Category: David’s Posts

Being a missionary is a never-ending process of learning and growing, especially in regard to culture. The picture above is from a cross-denominational prayer meeting that we have every month with the pastors from Lviv, Ukraine. It is so cool to be with these brothers in Christ! When pastors from Baptist, Charismatic, Pentecostal, Seventh-Day-Adventist, Salvation-Army, non-denominational, and Reformed churches can get together to pray for one another about real, pressing needs, to share just “what God showed me this morning in my devotions”… It’s a miracle, honestly. God has answered prayers and done things through these men that wouldn’t be possible without this meeting.

I have a very unique place in this meeting. I’m an American that assists one of the local pastors. Normally, it’s the other way around. In general, when an American missionary comes to Ukraine, he starts a church or heads a ministry, and the Ukrainians “learn from him”. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I think I get more credit with these brothers here, because I am here to learn from them. I’m the novice, and they are the teachers.

This is a picture of me (on the left), and my pastor, Ruslan (on the right), by a rock at the top of a hill on a hike we took with the youth group. The relationship I have with Ruslan is a lot like one would have with an older brother. He’s like a father for my wife, Katya; he led her to Christ at a camp many years ago and has known her since then.

One of the cool things about our relationship is that we can both speak into each other’s lives. We have that permission and trust. Learning from him, learning from Katya, learning from my in-laws, learning from the other members of the leadership team – all of this is teaching me how to be a missionary specifically in Lviv.

…and I mean specifically! When I go to Kyiv or other cities here, I sometimes feel like I’m in another country. Lviv is one of the few cities that speaks primarily Ukrainian. This is in contrast to Kyiv or other cities, where most people speak Russian. I actually sometimes get culture shock going to those places! I’ve talked to friends, Ukrainians, from Lviv, and they experience the same thing!

This constant learning of culture and finding the best ways to express the Gospel to that culture is called “contextualization”… More about that later.

This is most of our team. From left to right: Tomasz, a Czech missionary; Olya in the baby blue jacket, the church administrator; Bara, another missionary from the Czech Republic; Katya, my wife, is to my right; and finally Paul, another brother in the church, is on the far right.

I love these guys. We’re from many different backgrounds and often have huge differences in opinion, but that helps us to serve many different kinds of people.

Tomasz and Bara, for example, work with a student-missions organization called Josiah Venture. They are especially good at working with youth, teaching language courses, and starting relationships that eventually turn into opportunities to share the Gospel.

Olya is studying at Coram Deo, the biblical counseling organization where my wife studied. She’s great at working with young girls and helps me and Ruslan keep our heads screwed on straight with the church’s documents, finances, and other administrative duties.

Katya’s also great at working with young women and leading small groups. Olya and Paul were actually in her small group years ago when she taught “Series 2:7”, a Ukrainian-made new believers course that sets out the foundational doctrines of our faith.

Paul has a heart for underprivileged families and has been serving them at our church for a couple of years. His wife leads the children’s ministry, and she also studied at Coram Deo.

All that to say, I’m a blessed missionary. The fact that these people follow me blows me away sometimes, because I have so much to learn from them.

Please pray for our team! We’re growing. We’re learning together. We have growing pains, but that’s part of the progress we are making. I’m proud of these guys.

There’s a book that I recommend about this topic, cultural learning and preaching the Gospel. It’s called “Center Church” by Timothy Keller. It isn’t solely about contextualization, but that’s a big part of the book – finding what works for the particular city and culture that you are working in.

Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City

This is an affiliate link, so a portion of the sales price goes to support our family and ministry.

If you have suggestions for other books to go through about contextualization for missionaries and church leaders, please comment below.

David is leaving soon for a missions trip to Novhorod-Siversky, a city in northern Ukraine on the border with Russia. Don’t worry – it’s far from the conflict zone! Please pray for hearts to be open to hear the Gospel and for the ministry we will have in the local churches.

The picture above is of David preaching with Anastasia, the local coordinator of the trip, translating at an evangelistic concert in Novhorod-Siversky in May, 2017.

