At the ICCL office in Kiev, Ukraine with Pastors from Uzbekistan, a place of persecution for Christians

Circumventing and ministering around the world in one contiguous trip was never planned our imagined by me, ever. Originally, the plans only included a regular late Autumn a trip to Kiev, Ukraine for my work as Academic Dean at the International Center for Christian Leadership. I had not immediate plans to go to Guam or Korea. However, circumstances in Korea called for some personal intervention to affirm and maintain our church planting ministry with our missionary Amber Messina.  Since I needed to go to Korea, it was also good for me to go Guam, in the same neck of the woods so to speak (perhaps better, neck of the ocean),  since we have a Living Faith School of Ministry virtual classroom there and we needed to test some new technology and I also wanted to visit with our missionaries, Monica Karagosian and Rob and Allison Zimmerman. As I checked on flight schedules and prices, it made the most sense and least cents to have an all-in-one trip, and thus the trip was conceived and now safely delivered. Today, on this concluding blog, I want to summarize my reflections.

First of all, I spent a lot of time in transit which included an all night air flight,  three all day air flights and two all night train rides. In addition I spend countless hours traveling to and from airports. Of the four weeks I was away, almost one of those weeks I was traveling all or a major part of the day. In all, I have ten boarding passes from 10 different flights and went through seven different airports. I am a well traveled man.  I have certainly traveled quite a bit farther that the 24,901  mile circumference of the earth.

Secondly, I continue to be amazed at the fruitfulness of ministry to people of a different culture that I have never met and ministering to through the communication barrier of a translator. I have not kept track of the numbers, but the fruit of my labors has been personally overwhelming to me. People have been saved, healed, delivered and filled. I have had the joy of seeing altars filled with people on their knees in total and complete surrender to God.  God gets all the glory and my prayer supporters make the might works of God possible.

My third observation is something I have continued to so enjoy and long for in my travels. How great is the love of believers around the

Great international friendships: Marina from Russia, Yohan from Korea, Amber from USA, enjoying a coffee in Korea!

world . Once you meet a believer from another country they become your friend for life. When you return to a nation, you simply pick up where you left off.  Returning to places I have been and people I know in Guam, South Korea, and Ukraine is a mutually longing for experience. Some of my dearest friends and deepest friendship are with people who live half-way around the globe and we cannot speak to one another without a translator. When I return to ICCL in Kiev, and see my students, I act as a very unprofessional academic dean and warmly embrace them as dear friends; the same embrace is reciprocated upon departure.  I am already longing for my April ministry at ICCL and loving up on my students.

Fourthly, I was reminded of two vital spiritual principles that for most of the world are absolutely essential for life and ministry; prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. In Seoul, South Korea I attended an all day prayer meeting in a soccer stadium packed with upwards of 100,000 people. My dorm room in Kiev, Ukraine was in a church building that on every night believers were gather for all night prayer meetings! In the USA we can’t even get a handful of people out for a weekly prayer meeting and we wonder why we see so little of the move of God. The same thing is true on relying on the power of the Holy Spirit. Most believers in the world believe in the necessity of a Baptism of the Holy Spirit subsquent to salvation where the are empowered for supernatural ministry.  They constantly see this enduement of power in their lives and that of their churches at work in miracles, healings,  and supernatural provision.  I was deeply convicted by the Lord, for the anemic prayer in my own life and for not preaching and teaching and ministering in and through the personal power of the Holy Spirit as much as I should. I believe this is the biggest reason the USA is spiritually floundering.  We are so much about talk, and so little about power. This Sunday I will be preaching at Faith Chapel on this subject with the message title “How the West was Lost.”

