Monday May 11

The class.

Me being a tourist.


Orthodox church

I did get into Minsk this morning for a little. I had the time today. Class didn't start until 6:00 to night. I really thought it was supposed to start at 4:00. I guess I get my times mixed up.
Here are some pictures of inside the big Orthodox church in Minsk. While I was there, there was a small service going on so I couldn't walk around and take a lot of pictures. I made sure the flash was off.

Here are some pictures of the class. As I mentioned in my first blog, there are a lot of young people. While this may seem like a good thing (and it is), it also creates some very serious problems for these young people. If they are leading in a church that has a hard time changing formats, it will take time and patience on their part. There are not many young people with patience.

Tonight we talked about leadership qualities and then got into a discussion about ensemble playing and singing and how that is different then singing or playing as a soloist.

We also talked about the "less is more" concept. Because a lot of their musicians are classically trained it's difficult for them to play 'less' and let the other instruments of the band play. But that even carried over into our discussion about the other instruments of the band too.

I even had a conversation with someone who wanted to know about vocal arranging. Should it be all unison, all harmony, what kind of mixture? Questions I know I asked when I was that young, but because I've been doing it for so long, i don't even think about it any more. It was good to be challenged again with those type of questions.

They are hungry for leadership. they know what they really need to do, it a matter of how to do it the best they can. And they so very much want to do it RIGHT.

Good night for now.

John

Minsk Belarus 09

Brother Nikolay.

Sunday May 10, 2009 Belarus
Yesterday when I got here they were celebrating “Victory Day”. It was a celebration of the end of WWII and their participation in it. About 10:00 at night the city had a fireworks display. The hotel I stayed in last night was right across the street where they were shooting them off. Since I was on the 11th floor I had a great view. The only problem was I fell asleep at 9. I had been up for 31 hours. I did manage to catch a couple of 50 minute naps on the plane from Dulles to Frankfort, and then one 40 minute naps from Frankfort to Minsk. I woke up hearing the fireworks, watched them until it was over, and then went back to bed. The next thing I knew it was 7:00 the next morning.
They wanted me to preach and present a special and take up 40-50 minutes. The special wasn’t what I was worried about, it was the preaching. My part lasted about 35 minutes. It’s a good thing they have 2 sermons every Sunday. The church was located outside of the city of Minsk. It’s very, very difficult to get property in the city of Minsk. It is very costly. Their vision is to build a building that will be big enough to start some community activities for the people who live around them. They also understand that the city of Minsk is growing and in the near future they will be located within the city of Minsk it’s self.
As you can see from the pictures they are a very intergenerational congregation. The building was acquired from another congregation who started building up but then ran out of funds. They took over and now have at least this one level completed enough to have a corporate worship service in it. When the worship area is completed it will be able to sit 800.

By the time we finished with church went out to eat and then get back to the seminary I had about 30 minutes to get ready for the conference.
There were about 20 in the class from about 10 different churches. One of the worship leaders there was Daniel. Daniel was in my TCMI class when I taught it here at the seminary last summer. It was good to see him again. He had 5 other people with him. It was good to talk to him and find out how he was doing.
My interpreter is a young man by the name of Gera. He just started talking classes with TCMI, so I may have him in my class someday.
I’ll have pictures of the class tomorrow.
Das vadanya

That time of year.

