March 11, 2008

Dear Friends,

The apostle Paul was a very busy man. His desire to preach the gospel in places where “Christ had never been named” kept him on the move to such an extent that he was unable to visit the churches he had organized as often as he would have liked. He had to rely on letters to keep in touch with the churches flung across the Mediterranean Sea. And while Paul was off speaking of Christ in some city, in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, or Italy, other preachers sometimes moved in to visit the churches he had started in another city. These other preachers on occasion worked to discredit Paul and his teaching. Such was the case in Corinth, and this provides the background for much of what Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. (These, by the way, are typical missionary conditions. No missionary worth his or her salt can ever keep up with all that needs to be done, and if that missionary is doing good work, some other so-called missionary (a.k.a. wolf in sheep’s clothing) will come along and work to discredit what he or she has done, persuading people to disassociate themselves with the missionary who introduced them to the gospel. It’s sad to say, but I’ve seen it in so many places in Russia.)

The situation in Corinth had grown so strained that Paul felt as if some people wanted him to provide letters of recommendation to vouch for his good reputation and integrity. That seemed absurd to him, since he was the one through whom God had brought the Corinthian church into existence. He wrote to them “Do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ” (II Corinthians 3: 1-3).

To put it in other words, the Corinthians were asking Paul “How do we know you’re for real—that you bring us the real gospel?” Paul’s answer was straight to the point “Your faith—your lives are proof that I’m real. I don’t need any more proof than you yourselves. Your lives bear witness to the truth of Jesus. Any one can read for himself. You are a letter of Christ.” As far as Paul was concerned, the lives of the Christians in Corinth were adequate proof of his genuineness. He knew them, and they knew each other.

Over the years I have received a lot of encouragement and affirmation for the work I have done in Russia. The work itself has been very satisfying. The encouragement and affirmation have been like icing on the cake. Of course, if you lived closer to me and observed me in my work day in and day out, you would surely notice the weak areas. Another thing you would notice is that other people do most of the work for which I receive affirmation and encouragement. As I prepare to leave Russia in the spring to begin work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, I want you to hear more about some of the people who do the work here at Narnia Center and will continue to do it after I move from an active, hands-on role, to the role of an advisor.

As I prepare for this transition I want to do everything I can to set up Narnia Center to continue to prosper in its work of proclaiming the gospel through literature and training. I can think of no better way to do that than to send these letters of recommendation, that is, testimonies from the lives of the people who with me do the work of Narnia Center. Most of you don’t know them. I know these people because I have been working with them.   Their lives are letters from Christ that speak for themselves.

Alexei Markevich

Baptist minister Alexei Markevich has been the director of Narnia Center since it was charged in 2000.

Alexei Markevich, the director of Narnia Center, was born in Moscow in 1971. An only child, both of his parents were engineers. In school he was an active member of the pioneers and the club of international friendship, which were government-sponsored programs to raise the next generation of leaders for the Communist Party. In 1988, at age 17, he enrolled in a six-year program at the Moscow Aviation Institute, studying to assemble aviation equipment. That same year he began searching for God. His search began because of an emptiness he felt inside. He had read a popular atheistic book ridiculing the Bible. Something in it struck him as untrue, and he decided he would read the New Testament. In 1990, he bought a New Testament on the street for 25 rubles, half his student stipend. After reading the New Testament he came to believe and began searching for a church.

He visited an Orthodox church where he was told that if he would memorize the Lord’s Prayer and pay twenty-five rubles, they would baptize him and make him a member of the Orthodox Church. This did not appeal to him. Alexei found his way to another church, as it were, “by chance.” He found the address for this church printed inside the cover of a book he read by Josh McDowell called More Than A Carpenter. His father had told him about this other church, the Baptist church, which he had seen in his student days. He had never visited the church, but he had seen it near his engineering institute. Alexei visited this church, which is now called the Central Baptist Church in Moscow (at the time it was the only Baptist church in Moscow), and on August 8, 1991, he gave his life to Christ in that church.