My final of these brief observations of “Thirty Days of Ministry Around the World” relates to this blog.  After I realized that this trip would take me around the world in thirty days I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit tell me to write a daily blog about my trip.  I had never written a regular blog before (thought I must confess I loved the movie, “Julia and Julia” that centers on a 365 day blog) but needed to be in obedient to God. Since I did not know where to begin, I had help from  a wonderful spiritual son, Jimmy Doyle, who set it all up for me and wrote all those personal daily emails to you in my name (mail merged, of course).  I did not know how much they would be read or what the response would be, but I was overwhelmed at both. In the past 30 days I have received over 175 personal comments and ever day my blog is read by over 100 people!  Additionally, I have been encouraged (some prophetically) by at least a half-dozen people to write a book, something I have always wanted to do, but now have the push to do it.  So readers, help me, what should I write on? After hearing my heart for thirty days and getting to know me quite well what should I write about? What would be a help to you and the body of Christ? If you have any suggestions or hear a word from God, please let me know.

Stay tuned, I will be in touch, the quest continues,

Lee

In a 767 flying at 36,000 Feet Somewhere over the North Atlantic

“Fish bait, that’s what we would be,” I would often say to my startled seatmate after the talking head with the pretty face on the plane video smiled as she said, “In the event of a water landing.”  And so, my fish bait comment.  A water landing! At 36,000 feet when the mechanics of the plane failed or some madman actually got through the gauntlet of security and blew our plane in barely recognized pieces, “a water landing,” hardly.   Gravity would smash us into the ocean and our bodies would be unrecognized small clusters of cells.

I really get such a sadistic laugh out of the “safety video.” that is shown or lip synced though a lifeless mannequin-like stewardess or in political correct speak, “flight attendant,” well they are half right.  Today’s video, that is Delta’s cooperation with FAA regulations, was especially unintendedly funny.  Unlike the barely alive stoic flight attendants (who are currently barking out orders reminiscent of a drill sergeant), the perky petite model hired to do the video smiles broadly while saying, “in the event of a water landing,” and after that, “when you exit the plane,” expressed with a breathy voice and broad perky smile, like someone looking a drooling puppy. Now in the event that our plane plunged into the icy North Atlantic with gravities’ pull from seven miles in the stratosphere, there would not be an orderly and joyful exit of the plane, there would be no plane, there would be no us.

Now, get this, the pretty face with an abundance of ivory flashing, then says that after you exit the plane (sounds like exiting a theater after a good show, yeah right), from a water landing there is a little light on your vest that you can push, which she says in the same gleeful tone as when finding just the right accessories for that new seasonal outfit.  Now in the amazing event that we were able to accomplish a belly flop water landing like “the miracle on the Hudson,”  can you see us turning on our little life vest light on like Boy Scouts with their newly purchased flash lights for their first camping trip? All the while bobbing like corks in the icy November waters. Please! Am I the only one that sees this ludicrously funny?

Now, I write while flying at 36,000 feet above sea level and we could have so sort of an unplanned water landing, euphemistically speaking. While my seatmates grimace when I make the “fish bait” comment, I can joke about the possibility of my death without fear. So much so that I often instruct my wife on what to do just before my casket is closed. I tell her to open my mouth and pour one more cup of coffee (fresh brewed with fresh ground, dark roasted beans) down my throat and I will be good to go. (Never hit the road with a bad cup of Java). And then, just so I will be comfortable, put an offering plate in my hand (I have heard of the riches in heaven!).

Some people wonder how I can talk about my own demise with such glibness. It is really quite easy because I am certain that if the plane goes down, I go up. Not because eternal life in heaven is anything I have earned or deserved, because neither are true, but because I believe the clear teachings of the Bible that tell me that by believing on and receiving the living Son of God into my life that I know I have eternal life. Many verses for the lips of our Lord and the pens of the apostles affirm this eternal truth.  The Bible itself says it was written so we may know we have everlasting life. I have done what the Bible says so I have the assurance from the Bible that I presently possess eternal life that will be fully actualized when I flat line or crash land.

