A Retreat in the Russian Forest

  While it certainly wasn't the taiga, the vast forests of more isolated portions of Siberia, the tur baza (more or less like a camp) called “Russian Forest” still made for a good spot for folks from the Omsk region to get away from the city and its cares and to come together to think and pray about how God is calling them to develop.

  If you read this blog regularly you will know that last year Pastor Len Dale (from the Central States Synod) and I made a trip to a number of sites in order to lead short seminars on strategic congregational development. Dean Vladimir Vinogradov liked that seminar enough that he asked that I come back to his region this year for follow-up.

  In mid-March, then, 12 congregational leaders from 5 congregations (Beryovovka, Zvonarev Kut, Kazanka, Azovo and Omsk) in addition to myself and Dean Vinogradov got together for a weekend retreat. Dean Vinogradov led morning and evening prayer based on the Biblical theme of the weekend – Mt. 9.38 – while I led the lessons related to analysis of the congregation's situation, it's gifts and it's potential call as the people of God in that place. In addition to study and application of the book of Acts, we also covered materials that are applicable to almost any organization regarding life-cycles, focus and goal-setting. The mix of the practical and theoretical, of the human and divine elements of the church, brought a lot of life to our discussions, work and plans.
  I'm especially pleased with that result given that it is the first time I've led this topic on my own. We were hindered a bit by a lack of time such that we did less concrete ministry planning than I had hoped. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that these topics are totally new for most people here, and so it may be unrealistic to expect to move so quickly.
  Because we saw the need for continued work in this area Dean Vinogradov and I agreed that it will be important to find good ways to follow up with those who attended. One option would be to plan a similar seminar (though introducing different tools and with the attempt to go deeper) for next year. A second option would be to try to gathered representatives of larger congregations together insofar as they face a common set of challenges and have significantly more opportunities than congregations with fewer human resources. Another option would be consultation, where someone would come in to help congregations analyze their ministries and mission opportunities. We will see where God leads us, as through the “Equipping for Service” program we strive to continue to increase the capacity of the Russian church to spread Christ's love.

Area Dean Vladimir Vinogradov

Equipping for Service in Perm

The art museum has a large collection
of wooden carvings of Christ, all set
during his trial. I've never seen anything like
this anywhere else in an Eastern Orthodox
context.

   It promised to be a long week.

   When Len and I went to St. Mary's Lutheran in Perm on the first morning of our four day seminar, we found that the pastor (Area Dean David Rerich) had come to the morning session. As had Lilia, a faithful member of the church council. That was all. A large amount of the material we had planned to use would work most effectively only if there were at least four people in the group. I was wondering if we would have to move to “plan B,” which was my doing Bible study lessons around the theme of “hope.” While I would not have been opposed to doing this, I really hoped that the congregations could take full advantage of having the unique opportunity to hear from Len – after all, God willing they'll be able to hear from me some other time!
   The first meeting, though, was not indicative of the rest of the week. After the slow start, by the evening session planned on that first day attendance had increased, and that meant as the week went on we had the chance to cover a full (or at least reasonably full) “tool box” of activities that the congregation could use as part of a concerted effort to work on transformation. Having adequate time allowed us to present more than just a snippet of the process (in contrast to other places on our trip), but instead to show the material according to its natural flow  – starting with the Bible and then moving from there to speak in a wider sense about the ways in which it is possible to live out the Great Commission...or, rather, in the ways this congregation can live out the Lord's call to mission in their particular place. 
   Their place, as it turns out, is really quite wonderful. I was really surprised at how much I

enjoyed the city itself - its history, culture, architecture, and natural surroundings - and congregational members were happy to show us around. They felt blessed to live there and that God has provided them with a historic church building in the city center; they've responded by taking great care of the building and have begun to use it for concerts as well as worship. They also have what is one of the only a few parsonages to have survived the Soviet era. They have room there for the pastor's family to live as well as other space that can be used for various purposes – including, this time, for housing me and Len. They have an active church council and a group of lay leaders outside of the council, some of whom are young and many of whom are well-educated. They've also benefited by having stable leadership; while Pastor Rerich (far left in the picture above) is moving toward retirement (not without some bumps along the way for him and for the congregation) having a reliable leader throughout the years has allowed the congregation to weather the storms that it has faced. 

