On June 9 to 11, the Southern Baptist Convention had another convention. General information about the convention, the issues raised and their resolutions, as well as the reports of the main ministries of the SBC: NAMB and IMB, and much more can be found on the official source of the SBC, at their website: www.baptistpress.com. In his article, the president of PCSBA talks about the uniqueness of this convention for the pastors of Slavic churches in the U.S.
Over the course of a few years now, the Pacific Coast Slavic Baptist Association of Evangelical Churches had their representatives alone with many other ministries, teaching institutions, and organizations within the SBC. Praise God that we have this opportunity where we can have the privilege to share about our ministries, to get to know other pastors, and meet with other Slavic representatives who came to the convention.
In addition to an opportunity for us to showcase our ministry, this year we also had an additional room for lunch and fellowship for pastors in the U.S. At first, we were planning to have this event on June 10 for 35 to 40 people, but since there were a lot more people who showed interest to attend, we expanded the meeting and moved into a much bigger room. There were about 90 people in attendance! Praise the Lord! The organizers of the lunch fellowship for the Slavic and Ukrainian pastors were: John Barnett, Mick Stockwell, Bogdan Kipko, and Ivan Mileyev.
During the meeting, we were welcomed by Associate Vice President for Convention Partnerships, Charles Grant, director of Ethno-Linguistic Church Planting for NAMB, Ramon Grant, IMB vice president of global engagement, Jacob Boss, as well as the president of the Gateway Seminary, Adam Groza, and many others. The presentations about the ministry of IMB were given by John Barnett, Mick Stockwell, Bishop, Scoll Ray. In addition to sharing more about the Slavic ministry opportunities, they also motivated us to joint ministry. IMB and NAMB, along with the SBC Executive committee were the sponsors of this luncheon. I am captivated by the openness and desire for serving together with the Ukrainian and Slavic Associations of the U.S by NAMB and IMB! This opportunity is opening up doors for further service for youth and young families of the Slavic and Ukrainian churches in the U.S!
Thank God for the fellowship, new relationships, and a group of friends which is growing every year with every SBC convention! The luncheon had representatives from 8 churches of our Association, 11 pastors (out of the 24 people from the PCSBA churches). There were a lot of representatives from Bryte Church (pastor Igor Dronov), and the Spring of Life Church (pastor Pavel Belev). The convention had the chairmen of the Pacific Coast, Mid-West, Ukrainian (U.S.) associations, as well as the vice president of the West-Ukrainian Associations of the U.S. There was even a special guest who came from Ukraine to this convention, the rector of the Tavrich Bible Institute, Valentin Siniy. He spoke about the challenges and hardships during the time of war, and about what Ukraine is going through at the moment.
These few days of the convention in Dallas went by very quickly. As I was waiting for my plane home, I thought: “What an interesting time for ministry that we are living in with so many opportunities, and that in the future, we will have true missionaries who will be sent around the world, new churches will be planted in the U.S., there will be many joint missionary projects, and our students will fill the seminaries of SBC, plus much more!”
May the Lord bless us to take advantage of this “wide door”. Praise be to God!
President of PCSBA, Ivan Mileyev
For more details about the Slavic meeting, visit the website of SBC.