Dear Blog reader, you have read much about my God-given quest of making and multiplying disciples to reach one million souls for Christ worldwide. Since I have readers from so many places, including many of my Face Book friends, I want to make sure you are sure. If you were flying in plane and were being sucked by gravity to your demise, are you assured that if you became fish bait, you would be in the immediate presence of the Lord for eternity? If you are not sure and want to talk to me further, our just have questions please email me or send me a FB personal message and we can talk further. Perhaps some of my readers are part of the one million soul vision.

I am not planning to be fish bait any time soon, but if I do, don’t worry about me. I just had a bad cup of airplane coffee, it no way to go home. Oh, I just looked at the map of the plane’s computer display of our air flight and we now heading over the icy waters on the North Atlantic towards Iceland. “In the event of water landing…..”  Better have another cup of bad coffee. Where is that barking flight attendant, oh, she just wacked my elbow for the zillionth time with her little cart, this time yelling “duty free,” “duty free,” like some street urchin hawking papers.  Lee, look out here she comes again, ouch, whacked again. She is faster than a speeding bullet with that thing. Sometimes fish bait does not sound like too bad an alternative to the abuse of flying, oh well, it beats swimming, I could be live fish bait. Do amphibians like coffee?

Thanks a million,

Lee

Averell and I with Pastor Sergey Ozeruga and his wife Lena. Sergey's father Validmere was a part of the Tallinn, Estonia Revival and one of those who brought it to Ukraine

An amazing discovery was made last week in Dr. Vinson Synan’s class when he was teaching about the person who brought Pentecostalism to Ukraine, Ivan Voronaev, who planted over 350 churches in Ukraine, Russian and the former Soviet Union.   One of the students asked about him about the Tallinn, Estonia revival that began in 1978 under the reign of persecution of the heavy hand of the Soviet Union.

Dr. Synan was amazed that in all of his worldwide historical research on Pentecostal and Charismatic history,  he had never heard of the Tallinn Revival. Amazingly, the revival took place under the watchful eye of the KGB, who at one point were responsible for arresting 800 pastors and sentencing them to imprisonment for fifteen years  just because they were leaders of Churches. After a Google search I was not able to find anything on the web in English about this great revival.

We were told that we could talk to a women who attended the Tallinn revival who was  a staff members of  Bishop Anatloy Gaverluk, a member of our our board and leader of the Charismatic Churches of Ukraine.   Bishop Antatoly told us she would be happy to give a first hand account. Since Dr. Synan had already left for home I was able to conduct some first hand historical research on his behalf. The woman who attended the Tallinn revival was named Valentine and I had the wonderful privilege to interview her and Bishop Anatoly for almost three hours. What is truly remarkable is that the revival in Ukraine is a direct result of the revival in Tallinn.

So the best I know you may be reading the first report in English of this great revival. Valentine, who has spent her lifetime in Ukraine, in 1978 was in need of a great healing. She had an untreatable thyroid condition, and needed a supernatural healing. She heard that great healings were taking place in Estonia and so she traveled by Ukraine to attend the healing meeting. She said she had to wait all day just to receive healing prayer. She told me she waited with an elderly woman on crutches that she care for all day while waiting for prayer. When they got close to those who were ministering healing prayer through the laying on of hands the old woman threw away her crutches and began to dance and shout. Valintine said the meetings were held in a hall owned by the Catholic Church and that there was a room in that hall that was full of crutches, canes, braces and other orthopedic devices that were no longer needed by those divinely healed. Valentine did not receive her healing at that time but did so at a later date. What she did receive at that meeting was a fresh empowerment of the Holy Spirit and a desire to take back healing to her home in Kiev.

Many other church leaders also attended the meetings and received  a fresh empowerment from the Holy Spirit and a new desire to see the power of God released in healing.  Valentine and the other Ukrainians who attended the meetings brought a fresh spark of revival to the underground persuaded church in Ukraine. The Tallinn revival  lasted for a little more than three years  until 1981, but the effects of it are still being felt today.  For ten years revival was experienced in Ukraine as a result of Tallinn.  Then in 1991 when freedom from communism came to Ukraine, explosive church growth occurred and continues to do so. Before communism fell there was about 2,000 Pentecostal churches in Ukraine. In the last two decades there have been 2,000 additional Charismatic churches planted.  In twenty years the church has doubled.