  Stability, though, is not an eternal or absolute value. Change is also necessary, ,and after our visit to Perm I feel confident that God brought Len and me to the right place at the right time, “equipping for service” in that place for the work God has for them as they move in to the future. I feel privileged that I'll have the opportunity to follow up with them to see how their plans (including living in their draft mission statement and trying new ministries in December and January) have worked, whether they be successful or “excellent failures” (i.e., those failures from which we take something useful for our future development). 

Transsib |trænz-SÍB| verb [intransitive]

   The title of this entry includes a word that, of course, exists in no other dictionary than the one in my mind. But some words virtually demand to be brought into existence. Riding through northern Asia on the train is certainly a unique mode of travel, and after celebrating its centennial recently I think that the Trans-Siberian Railroad deserves its own verb. 
   Len Dale and I were not on a leisure trip, of course – if  we were we would have found a train that left Khabarovsk at a reasonable hour and whose wagons would have been new and modern. As it was, however, for us the scheduling of congregational events held priority and that meant getting on the train after midnight and putting up with an antiquated system of heating the passenger cars that slowly roasted us over the next few days and nights. 

   I had ridden significant portions of the Trans-Siberian before, mostly in my time in service as a pastor and acting dean based in Novosibirsk. In western and central Siberia it can seem like the birch forests and fields of cereal grains go by at 50 mph for  whole days at a time. There was some birch in the east, too, but also a greater variety of hills, steppe, thick coniferous and mixed forests, rivers and streams. On this trip stops between Khabarovsk and Chita (our next destination) were even less frequent than in other places of the “magistral” – about twice in 24 hours there was a stop of 20 minutes or more, with 1-2 minute stops every four hours or so. I knew that this area (“Zabaikalsky krain” and the “Amurskaya oblast”) was among some of the least densely populated areas along the Trans-Siberian, and we rode through abandoned villages with some frequency. At the same time, there were enough people living there that I thought of what life must be like in rural Siberia, and it made me miss home. 

   As we approached Chita and saw the spreading urban development, I couldn't help thinking about what it is like coming in to Billings – a place that is not very large in terms of its population, but important insofar as it is the biggest town for many miles around. Chita, though, is bigger, older, and draws in people (for shopping, trade, and work) from an entire time zone. As with Magadan, Chita has a reputation in Russia as a city where the people (as the joke goes) have been in prison, are in prison, or are planning to go to prison in the near future. Our experience there, however, was wholly positive; we stayed in the charming older part of the city which, like with almost all Russia cities, has a mix of new buildings, restored older buildings, and buildings that are still occupied though they should be condemned for safety's sake. 

The oldest building in Chita, now a museum, formerly a
church used by the Decemberists who were exiled to Siberia

   We spent three days with the tightly-knit, multi-generational Lutheran congregation there, made up of two or three extended families and explored with them how God might be calling them to develop their ministries. We introduced ourselves and our work there by reading the story of Paul's meeting with Christ in Acts 9, using the very simple method of asking three questions about a text: “What is God doing here?” “What are the people of God doing here?” “How does this apply to us?” These discussions helped us get a sense of what was important to them, which was, most of all, raising their kids (which are many!) in the faith. One of the men there, Viktor, shared how he taught his kids to pray in part because his parents never taught them, and he knows his own life has been enriched thanks to prayer. Together with them we realized that God had put among them a desire to grow in discipleship and Christian education at all levels.
  That is a long-term goal; Len and I were able to meet some of their immediate needs by leading worship with Holy Communion, baptizing a newborn, and preaching at a mid-week worship service arranged to coincide with our visit. Congregation members provided hints that their worship life has suffered recently, mostly due to a lack of a clear leader in spiritual questions. Dean Manfred Brockmann in Vladivostok has made efforts throughout the years to support the congregation by sending interns there, but one of their clear needs is to develop their own lay leaders; Chita is not moving anywhere closer to any other city and the nearest full-time pastor is still two time zones away (in either direction.) I hope that I was able to provide them with the resources they need in order to take steps toward resolving this issue for themselves. We left the city knowing that there is much more to do there and with prayers that they can gain strength both through developing internal resources and by finding new ways to relate to those outside. 