Just eleven days later, the 1991 Soviet coup d’etat attempt was staged, in which a group of hard-line Communist Party leaders briefly deposed Mikhail Gorbachev, holding him captive in his summer dacha. They claimed his health did not allow him to continue leading the USSR. It was during the next three days that Boris Yeltsin, standing on a tank outside the Russian White House, defied the leaders of the putsch and, backed by Soviet military leaders, caused them to step down. Although he had always been very interested in politics, and still is, Alexei remembers that these events and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet economy did not trouble him much. His life had taken a new direction with Christ.

On November 19, 1991, Alexei was baptized at Central Baptist Church. His wife Oxana at first seemed indifferent to his new faith, but within a year, she too had received Christ and been baptized in the church.

In 1992, Billy Graham held a large evangelistic meeting in the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. Alexei, along with other young people from the Baptist church, was invited to help organize a “follow-up” Bible study group for those who attended the meeting. The group in which he participated eventually became one of the new Baptist churches in Moscow, Hope Church. In 1993, Alexei’s pastor, Sergei Belov, suggested that he enroll in the newly organized New Life Bible College, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. He was able to do this while completing his degree at the aviation institute.

As he enrolled in the Bible college, the political situation in Moscow remained unstable. In October 1993, another group of hard line politicians tried to oust Boris Yeltsin, taking over the White House. Yeltsin called in the army whose tanks shot at the White House until the rebels surrendered. All that seemed like a minor disturbance in the background to a new life.

Alexei received his diplomas from the aviation institute in 1994 and from New Life Bible College in 1995. In the fall of 1995 he enrolled in the Moscow Baptist Theological Seminary. This is where I met him when I went to teach a course on Christian education there in the winter of 1998, exactly ten years ago. He became a deacon in Hope Church, and in 2003 he was commissioned to organize a new church in his own neighborhood of Butova in southern Moscow, where he continues to serve as the organizing pastor.

Alexei has been working with me since the fall of 1999, when he became my teaching assistant at the seminary. He became the director of Narnia Center when it was chartered in the summer of 2000. He is a hard worker who keeps on going and going until the job gets finished. He motivates our staff to work together to get books out and lately has helped immensely in the promotion, sale, and distribution of our books through new channels. Alexei is married to Oxana Markevich. They have three children—Artyom, 17, Vladimir, 14, and Lyev, 11.

Sergei Kokurin

Sergei Kokurin, an Orthodox Christian and a journalist, will be the acting chief editor for Narnia Center.

Sergei Kokurin was born in 1960 in the city of Kinyeshma on the Volga northeast of Moscow, he is also the only child of his family. His father was a builder and foreman and his mother worked in a chemical factory. When he was 7, the family moved to Ukraine. After finishing school and working for two years, he was required to serve in the army.

Before going into the army in 1980 he decided to visit his grandfather back in the city of Kinyeshma where he was born. Taking the train from Kiev to Moscow, he had an entire day to spend, so he bought himself a ticket to a movie and sat down on a bench on Tverskaya Street to read a book. A young Finnish couple sat down next to him and struck up a conversation with him. In broken, but understandable Russian, they witnessed to him of their faith in God. He told them he was an atheist. God cannot be seen, he said. There is no God. This couple waited for him until he came out of the movie and accompanied him to the train station to visit his grandfather. Although he did not believe in God at the time, the couple made an indelible impression in his memory. While in the army he began to pray, and afterwards, he started going into churches to pray.

Following his discharge from the army he enrolled in the Kiev University in the department of journalism, where he studied from 1983 till 1989. According to the Soviet system, in which education was free of charge, Sergei was required to work for three years in a kind of journalistic internship. He found an opportunity to do this with the city newspaper in Sudak on the shore of the Black Sea in the Crimea.

Many of his young colleagues in Sudak were reading books on philosophy, poetry, and religion. One of them was a woman named Yelena Veniaminovna. She had recently been baptized in the Baptist church. Sergei visited this church often. It seemed that he was surrounded by his journalistic colleagues and well educated friends as he attended this church. He liked going there because the sermons and prayers were understandable. He attended this church for several years. People began to ask him “When are you going to be baptized?” As he was thinking about this, a question rose up in his mind: “What do I do about the fact that I was baptized in the Orthodox Church as an infant?” Sergei hated what he knew of the Orthodox Church, but he said to himself “I don’t understand the Orthodox Church, but I don’t have the right to reject that which I don’t understand.” He decided to set out on a path to learn everything he could about the Orthodox Church and its faith.