In all of Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union, there is no greater revival anywhere than in Ukraine. More people are saved, more churches are planted, more missionaries are sent out than from any of the aforementioned places. It all began in Tallinn, Estonian under the watchful eye of the KGB. The Ukrainians took the revival back to Ukraine and it continues today.  I have so much more to tell about this revival, and when it is all written up I will send you a copy.

Well, in less than seven hours Averell and I leave for the Kiev airport. I plan to write day 29 in transit. Who know what bathroom I will encounter on the way home. Did I ever tell you about airplane bathrooms? As my Canadian friends say, “that’s a hoot.”

Coming home soon!

Lee

Incuturating Myself in the Russian Mindset

It was a faux pas of proportions beyond epic.  Innocently, I glanced at the bathroom door and seeing geometric figures of triangles of either normal or inverted, I was certain I was entering the one the reflected my gender.  Au contraire! My first clue was the startled lady just exiting the toilet stall, who upon making eye contact with me, said in a non-verbal language understood in any culture, “you stupid idiot, didn’t you see that this is the ladies restroom!”  I clearly understood her language and promptly exited and faced embarrassment double play, the howling and snickering of my dear wife and my former pastor friend, Grant Rice.  And so I pass on my words of wisdom for those brave enough to traverse cultural boundaries. It is never culturally acceptable to use the bathroom designated for the opposite sex. Never!

People Kneeling at the Altar in Repentance at Sunday Service

All I was told by Eugenia Kulagina, our Executive Director of ICCL in Kiev, was that I was preaching Sunday at such-and-such church in such-and-such place and our driver was picking us up 9:00 a.m.  I never met, did not know, or even talked on the phone with anyone in the church.  Talk about going in cold, and I would, as usual, speak through a translator, adding another barrier to communication. They did not know me and I did not know them. I was not even invited to come but was asked if I could come. How would the service go? Would I just “deliver the goods” and leave or would God do something special?

Taking about a  hour to travel  to the church bouncing around in the back of  Lada, a Russian box with wheels,  with Averell at my side and Grant riding shotgun, we arrived just as the service was about to begin.  I like to arrive in enough time to meet with and get to know the pastor a bit, pray with him,  and greet some people before the service  begina.  Not a chance, immediately upon our entrance into the church we were ushered to our seats on the customary front row.

The service began with good worship, but with Ukrainian songs I did not know and the words were not projected on the walls so I could not even attempt to sing along with them. Following worship was communion, but again in unfamiliar surroundings, we  did not know the house protocol, so we had to wait and mimic others in the timing and procedure to receiving the elements. Awkwardness abounded as Averell, Grant, and I tried to fit into a team that we did not know what rules they were playing with.

Just before I got up to speak the pastor came to me and speaking through my translator asked if I would share my testimony first before I spoke, saying that people liked to get to know visiting speakers by first hearing their testimony. Happy to do so, I enjoyed telling my story of my personal transformation as a fifteen-year old teenager though inviting the resurrected Christ to live His live in and through me.  However, as I was doing so, I sensed the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to me about changing my message to another passage that would lead right from my testimony. The notes I dutifully prepared early in the morning would have to remain  nestled in my Bible  in the other passage I was planning to preach.

And so, without any preparation, but that still small voice telling me to preach a different message, I began as God wonderfully put the words in my mouth.  As I preached through my interpreter to faces I have never see before of people from a different country, culture and language, God began to touch people. Towards the end of the message God gave me a moving illustration and people began to weep. I saws the pastor sitting in the front wiping tears from his eyes and then looking in the eyes of my interpreter, I saw his eyes glistening from his salty tears. God was moving among us!