   Then Len and I hoped on the train once again, continuing our westward journey another day to Irkutsk, where Pastor Thomas Graf Grote met us VERY early at the train station. He was our kind guide around the area for the day we were there, taking us to the amazing Lake Baikal – where our walk turned rather meditative as we stopped trying to shout over the wind – and to the impressive museum of wooden architecture, Tal'tsy.

   As we drove around the area and as we conversed with Thomas in his home, he spoke to us about his ministry. This helped prepare us for meeting congregational leaders in Shelekhov, an Irkutsk suburb, late that evening. We began only at 8 pm, since a number of key people were busy until that time either at work or at their (para-church) ministry with developmentally challenged children. (This ministry, together with the other aspects of Pastor Thomas' story, are worth a separate blog post some time...)

 The group of congregational leaders gathered that evening once again brought us hope – they were clearly people who cared deeply about their faith and were open and energetic enough to think creatively about the ways the church might develop. Len spoke with them about congregational life cycles and re-assured them with words he repeated frequently throughout our travels; they sound something like this when translated back into English from the Russian - “God gives you everything you need for mission in this time and this place.” Insofar as the congregation anticipates changes in the next few years, it was a timely conversation, even if it was only a start. From discussions with Pastor Thomas both immediately after the meeting and when we met again a couple of weeks later I learned that in Shelekhov they intend to continue their work together in order to grow in their sense of the Spirit's leading. 
   From Irkutsk we needed to make it quickly to Omsk in order to take part in the last day of the ELCUSFE synod assembly. Regretfully, then, we exchanged the train for a plane in order to catch one of the relatively few flights that directly connects Siberian cities with one another. While the flight was fine, I already missed the train's rhythms, the gently swaying cars, contemplating the scenery for hours on end...everything, actually, except the heat. It was good to know that, though the longest trips were behind us, we still had plenty of transsibing to do before the month was through. 

Transsib |trænz-SÍB| verb [intransitive]

   The title of this entry includes a word that, of course, exists in no other dictionary than the one in my mind. But some words virtually demand to be brought into existence. Riding through northern Asia on the train is certainly a unique mode of travel, and after celebrating its centennial recently I think that the Trans-Siberian Railroad deserves its own verb. 
   Len Dale and I were not on a leisure trip, of course – if  we were we would have found a train that left Khabarovsk at a reasonable hour and whose wagons would have been new and modern. As it was, however, for us the scheduling of congregational events held priority and that meant getting on the train after midnight and putting up with an antiquated system of heating the passenger cars that slowly roasted us over the next few days and nights. 

   I had ridden significant portions of the Trans-Siberian before, mostly in my time in service as a pastor and acting dean based in Novosibirsk. In western and central Siberia it can seem like the birch forests and fields of cereal grains go by at 50 mph for  whole days at a time. There was some birch in the east, too, but also a greater variety of hills, steppe, thick coniferous and mixed forests, rivers and streams. On this trip stops between Khabarovsk and Chita (our next destination) were even less frequent than in other places of the “magistral” – about twice in 24 hours there was a stop of 20 minutes or more, with 1-2 minute stops every four hours or so. I knew that this area (“Zabaikalsky krain” and the “Amurskaya oblast”) was among some of the least densely populated areas along the Trans-Siberian, and we rode through abandoned villages with some frequency. At the same time, there were enough people living there that I thought of what life must be like in rural Siberia, and it made me miss home. 

   As we approached Chita and saw the spreading urban development, I couldn't help thinking about what it is like coming in to Billings – a place that is not very large in terms of its population, but important insofar as it is the biggest town for many miles around. Chita, though, is bigger, older, and draws in people (for shopping, trade, and work) from an entire time zone. As with Magadan, Chita has a reputation in Russia as a city where the people (as the joke goes) have been in prison, are in prison, or are planning to go to prison in the near future. Our experience there, however, was wholly positive; we stayed in the charming older part of the city which, like with almost all Russia cities, has a mix of new buildings, restored older buildings, and buildings that are still occupied though they should be condemned for safety's sake. 

