Photos taken Feb. 7, 2008 by Jerry Van Marter at the orphanages at Dukhovschino and Kardymoro, villages near Smolensk, Russia.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Images of Smolensk
Smolensk — Russia’s oldest and most strategic city
Smolensk is the westernmost city in Russia, less than 50 miles from the border with Belarus, one of the former Soviet republics that has retained a totalitarian government.
Smolensk is also the oldest city in Russia, dating back to at least the 9th century. It was already a sizable city — its population is currently 400,000 — when Moscow was first getting started in about 850 A.D.
From its earliest days, Smolensk has been critically important economically and militarily. The three rivers that flow through it provide access to the Caspian, Baltic and Black Seas, a rarity that makes Smolensk an historically commercial hub in eastern Europe.
Militarily, all invasion routes to Russia run through Smolensk and so it has been a crucial battleground for centuries. Since the 15th century, Smolensk has been a strategic front in wars with Latvia, Poland, France and Germany. In recent centuries, both Napoleon and Hitler successfully overran Smolensk, but paid such a heavy price that their subsequent attempts to push on to Moscow came to ruin.
Smolensk, then, features various monuments to war heroes, as well as churches dating back to the 12th century, and its singular piece of architecture: the remnants of a 45-feet high/20 feet wide wall that, when built at the turn of the 17th century to defend the city against an imminent Polish invasion, completely encircled Smolensk. Originally running more than 3.5 miles with 38 towers along its length, only about one-third of the wall and its towers remain.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s most long-standing and highly-evolved “twinning” partnership in Russia — between First Baptist Church of Smolensk and White Memorial Presbyterian Church of Raleigh, NC, makes Smolensk a crown jewel of the denomination’s Russia Church Twinning Project (Extra Commitment Giving account #047954).
Photos, top to bottom: The eternal flame commemorating World War II dead; the 17th century defense wall; a memorial to those who died defending Smolensk against Napoleon; St. Michael's Cathedral, a 12th century church; St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, built 1150 years ago and the oldest church in Russia; the main cathedral of Smolensk, completed early in the 18th century.
Photos by Jerry Van Marter
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Faces of Moscow -- from the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy soup kitchen
Photos by Jerry Van Marter, Feb. 4, 2008.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Monuments of Moscow
Top to bottom: Cathedral of Christ the Savior (dynamited by Stalin in 1938, rebuilt 1994-1997; an ice-skating rink in Red Square; Karl Marx (inscribed "Workers of the world unite!"); a memorial to the victims of the Gulag, placed in front of former KGB headquarters; yours truly with St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square (photo by Gary Payton).
Reflections on worship, Sunday, Feb. 3
360 degrees of worship
MOSCOW — On Sunday, Gary Payton — the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland — and I went to church twice in this capital city. The experiences couldn’t have been more different.
And identical.
In the morning we attended a Russian Orthodox service at the quaint Kazan Cathedral (top, left), a tiny little house of worship nestled at the northwest corner of Red Square between the towering Resurrection Gate (destroyed by Stalin in 1931 and rebuilt in 1995) and the enormous GUM shopping complex.
Kazan Cathedral was burned to the ground in 1936 and rebuilt between 1994-1997. Sunday worship runs between two-and-a-half and three hours. The sanctuary will hold about 100 worshipers — all standing — and people come and go throughout the service. We waited in the narthex for about 15 minutes before there was room for us to enter the sanctuary.
The interior is marble-floored and the wood paneled walls are covered floor-to-ceiling with elaborately painted icons, with Jesus and Mary the most prominent. Though the weather was bitterly cold outside, the sanctuary was warm and cozy.
I have never in my life been so struck by the mystery of the Christian faith. To a U.S. Protestant largely unfamiliar with Orthodox worship, the combination of Russian language and highly-ritualized liturgy was in one sense disorienting.
But the intonations of the clergy, the Taize-like singing of the small choir and the familiar images — Christ, the apostles, biblical scenes — and the knowledge that this service has been replicated throughout the Orthodox world since time immemorial gave a remarkable sense of calm and comfort.