As the message ended I extended a call  for people who needed Christ to come forward for salvation and two people responded. They wonderfully trusted in Christ. Just as I was about to turn the service back over to the pastor, I heard the Holy Spirit say to have an altar call for repentance and total surrender to God. I asked for worship leader to play something on the keyboard. Slowly people began coming to the front and kneeling in repentance. After a few minutes the altar was full and the pastor was methodically laying hands on each person and praying for them. It was a beautiful sight of a shepherd caring for his sheep. As people lingered at the altar I looked at the worship leader and made a motion with my fingers to my mouth telling him to lead the worship team in a song. He wonderfully responded with a song I knew in English that was the right song for that time. God put it all together.

In the midst of every kind of barrier, God was there, His Holy Spirit powerfully at work. People did not respond to me, they responded to God. Oh, the joys of being in His will, led by His Spirit. Later, while having lunch, and sharing with the pastor and his wife, they said how that Scripture and the message was just the right one for the church at that time because of events recent weeks.

We entered the church as total strangers and left as dear friends.

It is all because of Him,

Lee

Babi Yar - As seen in 1941 - The Mass Grave of Jews in Kiev

“They’re a resilient lot, aren’t they mate,” Pastor Grant Rice my Australian accountability buddy said to me Saturday evening as we were reflecting on the day’s events. Saturday was my only free day  in my over two weeks of ministry in Ukraine and we began and ended the day viewing the vestiges of horror visited on the the innocent Ukrainian people. What the Ukrainian people have faced the past century is a testimony to their internal stamina and eternal hope to press on regardless of life’s tragedies.

In 1933 in order to subjugate the Ukrainian people, Josef Stalin forced the starvation of between seven to eleven million Ukrainians in the renown fertile land known as the “breadbasket of Europe.” It is today considered one of the worst atrocities of the Soviet regime and a terrifying act of genocide. Stalin determined to force Ukraine’s millions of independent farmers into collectivized Soviet agriculture, and to crush Ukraine’s growing spirit of nationalism. Through systematic killings, looting, and closing off supply roads one fourth of the population of  Ukraine died in their own holocaust, most through agonizing starvation.  On my last trip to Ukraine I drove hours through some of the same fertile farmland that was the place of millions of their early graves.

Eight years after the atrocity of Stalin’s mass starvation, another atrocity came to Ukraine. The Nazi War Machine invaded  Kiev on its assumed march to conquer Moscow. Several weeks after occupation, all Jews in Kiev were ordered to go to a place call Babi Yar, a large ravine in North West Kiev. There were told to bring their money, warm clothing, and personal possessions. All were certain that they would be relocated to work in the factories of Germany and completely unsuspected their tragic soon demise. German soldiers lined up the Jews in a large single file between them and led them in a maze of soldiers toward their doom. First, their possessions were taken away and then they were forced to strip every stitch of clothes off their bodies. In systematic groups of ten they were  forced to line up in the trench and were machined gunned to their death. Later, a Nazi with a pistol would walk over the bodies and put a bullet in the skull of any still squirming and gasping for breath. In the detailed kept diaries of the Nazis, 33,771 Jews were murdered in the ravine at Babi Yar in 48 hours, the largest systematic slaughter of any people at any one time in history in such a short amount of time.  Later, the Nazis added to their barbarism by murdering there as many as 100,000 additional Jews, Gypsies, Partisans and others who they determined were unfit for life.  Saturday, we somberly gazed as the sight of the slaughter, now a park , but with little notation of what happened there.

