Russian’s evangelistic expedition coming to a close

Russia (MNN) — Christians are being asked to pray for an evangelistic campaign that’s quickly coming to an end. It’s called, “The Expedition” and it’s sponsored in part by Slavic Gospel Association.

Slavic Gospel’s Joel Griffith says, “For the month of June they’re going to be taking the leg of “The Expedition” that will be going through the cities of Ufa, Orenburg, Penca, Makhachkala, which is a Muslim area of Dagestan, that’s a Muslim republic in southern Russia, right across the board from Chechnya, which is a war torn area. So, it’s really going to be great that they can get the Gospel into this region.”

“The Expedition” is a nine month effort by Russian Christians to help local churches reach their fellow countrymen for Christ. Griffith says, “The way that they’ve been doing this is they’ve been sort of trading off in shifts. They’ll have one team that will go into a region and they will spend three weeks doing that, then they hand off to another group of workers.”

According to Griffith, there are up to 160 different ethnic groups in Russia and the response to “The Expedition” has been mixed. “Some areas have been very open arms to the Gospel expedition; others have been a little more resistant. But, what we see more often than not it’s amazing the way that especially some of the outlying areas even the authorities have embraced ‘The Expedition.'”

It’s uncertain how many people have come to Christ, says Griffith. “I think only time with obviously tell the eternal impact that this has had, but I’ll tell you it’s really made a strong impression in a lot of local regions and it certainly was a shot in the arm to some of the local smaller churches.”

You can follow “The Expedition” at http://www.sga.org/expedition.