The oldest building in Chita, now a museum, formerly a
church used by the Decemberists who were exiled to Siberia

   We spent three days with the tightly-knit, multi-generational Lutheran congregation there, made up of two or three extended families and explored with them how God might be calling them to develop their ministries. We introduced ourselves and our work there by reading the story of Paul's meeting with Christ in Acts 9, using the very simple method of asking three questions about a text: “What is God doing here?” “What are the people of God doing here?” “How does this apply to us?” These discussions helped us get a sense of what was important to them, which was, most of all, raising their kids (which are many!) in the faith. One of the men there, Viktor, shared how he taught his kids to pray in part because his parents never taught them, and he knows his own life has been enriched thanks to prayer. Together with them we realized that God had put among them a desire to grow in discipleship and Christian education at all levels.
  That is a long-term goal; Len and I were able to meet some of their immediate needs by leading worship with Holy Communion, baptizing a newborn, and preaching at a mid-week worship service arranged to coincide with our visit. Congregation members provided hints that their worship life has suffered recently, mostly due to a lack of a clear leader in spiritual questions. Dean Manfred Brockmann in Vladivostok has made efforts throughout the years to support the congregation by sending interns there, but one of their clear needs is to develop their own lay leaders; Chita is not moving anywhere closer to any other city and the nearest full-time pastor is still two time zones away (in either direction.) I hope that I was able to provide them with the resources they need in order to take steps toward resolving this issue for themselves. We left the city knowing that there is much more to do there and with prayers that they can gain strength both through developing internal resources and by finding new ways to relate to those outside. 

   Then Len and I hoped on the train once again, continuing our westward journey another day to Irkutsk, where Pastor Thomas Graf Grote met us VERY early at the train station. He was our kind guide around the area for the day we were there, taking us to the amazing Lake Baikal – where our walk turned rather meditative as we stopped trying to shout over the wind – and to the impressive museum of wooden architecture, Tal'tsy.

   As we drove around the area and as we conversed with Thomas in his home, he spoke to us about his ministry. This helped prepare us for meeting congregational leaders in Shelekhov, an Irkutsk suburb, late that evening. We began only at 8 pm, since a number of key people were busy until that time either at work or at their (para-church) ministry with developmentally challenged children. (This ministry, together with the other aspects of Pastor Thomas' story, are worth a separate blog post some time...)

 The group of congregational leaders gathered that evening once again brought us hope – they were clearly people who cared deeply about their faith and were open and energetic enough to think creatively about the ways the church might develop. Len spoke with them about congregational life cycles and re-assured them with words he repeated frequently throughout our travels; they sound something like this when translated back into English from the Russian - “God gives you everything you need for mission in this time and this place.” Insofar as the congregation anticipates changes in the next few years, it was a timely conversation, even if it was only a start. From discussions with Pastor Thomas both immediately after the meeting and when we met again a couple of weeks later I learned that in Shelekhov they intend to continue their work together in order to grow in their sense of the Spirit's leading. 
   From Irkutsk we needed to make it quickly to Omsk in order to take part in the last day of the ELCUSFE synod assembly. Regretfully, then, we exchanged the train for a plane in order to catch one of the relatively few flights that directly connects Siberian cities with one another. While the flight was fine I already missed the train's rhythms, the gently swaying cars, contemplating the scenery for hours on end...everything, actually, except the heat. It was good to know that, while the longest trips were behind us we still had plenty of transsibing to do before the month was through. 

"Sektanty" as Faithful Disciples

  From Magadan Len and I flew south to Khabarovsk; we spent four days with two congregations in the Khabarovsky krai. Clear skies during the flight allowed us to see the incredible beauty of Russia's eastern coast and the Amur River region. The area is very sparsely populated, and from the air it seems to be a vast wilderness inviting you to explore...from what local residents told us, though, bears might not take too kindly to human visitors tramping through their territory!

  Well, we didn't have any time for camping anyway. Our hope instead was to raise questions and provide tools for congregations that might help them develop a sense of their own, particular call in and for their communities. Len provided many years of experience in the field and knowledge about the process of congregational transformation; my job was to translate and, from time to time, adapt and add in a way that would be appropriate to the cultural context.

  One of the realities that we ran in to again and again is the degree to which Lutheran (and any non-Russian Orthodox, really) congregations are at a disadvantage here in terms of people's stereotypes. “You don't have a church building?” their neighbors ask. “Well, then you must be a 'sektanty' (said with the same intonation that we might say “cult members” in English to speak of those who belong to a dangerous religious group). People who are less set in their stereotypes might ask - “how does your faith differ from Christianity?” You can imagine, then, what a challenge it is to even get a sense of how to talk to people in a way that witnesses to the Gospel without in any way “stealing sheep” from our sisters and brothers in the Orthodox church.