It's that time of year again, and I better dust off the old blog site.
Actually it's a little early for the TCMI teaching to begin, but tomorrow I leave for Belarus. I'll be in Minsk again at the Baptist Seminar there. I'll be with church leaders and worship leaders, talking about worship. The nice thing is that I will be in the seminary there. they have a room right in the same building where I'll be talking.
I'll try and keep you posted to what is happening.
I'm looking forward to my time with the people there. One of my former students is the president of the Christian Evangelical Baptist Union and works with the seminary there. We met again in December in Baltimore at the Slavic Christian Church and he invited me to come over.
Pam and I will leave for our TCMI work on June 16th. This year I'll be going to Ukraine (June 29-July 4) and Romania (July 6-11) again. I will also be teaching at the Haus in Austria (July 20-30), so that will be nice. I will only have to travel to 2 countries this year. Not 4 like I have been for the past several years. That has been fun, but it also has been draining on me.
I'll try and post something after I get there on Saturday.
Oh one more thing, pray for the people that will be there in church on Sunday, they want me to preach. I told them that I could give an 'extended' greeting. They wrote back and said, "Good, that will be 40 minutes including a couple of songs." It's going to be a long, long greeting!!

Up and coming travel

This blog has been inactive a long time, but in the next several months I'm going to be posting again.
I got my plane tickets and my visa back from the Belarus Embassy, so I'm ready to go. I'm going to Minsk to conduct a worship seminar in May. I'll start teaching Sunday afternoon around 3:00 and then teach until around 9:00. I'll be teaching on Monday and Tuesday nights also.

This time it is not with TCM Institute, but something that Nikolai Sinkovets and myself worked out. Nikolai is the president of the Christian Evangelical Baptist Union for Belarus. He was a former student of mine back in 2005. I met him again in the states last December at the Slavic Christian Church down in Baltimore. Pam and I were there on a Wednesday night to hear a concert from several musicians from Belarus. I was a wonderful time to see him and renew our friendship. At that time he offered me an invitation to go to Minsk and give a worship seminar. It took awhile but we finally got all the arrangements completed.
After coming back from Minsk, Pam and I will be going back to TCM Institute in the middle of June and stay until the beginning of August. I will be going back to Romania but teaching in a different part of the country, not Bucharest. And then I'm going back to Ukraine. This time I'm going to be teaching in L'viv. It will be my first time there.
More to come.
John

September - December

Wow, I'd say it's been awhile since I last posted something. August is 4 months back to many. I'm not sure there is enough space for all of that time. So this will be a summary.
We've been busy though. With getting four services ready every Sunday in two different venues. I guess that's what makes it a bit hard. We have to plan one themed service that can work in two different venues. And since we use a DVR for our preaching in the second venue we have to make sure that we have enough time that once we start recording live we can then start playing the recorded part while at the same time recording live. So the services have to be slightly different order while have pretty much the same material.
More on that at a different time.
This past November I was the Worship chair for the Eastern Christian Convention. It's held once a year in the fall. For the past 8 years we have been going to the Hershey Lodge in where else but Hershey PA. I think Pam and I have missed only about 5 since 1970. It's a time for the people from the Christian Churches in the north east to get together for fellowship, worship and encouragement and spiritual growth. This is probably the 3rd time I've been the worship chair. Eric Olson our worship pastor from Mountain was the worship leader. So several of the team went up there for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday services. This also gave us a taste of what it will be like when we start another venue next year. we will have to have three teams on every weekend. Which of course means we will need more then just three teams! So that will definitely start to make things considerably more difficult.
Last night and tonight The church is hosting what we call Comedy Night. Several of the band members will play a couple of numbers to open up for Thor Ramsey. It is an outreach event for our church. This is the third time we have done this type of thing and it seems to work well.
Between now and the end of the year we will have 22 worships services. Christmas Eve will be 6 of them, 2 on Tuesday night and 4 on Wednesday night. The rest of the services are all the Sunday services.
John