Here is a message from Anastasia:

Novhorod-Siversky is a small town on the northern border of Ukraine with Russia. It’s in one of the poorest regions in all of Ukraine, with one of the highest alcoholism rates in the country. Families often drink together with their children, and the children pick up the poor habits of their parents. Young people often die there from alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

Most people in Novhorod are Orthodox with a heavy accent on traditions and rituals and very little about Christ and God’s Grace. If you speak with people there, you can tell that very few of them have ever heard the Gospel about Jesus.

As far as Evangelistic churches in the city, there are only two of them. They are very small; one of them has forteen members, while the larger of the two has twenty-five. 90% of the people in those churches are over 50 years old. Because of the vision of those churches and the difference in age, it is very hard for them to reach the youth in their city, and the youth don’t have any desire to come to church.

However, young people in Novhorod are very responsive to invitations to fellowship with Christians of the same age. Music is the language of the heart, and they are excited when we invite them to concerts. This is one of the ways that I see we can share the Gospel with them.

So, let’s do it together!

– Anastasia Furtak

We will have pictures of the trip when we get back. Thank you all for praying for us!

Leadership is something that we all need to reach our full potential. Whether you are a part of a small team in a startup or an employee of a massive corporation, you need to be led well. Even if you’re the head of a huge organization, you need training, mentors, and coaches to see the best results in your own leadership… In other words, we need to be led.

Our leadership team at church is in the process of realizing and applying this truth. Leadership is a great way to be more like Jesus, as He was the ultimate leader of the last 6000 years. At our church, to work on this, we decided to go through the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell after I (David) read through it on a weekend and suggested it to the pastor. His response was to ask me to lead a directed discussion of each chapter every week with questions and application to make us better leaders.

Our church is at a turning point. There are many situations that have happened over the past two years that have required a greater level of leadership than we previously had. Ministries have been either rebooted, rearranged, or even canceled. Team members have been both added and subtracted. We see a great need to strengthen our foundation as a team, not only to survive these situations, but to thrive and grow in them.

This book has been great for that. It has shown me personally and our team in general a few different areas where we are either weak or have a total “blind spot” in leadership. The laws in particular that I want to work on are 7 and 12, which primarily focus on “people skills” and delegation. I don’t really have much experience taking a person from smaller responsibilities to greater ones, and I need to learn that discipleship process better.

However, this book isn’t the only thing that we are using to challenge our leadership team for growth. In October, we went as a team to a local leadership conference, and we will be attending the Global Leadership Summit together in November. We also have plans for continuing growth and application of the principles we learn after all of this.

That brings me to laws 1 and 2 from Maxwell’s book. Law number 1 stipulates that, as a leader, you are the lid for your team. Your team cannot go any further than your leadership abilities can bring them. Law number 2 is the law of process… In other words, with concerted, daily effort, you can, will, and must become a better leader. Leaders are people that grow and learn.

Please pray for our team to grow as leaders. Pray for me as I attempt to lead them and be as close to Jesus’ example as possible. If you would like to get the book from Amazon and go through it with your team, you can click on the link below.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (10th Anniversary Edition)

This is an affiliate link, so a portion of the sales price goes to support our family and ministry.

If you have suggestions for other books to go through as a team or any other input, please comment below. 🙂

Please be praying for our friend, Ira Zakharova! She is right now on her way to Stanytsya Luhanska, a city that is literally in the warzone.

You may recognize the word “Luhansk” from the news. That is the capitol city of one of the Russian-backed, puppet “republics” that are rebelling against Ukraine. She won’t be there. Stanytsya Luhanska is in the Luhansk region, not the city. It’s about 20km from Luhansk itself.

Ira will be serving there with Sasha Andriyashyna, a name that anyone who’s been in Ukraine for some time with Calvary Chapel should remember. She is one of our favorite translators at the big conference in May. Here is a picture of us with Sasha:

Sasha has been serving as a military chaplain in Stanytsya for some time. Ira will be in Stanytsya with her for at least until the summer and will be working with Youth For Christ to serve the teenagers there.

Ira is a long-time, good friend of ours. She and David served for a couple of years together at New Horizons. This picture above is from a VBS at the church with David (in the cowboy hat with the guitar), Katya to the right in the red bandana, and Ira to the right of her in the purple bandana. She is one of our most trusted friends, and it’s going to be hard not being able to see each other every once in a while in Lviv.