  In the Far East, though, groups of mostly professional people (doctors, musicians, artists, businessmen and most especially teachers) have found their way to our small congregations and have made their spiritual home there. Because of their life situation, though, they run in to a problem we see frequently in the West – the busyness of lay leaders, some of whom are on the edge of burnout. On this trip I noticed again just how difficult it is for working-age people to find time to meet on weekdays, and so our first couple of mid-week meetings were rather disappointing. By the weekend, though, we were visiting St. Catherine's Lutheran, a congregation that was dealing with yet another extra layer of difficulty – their location. Located a 6+ hour bus ride north of the Trans-Siberian railroad, they get pastoral visits even less frequently than others in the region.

  In spite of that, the congregation remains committed to the Gospel and to one another, led by a team of gifted lay women. Len and I found it a joy to work with them and to share in their fellowship. It is my prayer that the Lord would provide opportunities for them to widen their circle so that others may join them on the journey of discipleship.  

Far, Far East

Ernest Neizvestny “Mask of Sorrow”
Monument to GULAG victims 

  It's not every day that one gets to Magadan, a city in Russia's Far East that even in Russians minds is associated with stereotypes about Siberia – cold, isolation, gold mines, prison camps...did I mention cold? As I flew in to the city on October 1st the needles had already dropped from the larch trees and were covered with a fresh dusting of snow; the long winter was about to begin.
  Yet the reality of Magadan was much more complex than the stereotypes. Yes, the Kolyma region is very cold, but Magadan itself is saved from the worst of it thanks to the mountains surrounding the city and its port. Yes, mining was a big part of the region's economy, but today it is no longer at the center. And the camps? Well, Magadan knows its past and, unlike much of the country, makes a serious attempt to confront it – through moving memorials, museum exhibits and, most of all, the stories of survival passed on from one generation to the next. 
  What everyone has right about Magadan, though, is its isolation. Yet being “geographically marginalized” was part of the reason that I made it there. The “Equipping for Service” project for which I am responsible devotes special attention to those areas for whom Christian education is not accessible; for that reason Magadan became the first stop on a month-long journey that Pastor Len Dale (recently retired Director for Evangelical Mission in the Central States Synod of the ELCA) and I made through Russia visiting Lutheran congregations.

  Len and I were welcomed into the small Lutheran family in Magadan in order to listen to their stories and to try to encourage them to see how God might be calling them in to the next chapter. Their long-time leader, lay preacher  Andreas Olzols, together with their new chairman Yur Fogel, shared their own stories and their insights into their congregation's life. Throughout the years they've had hopes to have their own full-time pastor, but each time they've been disappointed. Dean Manfred Brockmann makes it up to visit them when he can, but Magadan is accessible only by plane, and tickets are expensive. Visiting the city is expensive for another reason, too – since almost all food (except the amazing local fish and crab) has to be brought in from the outside, it can be many times more expensive than in the rest of the country. Utility prices

(including for the congregation's apartment, where they meet for worship, have fellowship and put up guests) are also twice as expensive as elsewhere; these factors, together with the decreasing population of the city, make it easy to become depressed. While we were obviously unable to solve these problems, our hope in our time together was to help them see the multitude of gifts that God has given them and to concrete on using those gifts in a way that is most effective and life-giving. 
  If we were able to help them focus on their possibilities for mission (while not ignoring the challenges) then the resources spent on this visit will have been worth it. One small story heartened me; as Annete from the congregation was giving us a tour around the city and was telling us about the climate, her daughter Marina piped up with: “I don't like summer!” This was surprising to hear from a little Russian girl, so I asked her “why?” Her answered had everything to do with snow – she was a serious skier, and practices in the summer, she said, are rather boring. I thought that was great – if you live in Magadan, you'll be much happier if you love snow! In life it isn't possible to totally avoid such “negative” phenomena as summer (even in Magadan), but your much more likely to have a sense of God's grace if you focus on what you have instead of what you don't. 