In the afternoon, we attended worship at the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (photo top right of the Rev. Bob Bronkema and Gary Payton serving communion). Here the liturgical structure, language (English) and hymns and praise songs were so familiar I didn’t need a hymnbook. The pastor, the Rev. Bob Bronkema, is a PC(USA) pastor who served in St. Augustine Presbytery before coming here 18 months ago, and all felt utterly familiar. I could just have easily been at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville, my home congregation.
Two services — utterly and completely different in style and feel. But utterly identical in their spiritual and emotional impact.
How can this be?
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Celebrated in both houses of worship. Again utterly different in style and feel. And both complete affirmations of the central mystery of the Christian faith — in Christ we are one because we are one in Christ.
At Kazan Cathedral, the priest spoon-fed a small amount of the eucharistic elements into the mouths of worshipers as they came forward — infants and children first. Then each moved to a side table where women offered small cups of hot tea and chunks of plain bread — a light meal served on the Orthodox presumption that worshipers had fasted since the day before. This was a true break-fast.
At Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, worshipers, too, came forward to receive the eucharistic elements by intinction, before returning to their seats. Far less ritualized, less formal, but every bit as theologically mysterious as the Orthodox communion liturgy.
In those two services, I realized as never before what Jesus meant when he prayed that “they all may be one.” Two worship services. One ancient and inscrutable, the other contemporary famiar. They couldn’t have been more different.
But in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, the promise of unity in Jesus Christ was so palpable as to almost be real, despite the scandalous divisions in the PC(USA) and between Christians throughout the world.
MOSCOW — On Sunday, Gary Payton — the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland — and I went to church twice in this capital city. The experiences couldn’t have been more different.
And identical.
In the morning we attended a Russian Orthodox service at the quaint Kazan Cathedral (top, left), a tiny little house of worship nestled at the northwest corner of Red Square between the towering Resurrection Gate (destroyed by Stalin in 1931 and rebuilt in 1995) and the enormous GUM shopping complex.
Kazan Cathedral was burned to the ground in 1936 and rebuilt between 1994-1997. Sunday worship runs between two-and-a-half and three hours. The sanctuary will hold about 100 worshipers — all standing — and people come and go throughout the service. We waited in the narthex for about 15 minutes before there was room for us to enter the sanctuary.
The interior is marble-floored and the wood paneled walls are covered floor-to-ceiling with elaborately painted icons, with Jesus and Mary the most prominent. Though the weather was bitterly cold outside, the sanctuary was warm and cozy.
I have never in my life been so struck by the mystery of the Christian faith. To a U.S. Protestant largely unfamiliar with Orthodox worship, the combination of Russian language and highly-ritualized liturgy was in one sense disorienting.
But the intonations of the clergy, the Taize-like singing of the small choir and the familiar images — Christ, the apostles, biblical scenes — and the knowledge that this service has been replicated throughout the Orthodox world since time immemorial gave a remarkable sense of calm and comfort.
In the afternoon, we attended worship at the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (photo top right of the Rev. Bob Bronkema and Gary Payton serving communion). Here the liturgical structure, language (English) and hymns and praise songs were so familiar I didn’t need a hymnbook. The pastor, the Rev. Bob Bronkema, is a PC(USA) pastor who served in St. Augustine Presbytery before coming here 18 months ago, and all felt utterly familiar. I could just have easily been at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville, my home congregation.
Two services — utterly and completely different in style and feel. But utterly identical in their spiritual and emotional impact.
How can this be?
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Celebrated in both houses of worship. Again utterly different in style and feel. And both complete affirmations of the central mystery of the Christian faith — in Christ we are one because we are one in Christ.
At Kazan Cathedral, the priest spoon-fed a small amount of the eucharistic elements into the mouths of worshipers as they came forward — infants and children first. Then each moved to a side table where women offered small cups of hot tea and chunks of plain bread — a light meal served on the Orthodox presumption that worshipers had fasted since the day before. This was a true break-fast.
At Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, worshipers, too, came forward to receive the eucharistic elements by intinction, before returning to their seats. Far less ritualized, less formal, but every bit as theologically mysterious as the Orthodox communion liturgy.
In those two services, I realized as never before what Jesus meant when he prayed that “they all may be one.” Two worship services. One ancient and inscrutable, the other contemporary famiar. They couldn’t have been more different.
