The Charge of Christ

Jesus Christ commands us to preach the salvation message to all the nations. We have a limited window of opportunity and a great responsibility. Dima and Maria are going to Eastern Europe and Central Asia to tell others about Jesus, to the areas where less than 1% of the population are practicing Christians and most have not been exposed to the Christian message. Our goal is to help start a national revival that stretches over multiple countries by assisting in planting new churches, mobilizing and training national leaders.

Spiritual Need

Growing up in Eastern Europe, Dima had never heard the Gospel or met a Christian. Our target areas have less than 1% of the population as practicing Christians and Islam controls over 50%. Those regions are politically stable and relatively wealthy. There are some local churches here, but most of them have stagnated and are struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment pressured by the steady expansion of radical Islamic nationalism.

Ministry Sketch

The focus of our ministry is discipleship and strategic leadership development with the intent of starting a national church planting movement. We will integrate into the culture through sports and music outreach. The first stage of this grand task is to settle and develop a strong mother-church that would become a launching pad for other churches and ministries. My close friend is a pastor of a small church in Central Asia, and I will assist him in evangelism and discipleship. We will create church planting teams of national believers, attempting to gain momentum that leads to establishment and growth of self-reproducing churches. If God chooses to bless the efforts of the team and the churches are growing through conversions and becoming healthy, the final stage of the project is to direct this movement's attention to the other surrounding countries.

Tentative Timeline

We have about 2 years of preparation left, which includes our marriage, four-stage specialized training for church planting and discipleship in Muslim context, fund raising, prayer, and a possible partial deployment to Kiev, Ukraine.

Qualifications

Dima was trained for 8 years for church planting ministry at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Dallas Theological  Seminary. Maria has been a professional multilingual translator and editor for Christian organizations for 7 years.