Mission in Profession

On December 2nd and 3rd Hope Church of Poltava again hosted the annual youth conference Mission in Profession.  The topic was not chosen by chance, since among the attendees were more than 200 young people from many parts of the Poltava region: college graduates with experience, graduates just starting out, as well as many who were still choosing their professional path.

 

The Christian view of ministry in a profession was explained in the talks by Regional Pastor Oleg Ovsiy, youth leader Yaroslav Semion, conference coordinator Dennis Gorenkov and pastor Vladimir Golovash.

 

There were traditional seminars where speakers with many years of experience in different professions and in the Christian life shared practical advice and lessons learned.  Sergey Sinyagivskiy, chairman of the Kiev regional council in Poltava, spoke on politics, attorney Andrey Gnidetz spoke on jurisprudence, bank manager Oleg Bondarenko spoke on finance and doctoral candidate Constantine Teteryatnikov of the National Pedagogical University M. P. Drogomanov, spoke on teaching.

 

A new and very informative feature of the conference was the talk show, where anyone could ask about things they were interested in.  The answers included helpful testimonies from the lives of Christians in various professions as well as thoughts on activities for evangelical churches for 2017.

 

A special atmosphere was created by the musical group made up of members of different Poltava churches and the friendly conversations over coffee.  The time went by very quickly, but we managed to get everything done and more: find colleagues with common interests and share stories about the unexpected things that happened on the way to the conference.

 

The attendees made encouraging comments and constructive suggestions and requests for the future.  Here some of them share their impressions:

 

“The conference allayed my doubts and fears about my profession.  I saw my opinion confirmed that we can be a light in any place.” -Alyona

 

“It was an unforgettable time of worshipping together, sincere fellowship and reflection on God’s Word, where they explained how to be a Christian in the workplace and how to represent God through work and loving people.” -Pavel

 

And so let’s hope that those two days at the conference were a valuable time of encouragement and instruction for all of the participants and that it will help us all to truly be the light of the world.

 

Vlada Ryabukha