From the April-June 2008 Issue
Danger - mines
Volodymyr and Oksana Kostyshyn
Druzhba Meeting Room‘Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction’(2 Tim. 4:2). This was to be the main business in the life of Timothy, and the task that lies on the shoulders of every minister of God’s Word since. It is an imperative, which the minister is bound to fulfil in his life. He is to be ready to declare the whole counsel of God, even in most difficult and unsuitable places and circumstances. He is to do it out of his love for the Saviour and for people. These things particularly came to my mind again a couple of months ago as I got news about an ammunition dump from the time of the Second World War, which was uncovered during the foundation work for our church building. I thought to myself: ‘You cannot possibly build a church on a minefield, therefore it looks impossible to preach the Gospel here.’
Obviously no one can build anything on a minefield, but what we can do, and the Bible exhorts us to do, is to proclaim the truth no matter what. In fact, figuratively speaking, we are living on a minefield. We are surrounded by mines and they are ready to blow up any time we touch them. These mines are planted in the minds of people. There are many different kinds: mines of atheism, mines of liberalism, mines of false religion, and many more. Most times we are required to be well-skilled sappers in order to cope with them. Otherwise they can easily blow up not only themselves, but us as well. The work of the sapper is one of the most dangerous and one of highest importance. He is a pioneer who makes all other following work possible. This I learned from our building experience. It took several days for the sappers to accomplish their work before the builder could begin his part. In the spiritual realm, to de-mine usually takes much more time and effort.
The 3 Cubes Club
We renewed our young people’s outreach ministry several months ago. This ministry came out of a desire to reach with the Gospel young people who have no desire whatsoever for the things of God or the church. We see them on the streets of our city and often feel uncomfortable about talking to them. They look different to other people and seem to be very unapproachable; definitely not those to whom you can easily talk about God, the Bible, repentance, faith, etc.
We are very thankful for the help we received from a Christian woman who is an owner of a fast-food restaurant in Ternopil. Her conversion to the Lord was very dramatic, but soon afterwards she was in a car accident on a pedestrian crossing. She was in intensive care for several hours, with no certainty of regaining consciousness. ‘God saved me’, were her first words as she regained consciousness. It took her some time to recover completely and even in this time of rehabilitation she was giving her testimony to God’s faithfulness. Now she is back to normal life and in the fast-food business.
One of the places of which she is joint owner, is well known among young people. During the daytime it runs as a fast-food restaurant, and at night as a disco. She gave us one-and-a-half hours of her business time to use it for a young people’s club. From the very beginning we have made it clear who we are and what we are doing. We have no hidden agenda and try to be honest with them. Starting with just a few young people, the numbers increased and we now get around 50 for every meeting. I am not saying that most of them are Christians or sympathetic to the Gospel, in fact probably the opposite, but at least they can share with us some of their ideas of life and listen to what we say. I think it is a great success to get them to listen. They need to hear the truth.
From time to time we have what we call an ‘open meeting’. Anyone from the audience can have a part in the programme. Mostly it is singing, or playing some instruments. At our last meeting we had the reading of part of a novel written by a young lady who read a story she had written about a girl who committed suicide. It was really terrible to hear what came out of her young mind. But she is not alone in her thinking. A number of those who came to the club have a similar despair, or suicidal thoughts bothering their minds from time to time. As we see young faces on the street it is difficult to tell what is going on in their lives. Like when you see a mine it looks just like a piece of metal, but inside it is death and if you are not careful it may kill or seriously injure many. Therefore we are trying our best ‘in season and out of season; to correct, rebuke and encourage’, to help to get rid of this pestilent way of thinking and show life from a different perspective.