Posted by Max Tikhonoff (Русская версия здесь)

When a church steps out in mission, things get dirty. But then, as Max Tikhonoff, pastor of Solomensky Reformed Church in Kiev notes below, 'God gives more grace.'

A great opportunity to learn how to work more with less has appeared for Solomensky church in Kiev. Lacking the needed funds we have decided to concentrate on how we can continue to serve with just what we have. And our work in Troicky Rehabilitation Center (pictured above) has seen even more blessing than previously. Along with teaching non-believers right there, we have formed our own Bible study support group for those who just left the rehab program. Drug addiction is acunning illness, but as Scripture says, "Those who are forgiven more, love more" as we can see this year. By this entry, we would like to start a series of stories about our ministry in the Rehabilitation Center.

We thought we had lost Zhenya (left) when after 1 year of being a church member we found out that he was secretly back on drugs for about 2 months. He borrowed a lot of money from many people in the church using their naivity and trust. He took the church's musical instruments and was about to sell. He went to the non-Christian rehab instead of ours and when we saw him back he told us that all that year in the church he was pretending to be a Christian and he doesn't believe "all those weird ideas".

Our Session was about to excommunicate him from the church, but our pastor asked them to wait for 3 more months and asked Zhenya to think once again. It all seemed useless after talks like that, but the Session has agreed.

In 2 months, Zhenya came back and said that he was foolish when he dared to say such terrible things about God and that he had undertsood that, when he asked God to show Himself to him again and he got the answer. What an amazing story of being a prodigal son of God!!! Zhenya is back and he makes his living by singing in a subway to pay his debts back to people in the church, though, some forgave him all the debts he had. He is about to join our worship team in the church. 

Sometimes we need to act quickly when there is a danger to the church, sometimes we have to wait like God waits on our sins. Sometimes we need a crisis in our churches and in our lives to understand that we have more, than we think. And it is a pity, that sometimes we need a crisis for that.

We think, that it is time for us to begin to pray about our own 100% Christian rehabilitation center!

Get connected with this work. Contact Radstock's Anthony Adams or Max Tikhonoff, to find out more... For prayer pointers on this ministry, head over to our 'Pray with Us' Blog here.