But in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, the promise of unity in Jesus Christ was so palpable as to almost be real, despite the scandalous divisions in the PC(USA) and between Christians throughout the world.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The one-battery survey of Russian history and PC(USA) mission here
The one-battery survey of Russian history and PC(USA) mission here
MOSCOW — It’s an 11-hour flight from Atlanta to Moscow. It is my first trip and the 16th for Gary Payton -- the PC(USA's regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland -- so on the way over I asked for a brief summary of Russian history as background for the PC(USA)’s mission efforts here.
As the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, Gary speaks frequently to PC(USA) congregations and other groups on this subject, using a power-point presentation. Thus, he shared his presentation with me … as long as his laptop battery lasted.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which collapsed in 1991, consisted of 15 “republics,” which now number 15 independent states, thus the name Commonwealth of Independent States. This trip will focus on mission and ministry in Russia — formally titled the Russian Federation.
For centuries, Russia has been a land of stark contrasts between the ruling elite and the rest of the population. In recent years a middle class has begun to emerge, but Russia is still a land of stark contrast between the haves and have-nots.
Another dominant factor in Russian life is the legacy of World War II. To Americans, with the dying off the generation that fought the war that history is increasingly “ancient.” But for Russians it’s as if the war happened yesterday. No family is untouched.
At least 20 million Russians died as a result of that war, compared to approximately 650,000 American dead. Monuments to the dead and to various war heroes dot the landscape of Moscow and are a constant reminder of Russia’s long history of being invaded, dating to the Polish invasion in the 1600s.
Throughout that history, Christianity has struggled, survived and even occasionally thrived here since its introduction in 988 A.D. when Prince Vladimir of Kiev — today the capital of Ukraine — converted after his emissaries returned from Constantinople (now Istanbul). From that date on, Orthodox Christianity came to permeate Russian culture until the communist revolution in 1917.
Russia is currently experiencing a spiritual and religious renaissance, with crowded churches, a growing number of evangelistic and social ministries and the slow but steady restoration and reconstruction of houses of worship that were destroyed during the communist era.
We have visited two of those churches — the magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the “central” cathedral in Moscow, which was blown up by Stalin in 1938 and rebuilt almost exactly between 1994 and 1997, and the Kazan Cathedral on the edge of Red Square, which was burned to the ground in 1936 and also rebuilt in the mid-1990s.
Worship at Kazan on Sunday morning (Feb. 3) was packed — worshipers come and go during the two-hours-plus service — and we had to wait several minutes to get into the sanctuary. The Orthodox liturgy, lived out to its fullest here, is complex, mysterious and deeply moving. The mind cannot comprehend it, but the heart feels it richly.
Orthodox church leaders look back on the communist era and liken it to the Babylonian exile of the Bible. The analogy is apt and now the church here is faced with the return from exile, with all of its challenges, promise and hopefulness.
This is the context in which PC(USA) missionaries here are accompanying our Russian partners in the rebuilding, not just of churches, but of vital social and evangelistic ministries that address the myriad physical and spiritual needs of the Russian churches and people.
The PC(USA) stood with the Russian churches during the limited opportunities of the communist era: through World Council of Churches gatherings, Presbyterian Peacemaking travel/study seminars, and through National Council of Churches programs, in which renowned Presbyterian minister Bruce Rigdon was a leading figure.
Today, the PC(USA) partners with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Baptist Union, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia and Other States (ELCOS). The four “pillars” of PC(USA) engagement here are:
Twinning (matching PCUSA and Russian congregations for mutual mission);
Theological and Christian education programs;
Evangelism to unreached people groups; and
Social outreach ministries.
Those pillars result in PC(USA) mission activities such as creation and coordination of twinning arrangements, teaching and administration in Christian schools and seminaries, publication of Christian education materials and training of children’s ministries leaders, outreach ministries to immigrant and homeless populations, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse and alcoholism ministries, work with orphanages and other programs for children at-risk and “frontier” evangelism to people groups in Siberia and other hinterlands that have never heard the gospel before.
PC(USA) partners such as Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and the Outreach Foundation are also actively engaged here, working together to make Presbyterian mission in Russia more effective, better supported financially and responsive to our partners here.
In coming days, you will be hearing more about our 10 PC(USA) mission personnel and their ministries here, as well as our partners in the Russian churches here. Those stories will appear here and on the Presbyterian News Service Web site, www.pcusa.org/pcnews between now and mid-February.