Babi Yar today as I viewed it on Saturday, 6 November 2009

On Saturday we also visited the Chernobyl Museum, a place erected to remember the worst Nuclear Power Plant disaster in history.  On 26 April in 1986  a planned test of  a reactor led to an explosion that spewed  deadly radioactive  material in the atmosphere. Many brave Ukrainian engineers,  fireman, and helicopter pilots died of radiation poisoning in their containment of the site. Sadly, the Soviet Union kept the event unreported and hundreds of thousand of nearby residents were unaware of the event and went on with their daily lives consuming fatal does of radiation. Thousands later slowly and painfully died as a result. It was not until Scandinavian countries to the North reported high levels of radiation did the Soviets admit to the emission of destructive radiation and then they removed entire villages of people from the region.The museum is another somber reminder of a tragedy visited on an unsuspecting people

After over seventy years of Soviet domination, freedom has come to Ukraine and democratization is a slow and painful process in overcoming totalitarianism mentality. As a result, the worldwide recession has hit here much harder that most places on the planet.  Many have lost their homes and lifetime meager savings; many jobless, yet not hopeless. As Pastor Grant so aptly summarized, “They are a resilient lot.”

More than resilient, they are a people of revival and renewal. Since the glad demise of communism, those believers who survived the most brutal of religious persecution, sowed the seeds and are reaping the harvest of the greatest multiplication and growth of churches in the two millennia of European Church History. In the last two decades there are now twenty new denominations of Spirit-filled believers who are multiplying churches and winning and disciplining converts at a rate that makes Ukraine the spiritual envy of the world. Now, rather than witnessing the demise of its citizens in another tragedy, The Ukrainians are experiencing and enjoying the life that only a relationship with Jesus Christ can give.

And God has allowed me to be part of his most fertile field to train more labor’s as part of  my God’ given quest for a million disciples. How overwhelmingly privileged I am.

Keeping the Quest in Ukraine,

Lee

ICCL Class Praying for Dr. Synan At End of Teaching Week

The brisk early winter evening air was was as refreshing as a summer breeze as it tightened my facial skin upon encountering outside air for first time since classes began five days earlier. Free at last! Thank God almighty, I was free at last from  my jail like tomb of self imposed confinement in the building that housed dorm room, class room, office, and cafeteria.  A week of  a modular class is grueling on both professors and students alike. From the time I entered the building early Monday morning after an overnight train ride from a weekend ministry until Friday evening’s breakout, was wall to wall work.  From my wake up at 5 a.m. until bedtime at 10:00 p.m., it was unending work that centered on the task of the class at hand.

Early morning was preparation for the day’s class. Evening was preparation for the next day’s class. For me, my time was  spent mornings and evenings with email, blogging, meeting with students, staff, and preparing  for class discussions and writing the final exam. During class time I sat in the morning sessions taking copious notes of Dr. Synan’s unforgettable lectures, not only for my personal use but for preparation for writing the final exam. After lunch I led the class in the first afternoon session and then the day of class ended with Dr. Synan answerering questions by small groups that were  prepared  during the time I led class.  Preparing the final exam was a major project since I had to take it from the powerpoints  and notes I took from  Dr. Synan’s teaching. The final, in all it was seven pages of 120 points all carefully and painstakingly translated into Russian. I had to have it done and translated, so I completed several sections at time so it could be ready for Friday afternoon’s test of student’s hopefully acquired knowledge.

Pentecostal and Charismatic Foundations Class at ICCL

So, in the space of a work week the only air the entered my lungs was that from the all in one building where almost every waking moment centered on the teaching learning boot camp. But now, the day and week were over. Exams were taken, graded and recorded. Tearful hugs of farewell were shared with new found friends of our former ideological enemies.    Dinner had been served and dutifully consumed, although I ate sparingly. An evening walk was quickly agreed upon by out little party of Averell, Dr. Synan, Pastor Grant and this blog’s weary but happy author. And thus, our evening encounter with fresh air.

Warning  to vegetarians and vegans, the following content  my be unfit for your literary consumption. Read at your own risk of falling off the wagon.

The group was really choice-less on our walk’s destination. As the self-designated leader, I would lead diligently. I knew of a place I could satisfy my craving for two missing dietary commodities, a good cup of cappuccino and any part of a cow I could sink my teeth into, just so it was beef. For the past three weeks I have had enough of chicken, fish–both cooked and raw, and disgusting creatures from the deep sea that the Korean’s say is “good for you.” Where’s the beef?,” was my mantra.  And so our forced march to what is joking called here, “The American Embassy.” Better know stateside as the “Golden Arches.”

