Wednesday - Thursday

Trying to count to 10,000BYR; The river behind the Seminary


The back of the church ; Catholic church downtown Minsk


Russian Orthodox church; A Memorial site for the fallen in the Iraq war


The center of Belarus in downtown Minsk; Moscow is 700 KM east


Former KGB building still used for police; Yeap, he's still around


Class picture; At the concert singing


Practice for concert; Listening to the sermon

We had another great day in class today. But the big discussion was on copyright, software, music, video clips. Almost all of the eastern European countries have sign several international agreements concerning the rights of an artist and the ownership of the work they have created, although most countries here do not enforce those laws. I have found that the countries that are either in the EU or have started the process to join are moving in the right direction in regards to these laws though. But it still doesn’t help the church out. If each church were to obey the copyright law and with almost no business involvement from the major Christian music publishing companies each church would have to write each publisher with a list of songs they would like to sing and ask how much it would cost to use each one, not just once but several times throughout the year. That’s crazy! CCLI also has a branch in Great Britain now that serves Europe. Well, some of Europe. It does not serve all yet. I understand the conflict. “If we don’t use these songs from England, Australia, America, how can we be effective with the music in our worship service?” That came from a student in class. This is where I become excited again. This is where we started talking about raising up their own musicians. This is were we talked about the church being an encourager for young writers; To nurture them, to support them, to cultivate an environment that raises up Christian song writers that use Belorussian melodies, Belorussian word phrases, Belorussian harmonies.
The Internet has been down all day today, so I’ll have to put 2 days of blog together, so it might be long.
Tonight 2 of the students took me to downtown Minsk. I’ve been there before, but it was fun to go again. It really is incredible to see how large the building and streets and open squares are that the Soviets built. Minsk is also a pretty clean city. Very little in the way of trash, but there are a lot of empty beer and liquor bottles around on the sidewalk, in the trash can, on steps. It is not an uncommon sight to see people walking around with open bottles of beer on the sidewalks. And a lot of them are young people. I know it happens in America, but I don’t see it to this magnitude. Or at least I haven’t noticed it. I’ll have to look more closely. I made have turned a blind eye to what is really happening in the states, because I see it everyday.
Another thing I did notice was that image was everything. The way you dress, the way you walk, the way you hold your body is very important.
We got to ride to into the middle of Minsk by subway after about a 25 minute walk to get to the station. They have two lines and they only cross at one station, so it’s pretty easy to get around. I think I could even get to downtown alone if I had to. But I’m not looking for an excuse to do so right now.
Thursday
We finished the notes today, so tomorrow morning we will do a review of the class and also look at some slides of MCC and some of the people on the worship team in action. Sometimes I think the students are more interested in the ‘how we do things (at MCC) then the class notes. No, it’s not sometimes; actually I’m pretty sure it’s all the time. :)
Today was the day I had the students put together a worship service using the notes from class. We talked about different formats, different music styles, and different forms of planning a service. They were able to use any combination of any of them that they felt would fit best with the purpose of the worship service. I gave them Philippians 3:13-14 where Paul is talking about pressing on toward the goal to win the prize which is in Christ Jesus. I broke them into two groups of 5 each. I asked them to also try and use at least two creative ideas in the worship service. One group came up with the idea of using 2 older ladies throwing arrows at a target, and of course always missing. Then another person and an arrow attached to a thin string that went right to the middle of the target. Of course he couldn’t miss. Then they talked about the minister coming out with an apple on his head with an arrow through it. I’m just not sure if it an arrow that the ladies through or not. I think it was supposed to be. That’s what made it funny.
Big concert at the church here on Thursday night. About 40 people from the states (all from MO) and another 60 from here in Minsk came together to put a concert on of Christian music. It was wonderful music played very well.
I better close now. My time for today might be coming to an end, and I want to save some time for tomorrow before I leave to go back to Austria for the night.
John