I am on my way home from Ukraine, where I covered an historic event. It was the International Evangelical Missions Forum, sponsored by Russian Ministries.

The forum was the first of its kind to address a crisis in the church in the former Soviet countries.

The crisis is difficult to completely explain, but I will try. First, the church is on the decline. There are fewer people attending churches in these nations and it stems from a number of reasons. Many believe it’s because the church is stuck in tradition/legalism and not interested in providing worship that reaches and touches young people. Other suggest restrictions on religious freedom is causing part of the decline. Other suggest the emigration is causing part of the problem. And, yet other say evangelicals aren’t working together — not talking about these issues to help end the negative growth.

This forum saw nearly 200 leaders from many organizations and denominations from many countries in the former Soviet Union and they began talking. While no decisions were made about what to do about these issues, the groundwork was laid to see even more discuss to take place.

I’ve uploaded a short video for you to see what I saw.  Obviously, it’s not professional, but it was fun to do.