How to determine whether an event has aroused enough interest in a certain group of people? For instance, for any band a number of fans, who attend the performance or the concert of this band, is an indicator of the band`s popularity and the interest in its work. That`s why the meeting of the youth of the “Parish of the Good Shepherd“ church with the ministers and the guests of the 20th Missionary Conference was something like a concert of The Rolling Stones rock band in Rio de Janeiro, where the audience of 1.2 million gathered. A small room of the IPO “Hope to People”, where the meeting took place, was also chock-full. Of course, there gathered not 1.2 million of people, but the amount of those, who wished to attend the event, was that huge that those, who were late, were forced to sit in the deep “pit” – in the hallway nearby the kitchen. Although such meetings of the boys and the “elders” of the church are held almost every Monday, this meeting stands out among all the others. And not only because of a record number of visitors.
Perhaps the “culprit” of such occasion might be a Missionary Conference, but if to be exact – the missionaries themselves. It is not always possible to have a friendly talk with the ministers of the God’s plough in the format of the meeting of the classmates. It was exciting to become acquainted with people, who, being by common standards “little kids”, dared to move for permanent residence from one edge of the globe to another with the purpose of preaching the Good News. A striking example of such category of people is William Van Hoffer, a missionary from distant South Africa who has been doing missionary work in post-soviet countries for more than 20 years, mostly in Ukraine in Vinnytsia region.
Moreover, the meeting was attended by the representative of the Crimean Tatar people – Kurtumer; young missionary from the city of Colomyia, who worked in the Crimea and Uzbekistan among the Muslim population, Yurii Stefanko; brother, who moved from Rivne to Ivano-Frankivsk, where he is engaged in the music ministry and is working to create a Christian children’s drama school, Andrii Zakusilov. Of course, the presence of such colourful personalities encouraged youngsters to visit a church meeting. In a comfortable atmosphere missionaries testified and shared their experience, highlighted their vision of development and solving problems in missionary work, inspired young people to make missionary trips and frankly talked about victories and failures, exaltations and disappointments in their difficult ministry.
Undoubtedly, at the meeting was present Taras Prystupa, pastor of the “Parish of the Good Shepherd” church, who was “leading” the social, putting counter-questions to missionaries, encouraging young people to share their impressions of what they had heard and to participate actively in the discussion.
Such meetings cannot be in vain. They spiritually edify not only the youth of the church, but the church itself. In what way? They motivate young people to travel to remote corners of the world and preach to nations, forgotten by civilization. Hence, the church is growing, because, as one missionary once said, “the true greatness of any church is not about how many members it has, but how many missionaries it sends”.
Roman Tsymbal
