partnership.
Partner: Pastor Vladimir Osipov and 5 other pastors from Pushkin near St. Petersburg are opening Pushkin Christian School in September 2006. His huge, 3-storey brick house on a double lot was gifted to him by a newly-converted “new Russian*” 6 years ago as a shell for developing his church. It is located in a elite neigbourhood where “new Russians” live, but the church community is simple people. Eventually the house will be a school completely, and they will build a church on adjacent property that they own. Local funds from parishioners and grants from John de Jager of Partners in Learning Across Cultures, one of my NA partners in Christian school development) have completed most major construction inside. In September, they expect 10 children in the first class, and they will grow the school by one grade each year. CRWM’s aim to build up pedagogical leadership in the schools is helped when basic material needs are also addressed.
* “New Russian” is a businessman in the Russia of “wild-West capitalism of the 1990s, wealth that common, less-sly folk see as gained purely by banditry toward the dying Communist system.
Projects:
1) painting all rooms on first and
second floors for school use
2) cleaning/ leveling the territory on the
school property, possibly fence building
3) a fence is needed around the property;
- to contain children and to appease
neighbours.
Time Period: July 23 – Aug 2
11 days total
6-7 working days
Target Group: can not measure number of participants. We will work alongside member of the church community, including recovering narcotics and alcoholics.
Gary Timmerman
CRCNA Russia Ministries
St. Petersburg, Russia