Ira felt the call to serve people in the warzone at the very beginning of the War with Russia in 2014. When they shelled civilian areas in Mariupol, a city in the south-eastern part of Ukraine, she went there on a missions trip to serve the people in the aftermath. Since then, she has had many opportunities to travel there on short term trips, and God has slowly confirmed His calling for her, especially over the past few months, to go and live there now.

Ira is what we would call a high-caliber missionary. She serves with excellence, works hard, and is motivated to get things done. She loves the Lord and honestly tries to serve Him the best she can.

So, please pray for Ira! For safety, for ministry opportunities, for culture shock (living in the East, especially in a war zone, is very different from living in Lviv), and for her to be able to show the love and light of Jesus Christ there. Please also pray for opportunities for us to come and serve her and support her in Stanytsya Luhanska.

If you would like to support Ira financially, please click on the contact us link above to send us an email, and we will work something out.

Here are some more pictures of memories and projects with Ira that we have done over the years.

David and Ira were on a ministry team together in 2010 to serve in North-Central Ukraine. We still talk about that trip sometimes.

Ministry teams from different churches hanging out at Michael Pratt’s house in 2011.

On one Sunday, when David didn’t have a backup vocalist at church, Ira filled in… this was probably the one and only time she’s sung in a worship team… right Ira? 🙂

We (David and Katya) put together a retreat for the youth and young-career-aged at New Horizons in 2013, and Ira was there.

Serving on a missions trip at an orphanage in 2014.

This is a conference that Ira and David had a big part in organizing for the Calvary Chapel churches in Western Ukraine in 2014.

Hanging out at the big Calvary Chapel conference in Kyiv in May, 2015.

Traveling to the Carpathian Mountains together one last time before she moved to Stanytsya Luhanska this year.

Ira, we love you, will miss you, and hope that you will be able to visit us (and that we could visit you) someday soon!

 

In today’s post, I want to feature the DP (Director of Photography) of our current video project. His name is Elijah Leschenko (and you can find his YouTube channel here). Elijah and I have been acquaintances for a while, but we really became better friends when He and I worked together on “Ніч на Івана Купала”, our first video project. Here’s a picture from that shoot:

I asked Elijah to answer four questions in preparation for this blog post: 1. How would you describe your craft, your art? 2. How did you come to the Lord? 3. Why are you excited to be a part of this project? and 4. How can we pray for you?

The rest of this blog post was written by Elijah (and translated into English by me). Enjoy!

How would you describe your craft, your art?

To date, there is no more convenient way to perceive information than video. Not everyone likes to read, but most would agree that it’s more pleasant to read something with pictures. It’s even better, if there are high-quality and beautiful pictures; then, you cannot tear your eyes off of the page.

These days, everyone is trying to save time, and, especially in the world’s metropolises, one of the most popular things to do during free time is social media or watching videos on YouTube. This is exactly where we can reach a lot of people. In addition to that, video is quite an interesting industry. Just by changing the music, light, or a single camera angle, you can completely change the emotions that are experienced by the viewer.

This creates a magnet that draws in the viewer and gives us an opportunity to convey important information to him… And this is what we want to do!

How did you come to the Lord?

My parents repented a couple of months after I was born. Because I grew up in a believing family. I repented at the age of 13 at the Calvary Chapel Ukraine Conference. Before that, I also believed in God and served him, but, in that moment at the conference, I prayed to Him and decided to follow him all my life!

From that day on, He has guided me through difficulties and joys and continues His work in my life.

Why are you excited to be a part of this project?

I have always wanted to participate in something big and at least spend some time on something that inspires me. I like to communicate with creative people, and I love learning new things. I also always especially wanted to participate in a project that is just beginning, developing everything from scratch, and, Lord willing, to create something meaningful that will serve for many, many people.

How can we pray for you?

1. That we would be lead by the Holy Spirit, so that all that we do will remain in the minds of people, spreading widely into the masses and changing hearts.
2. That God would provide the necessary equipment (cameras, microphones, lighting, etc.). Personally, I’m a perfectionist, and I’m not afraid of this word. As a creative, I’m very demanding on the quality of content that I watch. I can not take anything seriously that looks like it was shot by an amateur. In that same way, I also would like to provide content of excellent quality, so that it will serve very demanding people. 🙂
3. For God’s special work in the hearts of the whole team through this project.