MOSCOW — It’s an 11-hour flight from Atlanta to Moscow. It is my first trip and the 16th for Gary Payton -- the PC(USA's regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland -- so on the way over I asked for a brief summary of Russian history as background for the PC(USA)’s mission efforts here.
As the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, Gary speaks frequently to PC(USA) congregations and other groups on this subject, using a power-point presentation. Thus, he shared his presentation with me … as long as his laptop battery lasted.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which collapsed in 1991, consisted of 15 “republics,” which now number 15 independent states, thus the name Commonwealth of Independent States. This trip will focus on mission and ministry in Russia — formally titled the Russian Federation.
For centuries, Russia has been a land of stark contrasts between the ruling elite and the rest of the population. In recent years a middle class has begun to emerge, but Russia is still a land of stark contrast between the haves and have-nots.
Another dominant factor in Russian life is the legacy of World War II. To Americans, with the dying off the generation that fought the war that history is increasingly “ancient.” But for Russians it’s as if the war happened yesterday. No family is untouched.
At least 20 million Russians died as a result of that war, compared to approximately 650,000 American dead. Monuments to the dead and to various war heroes dot the landscape of Moscow and are a constant reminder of Russia’s long history of being invaded, dating to the Polish invasion in the 1600s.
Throughout that history, Christianity has struggled, survived and even occasionally thrived here since its introduction in 988 A.D. when Prince Vladimir of Kiev — today the capital of Ukraine — converted after his emissaries returned from Constantinople (now Istanbul). From that date on, Orthodox Christianity came to permeate Russian culture until the communist revolution in 1917.
Russia is currently experiencing a spiritual and religious renaissance, with crowded churches, a growing number of evangelistic and social ministries and the slow but steady restoration and reconstruction of houses of worship that were destroyed during the communist era.
We have visited two of those churches — the magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the “central” cathedral in Moscow, which was blown up by Stalin in 1938 and rebuilt almost exactly between 1994 and 1997, and the Kazan Cathedral on the edge of Red Square, which was burned to the ground in 1936 and also rebuilt in the mid-1990s.
Worship at Kazan on Sunday morning (Feb. 3) was packed — worshipers come and go during the two-hours-plus service — and we had to wait several minutes to get into the sanctuary. The Orthodox liturgy, lived out to its fullest here, is complex, mysterious and deeply moving. The mind cannot comprehend it, but the heart feels it richly.
Orthodox church leaders look back on the communist era and liken it to the Babylonian exile of the Bible. The analogy is apt and now the church here is faced with the return from exile, with all of its challenges, promise and hopefulness.
This is the context in which PC(USA) missionaries here are accompanying our Russian partners in the rebuilding, not just of churches, but of vital social and evangelistic ministries that address the myriad physical and spiritual needs of the Russian churches and people.
The PC(USA) stood with the Russian churches during the limited opportunities of the communist era: through World Council of Churches gatherings, Presbyterian Peacemaking travel/study seminars, and through National Council of Churches programs, in which renowned Presbyterian minister Bruce Rigdon was a leading figure.
Today, the PC(USA) partners with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Baptist Union, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia and Other States (ELCOS). The four “pillars” of PC(USA) engagement here are:
Twinning (matching PCUSA and Russian congregations for mutual mission);
Theological and Christian education programs;
Evangelism to unreached people groups; and
Social outreach ministries.
Those pillars result in PC(USA) mission activities such as creation and coordination of twinning arrangements, teaching and administration in Christian schools and seminaries, publication of Christian education materials and training of children’s ministries leaders, outreach ministries to immigrant and homeless populations, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse and alcoholism ministries, work with orphanages and other programs for children at-risk and “frontier” evangelism to people groups in Siberia and other hinterlands that have never heard the gospel before.
PC(USA) partners such as Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and the Outreach Foundation are also actively engaged here, working together to make Presbyterian mission in Russia more effective, better supported financially and responsive to our partners here.
In coming days, you will be hearing more about our 10 PC(USA) mission personnel and their ministries here, as well as our partners in the Russian churches here. Those stories will appear here and on the Presbyterian News Service Web site, www.pcusa.org/pcnews between now and mid-February.
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