A brief history: In the late Eighties a group of us were teaching and training leaders in Scandinavia when two of our team had discernment about "Going East to minister". That turned out to be in Russia and in the early Nineties I began to visit with various Christian ministries in Moscow to find a group with whom we could partner for an extended time as that huge nation opened up to God and democracy.
The first group that asked me for support was a Christian Graduate School that was the brain child of American psychologists and grad school professors. After listening to their vision and plan I agreed to help them for a year to discern further if they were going to be able to really minister to pastors and churches as well as professional therapists. I was sceptical about too much emphasis on theory and not enough on practical skills.
My sixteen years at College Hill Church setting up a large ministry for the care and cure of soul s showed me the power of a healing community. Then in 1989 the Lord called me to open up an in-patient Christ centered psychiatric unit within Emerson North Hospital.
In that unit we implemented the things we had learned at the church. We trained the Seekers/ Clients/ Patients as well as the Helpers. I knew that Seekers would benefit more from the training than from the medication because I had seen the research and I saw the results at CHPC.
We experienced wonderful and miraculous growth and healing not only among the residents but also among the Psychiatrists, Therapists and Nurses. Our Medical Director, Dr. Emmett Cooper told me recently that working with our unit was the most exciting and rewarding time of his entire professional life.
When I went to Russia I took all those pastoral and professional insights. I did not want to replicate a Medical Model that places all the emphasis on the "Expert Therapists" and devalues the Seeker. I wanted to let the world know that the Seeker/Client/Patient is the expert and he or she is the hero of the story.
After a couple of visits I asked Dr. Galina Chentsova to come to Cincinnati to study in the Hospital and at LIFE Seminars. She had very good medical and psychiatric training. However, under Communism she was not allowed to actually study counseling skills of listening and caring. She was blown away by how skilled our lay teachers and lay Helpers were.
Galina now heads our ministry in the CIS/Russia. She has trained a core of solid, loving lay men and women who are committed to Christ and active in a variety of churches. Some are pastors and Christian Education Workers. Others are recovering from Addictions and Co-Dependency. They are now training hundreds of pastors and leaders throughout the CIS to deliver care, counsel and set up support/recovery groups.
Last night Galina called me with several urgent prayer requests. They are:
1. They are at an exciting crossroads in ministry. She is raising up team members to take more and more responsibility for the ministry and for travel to other areas to teach pastors and leaders. Pray for peace and courage.
2. The Mafia has taken over the building Galina was using and she is moving to another more expensive place. The need for painting, fixing and decorating with office furniture is great. Pray for finances, energy, volunteers and transportation.
3. The team is traveling to a city with terrible health and addiction issues to do a follow-up workshop on December 13-15. Pray for finances, a healthy team, students that are teachable and spiritual protection.
4. They do another training program on healing anger, bitterness, grief and trauma from December 18-20. Pray for spiritual protection and stamina for traveling mercies and finances.
5. Steve Griebling and I go to Moscow in January for an intense ten days of leadership development. Nothing is as important as developing healthy and effective leaders.
Thanks for remembering our brothers and sisters in need.
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