Interpreting - Part III

One of the surprises of our trip was running across a very interesting book in the church in Moscow - “To Siberia!” by Bishop Theofil Meyer. The book recounts Meyer's travels from 1925, when he made his way from Moscow to Baikal and beyond with the goal of strengthening the Lutheran church in the Soviet Union.I'll reflect more on Bishop Meyer's book in a later post, but here I'd like to share one quote that seems particularly appropriate for our journey:  “If everywhere in the world fellow believers of various nationalities  related to one another as well as they do here … then our Church would be much better and could contribute more significantly to [mutual understanding among] peoples.” Meyer was talking about a particular congregation, one which compared favorably with others that he visited. However, I think that his words reflect the experience of our delegation throughout all two weeks of travel and each of the 6 congregations we visited. I was thankful to be a part of it.

At the same time, I wasn't free of the work of translating! That was especially the case on our way from Vladivostok (where we were deposited by the train “The Ocean” on the morning of the 24th ) to Ussirisk and Arseniev. Once again, translation turned out to be as much cultural as linguistic  For example, I had to assure the terrified Americans sitting in the van that, yes, this was normal driving for Russia. At the same time, I was careful to selectively translate the irritated (to put it very mildly) exclamations of our small-city driver in big city traffic. Had I not been used to it by now, I might have even blushed. 

Sharing photos in Ussirisk. Oleg and his wife Olga in
the center; Ekaterina - far right.

At any rate, our first congregational visit in the Far East was to Ussirisk. Once again we visited a small congregation (St. Mary's) where most church events take place in the apartment. Like in Khabarovsk, there we saw a “family” type congregation with very impressive lay leaders, despite having no full-time pastor. As their lay preacher, Oleg, spoke of the situation of those living in the area, his words contained the mixture of hope (e.g., related to the economic prospects of the region as it developed ties with neighbors in Northeast Asia) with concern and uncertainty (related to the social/ political situation of the country) that we ran in to so frequently here. During our short visit, we experienced the warmth and hospitality Bishop Meyer knew so well almost a century before; our group came to the conclusion that the blinys (crepes) made by church council president Ekaterina win the prize for the best in Russia. 

KA-52 "Alligator," made in Arseniev

The trip to Arseniev was suprising in a number of ways. Perhaps I  had expected things to look and feel familiar since I know their pastor, Alexander, and a number of their lay leaders pretty well thanks to my work in education in the church. What I hadn't known, for example, was the degree to which Arseniev is surrounded by natural beauty. Areas of fertile soil made for rich farmland, while the forested, high-rising hills and quick-flowing rivers reminded me that we were now in the real wilderness. Going into the city, too, I could see that it would be different than the rest of the places we had visited. With the exception of Ussirisk, everywhere else that we had been had the status of a state capital; these other cities had recently done much to improve the quality of life of their residents, and it was clear that development was still going on. Not so with Arseniev. Here we were experiencing the “provinces,” and a depressed economic situation similar to what I had seen in certain parts of European Russia. Arseniev's situation is made even more complex by the fact that it is more or less a “mono-city,” i.e., a city based on a single factory. Arseniev's “Progress” factory makes helicopters, and the fortunes of everyone in town is based in one way or another on the number of helicopter orders the factory receives in a given year. Despite the more difficult economic situation, we were impressed by the warm and positive interactions we had in the city. 

Our evening there began there with an organ concert. We had arrived in the Vladivostok region during the “German Cultural Days” organized by Dean Brockmann. Many of the congregations in the  Far East use culture as a way of reaching out to new people, and the primary means of doing this is music. Arseniev has very little by way of cultural events, so an organ concert (by a German organist, held in a Soviet era hall that had clearly not seen renovations since the 70s or 80s) was a big deal. While Pastor Alexander had hoped for a better crowd, we were impressed both by the music and that so many people would come out on a weeknight to attend it.

Pastor Alexander Lapochenko with Bishop Mansholt

After the concert we went to the church, St. Luke's. Like our congregation in Novosibirsk, the church building is a private home that has been remodeled. Unlike Novosibirsk, Arseniev is a congregation that was founded with no tie to German-Russians. Here, too, we were met warmly by the congregation as our conversation stretched late into the evening. As someone in our group remarked later, in Arseniev it became especially clear how frequently we saw the people of this country striving toward beauty – for example, in their singing and renovations of their church. 

