Minsk, Belarus – Friday, October 31, 2008 – 10:47pm local time
The first full day here in Belarus is in the books, and a fabulous day it was. This is my fourth trip to Belarus now, and the relationships we’ve formed over the years are precious. When we come back now, it’s like coming home in some ways. After getting settled in the hotel, our team went to a mid-week praise and worship and prayer service last night. That was great, but we had the best time afterward upstairs in the church office with B & B and A (not a good idea to use their real names). We spent about 90 minutes snacking and talking about B’s testimony, life in Communist days, and a general mix of history and politics. One member of our team had not been here before and has no experience in formerly Communist countries or contexts. He was fascinated by the discussion, and it instantly swept away his jetlag! Among the most special times on these trips are the sweet times of fellowship we get to have with other believers that have to walk out their faith every day despite real persecution that we in America really only hear about or imagine.
My head finally hit the pillow at 11:30 last night, and I was asleep at 11:30:30! I didn’t hear a sound until 6:30 this morning. We enjoyed the breakfast buffet above the casino in the hotel (really!) and then fought our way through Minsk traffic to the church for today’s seminars. They tell us traffic is something new to Minsk, and I have to say that I don’t remember anything as bad as now on previous trips. Suddenly, everyone has a car, and the roads here were designed and laid when only the Party bigwigs had cars. Things are choked in all directions now. It’s like the DC Beltway! Once we got that out of the way, we settled in for the first day of seminars—seven great sessions on political theology and constitutional structure. (Don’t you wish you were here, too?!) It was fantastic, and I loved every minute of it. Over seven hours, we covered definitions and surveys of periods of political theology, political thoughts of major streams of Christianity, Calvinist political theology, the Preamble of the US Constitution, separation of powers and its biblical basis, the three branches of government and their various powers, bottom up government versus top down government and how it enables a society to develop citizens best as created in the image of God, amending a constitution, and the full faith and credit clause and how states are forced to deal with certain moral issues when other states pass laws that differ. While we Americans don’t necessarily study our government in depth regularly, we sort of innately know much of this. In Belarus, however, this stuff is as foreign to them as the Russian language is to you and me. I could see light bulbs exploding on at various points during the day as those attending the seminar latched on to one part or another of the lectures. We’re trying our best to give them godly foundations for nation-building so that when freedom truly comes to Belarus Christians will be prepared to step up and fill the leadership vacuum that will result. What an amazing opportunity from the Lord to partner with a people to build their nation the right way and almost from scratch! Tomorrow, we’ll dive more into constructing a political theology for the Belarusian context, the Bill of Rights, rights in general, and using biblical principles to delineate and protect rights. (I know, I know, you want to be here for all fourteen hours of lectures, too!)
In between the lectures, we stuffed our faces with home-cooking Belarusian style. That means lots of potatoes, dark bread, cheese, fruit juices, cucumbers, tomatoes (I didn’t stuff those), pork sausages, cabbage, olives, hot tea, and cookies. It’s all good, too good, and I’ll be walking straight from the airport to the treadmill when I get home. After we ate, we talked more politics (this time American election politics) and history and then ate again. Really.
Tonight is Oct 31, Halloween. More importantly, it’s also Reformation Day when many Christians worldwide celebrate the Protestant Reformation. That is big deal here as the Christian community is big on looking back several centuries at the nation’s history to when this was a center of Eastern European reformation and Protestantism and using that knowledge to teach the present church what a biblically-based society can look like. Two years ago when we here on Reformation Day, there was a big concert with several Christian rock bands and historical re-enactments. This year, it was more of a traditional church service with praise and worship, a couple of choral pieces, brief words from several different pastors from various denominations (how ‘bout that!), and a drama with an adorable little girl and some historical figures. We all got a good laugh with her! What a blessing that they make something meaningful out of today. I wouldn’t trade my kids’ Fall Festival experience tonight back home for anything, but I always want them to know the true significance of the day as well.
I’m going to sign off for the night and get caught up on a little more sleep. Another action-packed day! More to come.
Scott
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