{"id":2594,"date":"2019-06-20T15:21:37","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T15:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2019-07-16T17:43:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T17:43:14","slug":"sochi-united-methodist-church-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/sochi-united-methodist-church-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"SOCHI UNITED METHODIST CHURCH RENEWAL"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"right\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #708090;\">by: Katherina Tokareva<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<p>2 Feb 2018<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cTransfiguration\u201d (\u201cPrieobrazhenie\u201d) Sochi United Methodist Church has been renting the audience for Sunday worships for a month and a half already. We\u2019d like to share the joy with you, because for two years in a row we\u2019d been gathering in our pastor Nadezhda\u2019s apartment and realized one thing \u2013 we need to find a new accommodation so that new people could come. New people, as willing as they could be, would be unlikely to come to an apartment worship service. We started praying for some rental option or buying our own building. My husband Dmitry\u2019s good friend, a biker and a business-centre director (as well as a fan of his preaching) offered us a decent audience hall at a reasonable price. During this period (since October, 1st) 10 totally new people (among them two bikers), our co-workers and friends have become church attendants. Now we have an opportunity to summon a worship band for rehearsals on Saturdays, and our biker-friend Ivan now assisting us in worship service \u2013 playing the guitar and singing.<\/p>\n<p>Julia, my coworker, offered her arts skills in organizing a Christmas party. She\u2019s a good decorator. Maria, who moved from Perm to Sochi, supported the idea of organizing teens\u2019 ministry and we held the event called Hallelujah where we told the teens about the dark side of Halloween, which is so popular among the youth.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"sign\"><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"02.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/img-fotki.yandex.ru\/get\/370846\/309565745.6\/0_194278_2a5cab37_orig.jpg\" alt=\"02.jpg\" width=\"1216\" height=\"855\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Our most faithful and devoted church goer is our coworker, Sergey, who calls himself an atheist, though attending each and every worship service. He never has to be reminded of anything \u2013 12 p.m. he\u2019ll be there in the worship hall every Sunday. Due to him, we now have a wonderful video about our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/second-outreach-moto-quest-kerch\">2nd bike quest<\/a>\u00a0in Kerch, and Sergey is the editor.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Sc5xkm8MkQk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s the one to have created a wonderful worship service booklet, he\u2019s also in charge of making different banners and pictures for the social media (see the examples below). Thanks to Sergey we also started a new column \u201cquestions\u201d in the church group in the social media. He\u2019s very creative in asking questions and we\u2019re all eager to find the answers.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s crucial that we as Christians could answer the questions of the people seeking the truth. That\u2019s the sample of the questions asked, \u201cHow did the Great Flood take place? Where did the water come from and how it evaporated?\u201d Answering the questions, we ourselves stand firm in our faith!<\/p>\n<p>In the passed month we had two celebrations, one of the being devoted to The Thanksgiving Day (The Reaping Day), the other one was dedicated to the Reformation 500th Anniversary. For the Reaping Day we decorated the hall beautifully and sent out about 200 invitations through the social media. After the worship service we had a big feast, everyone had some treat with them.<\/p>\n<p>For the Reformation Day we had guests \u2013 Yelena, South District Superintentant\u2019s assistant, and her daughter Masha. Yelena shared an inspiring word about the importance of a permanent renewal and reformation of our soul. During the tea break we studied some of Martin Luther\u2019s statements, which were used for the hall decoration.<\/p>\n<p>In November, 12th a guest of \u201cTransfiguration\u201d Sochi UMC was a seminary student Natalia Zaytseva. She also invited her Sochi friend to attend the worship service.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a great joy for us, when new people come to the worship service. It inspires and refreshes the congregation. Glory to our Lord!<\/p>\n<div class=\"foto-div\">\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3\">\n<div class=\"image-album\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Text, photo and video by Katherina Tokareva<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u0422ranslate by V. Ditmar<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by: Katherina Tokareva 2 Feb 2018 The \u201cTransfiguration\u201d (\u201cPrieobrazhenie\u201d) Sochi United Methodist Church has been renting the audience for Sunday worships for a month and a half already. We\u2019d like to share the joy with you, because for two years in a row we\u2019d been gathering in our pastor Nadezhda\u2019s apartment and realized one thing \u2013 we need to find a new accommodation so that new people could come. New people, as willing as they could be, would be unlikely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"two_page_speed":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umc-eurasia.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}