And speaking of renovations of the church building, in our final destination, Vladivostok, this was at the very center of our attention. St. Paul's there is the only historic Lutheran building (from the Urals to the Far East) currently in the possession of our church. Before being returned (in very poor condition) the building housed the Museum of the [Russian] Pacific Fleet. Besides commemorating 15 years from the date of the building's return, we also were celebrating 20 years of Dean Brockmann's ministry in the Far East. Our days in the city included concerts at the church, a city tour, and worship. To give you a sense of the guests represented at the anniversary celebration, the Gospel lesson on Sunday was read in Russian, German, English, Slovak, Finnish, Afrikaans, and Korean! Besides visiting St. Paul's and Dean Brockmann, we had a very good opportunity to meet with other guests, including ELCUSFE Bishop Otto Schaude.

On the 1st of October we were in Vladivostok's new airport for our trip back to our respective homes. There we were reminded one final time of the vast distances of the country; a mosaic in the terminal shows how far it is to various cities – Anadyr (in the very NE corner of Russia) – 3750 km. Tokyo was much closer (1500 km), and even Singapore (5000+) was nearer than Moscow, seven thousand km away. We covered those kilometers and saw much along the way. At the same time, of course, we still missed much more that we saw. That means that I can hope that these two weeks of interpreting will not be my last.

PS. I read a newspaper on my flight back to Novosibirsk. In it I stumbled across a number of articles that really stuck out. For example, I read about how the head of the Russian Orthodox, Patriarch Kirill, had just visited Vladivostok before we arrived, and how the turnout for his appearance was disappointingly small. I read about a festival of native peoples of Siberia and the Far East, a topic that came up frequently in the museums we visited. There was an article on helicopters from Arseniev, the quality of Russian airplanes, as well as a number of items on politics and corruption. As our trip came to a close, then, I received a small sign of confirmation that we had been talking about the right things as we traveled, and that we had all taken some steps the right way in the path of being interpreters of culture.  

Interpreting - Part II

Translating at Evening Prayer. The congregation's preacher,
Alexander, is to my right. Pastor Loren Mai is giving the sermon.

As our group was reflecting on the journey we had made together, one person commented - "the fact that any of these churches are in existence today is a miracle." It was a powerful reminder of what could otherwise be taken for granted. It is certainly not obvious that the strong, pre-revolutionary congregation in Krasnoyarsk would be reborn 60 years later. Nor could one have predicted that new congregations would spring up in the Far East. Traveling with a group of people that were thoughtful, flexible, funny, adventurous and faithful helped me appreciate with fresh eyes the wonder of God's work in this country, even as I continue to be concerned about those areas of society and the church that are yet to see the effects of the Gospel's freeing power. 

So, while I was translating in a number of ways during this trip, others (Americans and Russians) also translated for me, helping me to understand the world around me differently.  

But now - back to the journey.  We took the "red eye" to Khabarovsk, where we were met by the church council president, Tatyana (one of 3 Tatyanas we met in the small congregation); we rested before taking a city tour with Tatyana #2, mostly in the rain. Even then it was clear that Khabarovsk was a big, vibrant and quite beautiful city. 

By evening we had made it to the apartment of St. John's Lutheran. Like Krasnoyarsk, the apartment is the center of the congregation's life, while they rent space for worship. Also both congregations are similar insofar as they have excellent quality lay leadership...which also means that everyone is very busy. Particularly challenging for such congregations in a Russian context is the lack of their own church building; most people here believe that only very strange people would meet anywhere other than in a "real church" if they were seeking spiritual growth or comfort. Khabarovsk has the additional challenge of being without their own pastor for most of a decade. 

Dean Manfred Brockmann (center in the picture right, together with church council president Tatyana and Pastor Gary Teske, of St. John's partner congregation in Lawrence, KS) came up to meet us from Vladivostok. He does much to support this and other congregations in his deanery, and we were happy to have him with us as we started out on this leg of the journey. He was one more translator among us as the members of our American congregation shared stories of life and faith with the group that had gathered in order to meet with us. Besides visiting the congregation, we had the chance to take a boat ride on the Amur (below) and visit the city's excellent history and natural museum.

We left Khabarovsk on the overnight train to Vladivostok feeling very blessed for the quality of our visits; those who were returning to Russia noted that there was a new openness in interaction, and that bodes well, I believe, for the possibilities of partnership in the future. 

In order to not make these posts too long, I'm going to stop now and add another installment in the next day or two.