After about twenty minutes of basking and breathing in the refreshing evening air, all while taking one more step closer to our destination, we turned a corner and gazed on it’s monolithic tower of it’s shining stylistic initialed logo. The gleaming Golden M! Beef at last, hallelujah, beef at last!  Americana in a foreign land, Ronald and Play Land and a menu in Russian! Ordering at restaurant in a foreign country is like a box of chocolates, now matter what you order, you just are not sure what your gonna get. I repeated it carefully and so unlike me, slowly. “D-o-u-b-l-e C-h-e-e-s-b-u-r-g-e-r,   “D-o-u-b-l-e C-h-e-e-s-b-u-r-g-e-r.” And behold,  the only guy that could speak a little English got it and I got a Doublecheesburger! Upon entering our brightly colored plastic seat, and offering a monosyllable prayer, I tore off the wrapping, like a kid at Christmas. And oh, oh, oh, can I tell you, how good it was, a blissful smile comes to my face and a joyful tear wells up in my eye just to think about my taste-bud’s dancing in delight, beef at last, halajujah, beef at last!

Well that was last evening and it is now early morning, …  hey wait, … I wonder if MacDonald’s is open now, and if the serve hamburgers in the morning? Hmm …… TTYL!  Time for some fresh brisk morning air.

Don’t pray for my deliverance, I am having too much fun!

Lee

With Averell in Thailand on a ministry trip in 2007

The heat baked us and the lack of ventilation stifled us on a lazy muggy day last July in Krivoragrad, Ukraine where I was conducting a Pastors and Christian leaders seminar. Yet, those in attendance not only faithfully stayed but took copious notes as if I was giving some insider stock tip that would make them incredibly rich. During a question and answer time a Pastor with an incredulous look on his face asked me a penetrating question prefaced with a statement. “I have never met anyone who has been in the ministry for thirty-five years as you have,” he stated.  He went on to say, “we have no spiritual fathers in Ukraine,” knowing he was looking for a pastoral adoption. And then the question, “How have you been able to be faithful in the ministry for so long?”

In my three and half decades of ministry I have never had a question remotely asked in near proximity. Honestly, I don’t know what I mumbled in response to the question that caused me reflective consternation.  Now, having given such a question a abundance of thought, I know the answer. It is my wonderful wife Averell. Without a good supportive got your back covered wife, faithfulness in ministry is about as likely as palm tree in Alaska. I have had the wonderful privilege to call Averell my wife for over thirty eight years.

For the past three weeks I have been on the international road without my dear companion and today the light of my life came to Kiev. About once a year, Averell is able to share with me in international ministry and today’s she arrived for the final week of my thirty days of ministry around the world. Since I needed to be in class, she was picked up at the airport by our driver and brought to the school.  Amazingly, her flight was early so I wasn’t expecting her as she slipped into our classroom and  quietly came up to the place I was sitting. Without realizing she was there,  I felt her unforgettable lips dampen my cheek as she unashamedly displayed her affection in front of 22 pairs of our students eyes.  As I turned to see her radiant smile I saw the deep longing  love in her eyes as they locked on mine.

Anyone who knows us is well aware that our relationship didn’t begin like this but thank God has progressed to this.  It was our shared love and commitment to our vows and our willingness to work through the landmines of marital conflict that brought lasting peace.  All is well, Averell is here.  What a way to finish the last lap of the journey around the world.

With a gleam in my eye and a spring in my step,

Lee

Dr. Vinson Synan teaching at ICCL

The greatest of privileges has been mine and our students this week to have Dr. Vinson Synan teach a class at the International Center for Christian Leadership (ICCL) here in Ukraine. Daily, I am sitting in his class along with our students and I also have the blessing of assisting him in the afternoon sessions.