He began reading books on Orthodox theology and liturgy by Berdyaev, Menn, Bulgakov, Florensky, Solovyov, Schmemann and Meyendorf. As he read these books, he discovered new and deep dimensions to the Orthodox faith. He discovered that Orthodoxy is not just a bunch of old women lighting candles in a church where anti-Semitic priests mumble prayers in an incomprehensible language. It is based on a deep theology that speaks straight to the mind and heart of contemporary persons. It is a living tradition that cannot be fathomed. He began to understand the meaning of icons. Things that formerly irritated him about the Orthodox Church no longer bothered him. He experienced that the church of Christ is alive—if you open your heart.

Even so, for several years there was a psychological barrier for Sergei. He could not find a priest before whom he felt comfortable making his confession. And without making a confession he could not participate in the Eucharist. Then he met Father Georgi Chistyakov in Moscow. In 1997 Father Chistyakov heard his confession and became his spiritual guide. He began taking Communion in the Orthodox Church.

While living in Kiev in the later 1990s and early 2000s, Sergei worked with the Association of Christian Schools International. He helped produce a Christian radio program for those serving in the military. In 2005 Sergei and his wife Svetlana Panich sold their apartment in Kiev and moved to Moscow. Sergei began working with Narnia Center as coordinator of book projects in 2005. He has a finely developed literary sense. He serves joyfully and energetically in his role. He shows the greatest respect and appreciation for each person he meets. Sergei will soon become the acting chief editor for Narnia Center, a role in which I have served since 2000.

Shortage of funds at Narnia

Since I announced that I will be moving to Virginia to begin work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, funding for Narnia Center has fallen off. For the first time in eight years we have had to delay sending books to press because of a shortage for funds. I am grateful that many churches have chosen to support my new work with PFF, yet I am aware that Narnia Center has not yet come to a position of self-sufficiency. Narnia Center continues to be active in publishing and promoting books to the extent that we can.

In early February we introduced a new book by a contemporary author named Maria Kondratova. Her book called First Flight is about a little bat who could not fly (until the end of the story). The author came from Yekaterinburg to Moscow to visit friends and to participate in presentations and book-signing ceremonies in bookstores and libraries. During the book presentations she spoke of her Christian faith.

On February 1, I attended Narnia Center’s book presentation at the municipal Gaidar children’s library, the central teaching and training libraries for Moscow’s children’s libraries. I was moved by the words of the head librarian who opened the meeting by telling of how she, realizing that Narnia Center had some kind of a religious affiliation, was at first skeptical about the books we publish, until she began to read them, and then fell in love with them. We could not have asked for a better recommendation. We are encouraged by the response of librarians across the Russian Federation.

Today is the last day of one of Russia’s big yearly holidays, International Women’s Day. It is a national holiday, and the streets are rather quiet. Tomorrow they will be overcrowded again. This week Narnia Center will participate in another large, all-Russia book fair on the grounds of BDNX, the national exhibition complex in the north of Moscow.

I am grateful for the privilege of serving in this ministry in Russia. With this letter I want to encourage you to continue to support the work of Narnia Center.

Yours in Christ,

Donald Marsden

Contributions for Narnia Center may be sent through normal mission-giving channels by designating gifts for ECO # 051800 - Narnia Center. Gifts by credit card can be made by calling PresbyTel at (800) 872-3283, or checks payable to the PC(USA) can be mailed to: Presbyterian Church (USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Designate the check to ECO #051800 - Narnia Center.  Contributions may also be made by check payable to “The Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church” and mailed to The Outreach Foundation, attention Linda Patrick, 318 Seaboard Lane, Suite 205, Franklin, TN 37067, or by calling the foundation at (800)791-5023.  The memo on the check should read “Narnia Center.”

P.S. You might be interested to in the article about the Narnia Center on the Presbyterian News Service.

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 186