A Big Oversight

Wow, do I ever feel bad. As you can tell, I had one more blog about my class in CZ and I just did not get around posting it until this afternoon.
I left Brno on Friday afternoon to Vienna. In order to catch the train to Baden where someone was going to pick me up, I had to run from one train on one platform to the Baden train on another platform. I even forgot my cap on the fist train. I got on the train (and even at this point I wasn't truly sure I had the right one). It turned out to be a local. It stopped at every station between Vienna and Baden. There are 11! We were making pretty good time until we stopped at one station and waited for about 20 minutes. Needless to say I got to Baden about 35 minutes later than I thought I would.
Pam and I left for the States the very next morning. Pam had to do all the packing. No time, no rest, no exit interviews.
However, Austrian Airlines over booked our flight so they asked if we would want to get 'bumped'. I'm not sure they used that word though. Long story short, we didn't get bumped. They did have seats for us on the flight. But they were in First Class. Well, it was called Business Class. But it was top of the line! So we did get to have some down time and relax while we were fed all kinds of gourmet foods and desserts and movies and hot towels and well it's not nice to boast so I'll stop.
We got home on Saturday, went to Mountain on Sunday and drove to NY on Monday. We stayed there for just under three weeks. No Internet to speak of (The local Mattituck Library once every 4 or 5 days). No cable, only 4 channels that came from Connecticut, and they came in fuzzy. Lots of beach, lots of reading, lots of sand, lots of playing with the grandkids, lots of family time, lots of sand, lots of sunburn, lots of clams, lots of fish, lots of sand and of course lots of naps.
I came back to work last Wednesday and then spent Thursday and Friday at Willow's Leadership Summit. And then played on Sunday. That was fun.
I haven't even gotten to download the summer pictures from the camera yet. If any come out good, I'll post them later.
This will have to do for now.
God Bless
John

The Last Class

A mural of the war against the Sweds 1645. Just the day before it was half covered with Ivy.

Our Thursday night worship experience. Anna gave her Life Story.

I feel so terrible about this. I had one more whole blog written while I was in Brno, CZ but I forgot to post it. I'll give an explantion as to the why in my next blog. In the mean time please read this blog, my last for my last class for TCMI this year.


Pavel asked if the class would be able to participate in a service they have on Thursday night. He wanted us to put a little worship service together. So we sang several songs, read scripture, had a testimony and had a time for prayer. It was interesting for me as it always is. After our section a man got up and starting teaching from I Kings. It was the story where Elijah passes his mantel on to Elisha. After he stopped he said something and then three more people got up and said something. It wasn’t until after the service did I find out that when he finished his part he asked if there were any others that would like to comment on that passage or had any other thoughts about it.

Jan just came back from English camp. The churches here use it for evangelizing. It is a concept in Czech Republic and several other neighboring counties for evangelizing. While talking with him I noticed that he is doing very creative things with youth and their worship. What he would like to do is carry these ideas over into the adult worship. I also read in his paper that he worked one week in a nursing home. He helped for the whole week with the daily routine of an older man who was physically handicapped. This man was also not able to talk. He just made sounds. Jan helped feed, clean, wash, shower him, and clean up after him. He mentioned how much of a humbling experience it was for him. He also mentioned how he asked God why God gave him so much.

Anna I found out half way through the week is the wife of a former student from my class Nick. Pam and I call him, Nick the trumpet player. The first time we met Nick brought his trumpet to play at worship on Sunday morning at a session at the Haus. I knew Nick was Romanian so I asked her how the two of them met. She said that a bus load of Romanians came to her town to work. Nick came to her church and because the only common language they both spoke was English they started talking and well now they have three beautiful children.

Liba – She was the cook when I taught this class in Mancice last time. Mancice is a small village about 40 miles from Prague. Her husband Slavic passed away when 10 years ago. She was 50 at the time. She told me that when it happened she just laid down in prayer and fasting for a week. She realized that that was a time of worship for her. Because of that worship is very important for her. Slavic was the national director for TCM until his death. Now Pavel the preacher here is the national director.

Petra was my translator. She attended my class with her husband several years ago at Haus Edelweiss.

Miriam, Stephanie, and Julia all have stories of giving money, or helping out people less fortunate then they.
I am just in awe of God’s mighty grace and the many ways, the many stories of how it overflows from His people to those who need to experience His grace. It is through people like this that God is moving. It is through people like this that God becomes real to people who so desperately need his grace and love.
John