Dr. Synan is teaching the course Pentecostal and Charismatic Foundations. He has written 17 books on the subject and is the foremost Pentecostal/charismatic historian in the world. He is also Dean Emeritus of Regent University School of Divinity.  He has taught in the leading universities and seminaries of the world and had preached in most of the largest churches in the world. We at ICCL are deeply privilege to have a man of Dr. Synan’s heritage with us. Most important, Dr . Synan, who is approaching the middle of his seventh decade, is a faithful servant, serving the Lord in ministry for over 50 years. This week I and the students of ICCL have been walking with a spiritual giant.

Today in our class Dr. Synan was talking about how singing in tongues, called the Jubilate, was part of the early Catholic Church. He then paused and said, “Let’s just do that right now.” Quickly we stood and began to sing in the Spirit, each with our own God-given unique tongue, but in the common universal language of tongues. Soon the presence of God was tangibly in our midst. For many minutes we continued and the presence of God grew stronger and stronger. We felt immersed in joy and peace. Then God gave me a message in tongues followed by several interpretations. We just basked in the wonderful presence of God, and in the middle of a graduate class! Oh, the power, presence, and purity of Pentecost.

ICCL Class Worship

To think that I was indoctrinated in and for many years believed in andtaught  cessationism, the teaching that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the completion of the New Testament.  I thank God for opening my eyes to see that He had so much more for me and for all of us. After being a pastor for over twenty years I had my own personal Pentecost, just like on the Day of Pentecost.  The gift of tongues has reversed the curse of the Tower of Babble when people were scattered everywhere because they spoke different languages. Now, people of any language can have a common heavenly language when the share in the gift of tongues. As English speakers and Russian speakers sang in the Spirit today we sang in one language, the heavenly language of tongues. It was a taste of heaven on earth.

I still am amazed how that empowering on God’s wonderful Spirit has transformed my life and ministry.  Today, over 85% of all people saved in the world today are through Pentecostal and charismatic ministries. I do not believe that for one moment that the million soul vision would ever be possible without an Acts 2 encounter with an enduement of power from on high.

I am going back for more!

Lee

Such were the days of a major part of my life resulting in us, USA, vs our enemy, the USSR. We were taught to hate our enemy and every ideology they stood for. Being a good patriotic American, I learned to hate the Soviet Union and lothe it citizens who intended to conquer the world. I know because I saw Nikita Khrushchev the former Soviet Premier, on our little black and white Philco rabbit eared TV, take of his shoe and pound it on the podium at the United Nations and speaking to our nations said, “We will bury you!” Thankfully, and miraculously, the Iron Curtain rusted away and the freedoms of democracy flooded into the land of the hammer and sickle and dissolved forced alliances.

Being a prodigy of the Cold War my feelings toward people of the former Soviet Union were at best tepid. When asked to go to Ukraine to teach, it was not out of love for the people but out of love for both my professor who asked me to go and for my  love of teaching.  The first week I taught in Ukraine (which I expected to be my last) as I looked into the faces of my students, I did not see the former”commies” but the most amazing wonderful people, that we could have destroyed in an extended instant. Every stereotype that I was taught and believed was dissipated with their contagious smiles.  By the end of the week, I like Joseph, who upon revealing his identity to his brothers, wept in deep waves of compassion openly before them.

Even three years later, while on another trip to the Ukraine, I still, in consternation, wonder how such wonderful people could be our ideological bitter enemies. Honestly, I can’t wait to come back here time and again. And, as an unprofessional Academic Dean, I greet my students with hugs and high fives. This week, while in the classroom,  I can’t write about the excitement of salvations, healings, and the power of God. But I can write about the joys of training leaders of the former Soviet Union who are seeing many salvations, healings and the power of God at work in their ministry. I want you to see the student I love dearly. This is a picture of my class this past summer. Look deep into their faces and see what I see.

Children of USA's avowed enemy who, like us, were on the eve of destruction

For the love of all people of the world,

Lee