In June 2008, we returned to Prague, Czech Republic with Greater Europe Mission to begin our fourth term. We have continued to minister at the International Baptist Theological Seminary. Greg is serving as chaplain. In this position, he oversees the discipleship and spiritual formation of the students. This involves weekly meetings and Bible Studies with the residential students. He has continued to oversee the Social Committee which plans a variety of activities for the entire community of residential staff and students.
With Greater Europe Mission, Greg helps to developed the overall Strategic Planning within the mission. This includes the individual annual plans of the missionaries as well as helping each field determine how best to use their strategic resources and determine recruitment.
Debby will be spending much of the first year with a Bible Study for mothers of children who attend Riverside School. It is open to all faiths and seeks to explain Christianity to those who may have never been exposed to the essential teachings of the faith. She is also involved in the lives of the IBTS residential women as she assists Greg in the discipleship program
Nic and Selina attend Riverside School which is an English-speaking school, based on a British Curriculum. The upper two years of the school are accredited through the International Baccalaureate program.
In June,
2003, we returned to
IBTS possesses very good credentials. In
addition to being accredited through the University
of Wales, they have recently received accreditation through the Czech Ministry
of Education to grant a European Union degree. The school is
designed on the British system. That means that there is a heavy emphasis on
reading and writing. I will be spending much of my time with students in a one
on one setting. I look forward to keeping them focused on the task of the
building up of the Russian-speaking evangelical church. The school services
students from all over
We have two children, Nicolas Tyler and Selina Kay They are attending Riverside School.
Gregory is a lecturer in the Baptist and Anabaptist Studies Department. Debby assists on campus with the various hospitality needs and helps out in the bookstore. Our family's primary task is to recruit, fund, train, and disciple the Russian-speaking students so that they return to their home countries fully prepared to minister in the newly established schools and churches of the former Soviet Union.
During our second term I focused primarily on the needs of the Odessa Theological Seminary. In addition to my teaching, Sergei Sannikov and the seminary's board of trustees asked me to opened a public relations office for the seminary. This was a rewarding experience as I was forced to use my Russian language on a daily basis. The Public Relations office started two quarterly newsletters, compiled a two data bases, one of donors and one of graduates, launched a web site, and developed the seminary's first academic catalogue. I learned great lessons as I worked with the Russian-speaking leadership of the school.
I continued my teaching at the Odessa Bible School and also began to teach in other programs. I worked with the bachelor level students as well as the one-year church planting students. I began to realize the difference between the life in Odessa, Ukraine's third city, and life in rural Ukraine. I felt that I had to give the seminary students a realistic sense of ministry in the Russian-speaking world. I started the Village Ministry Team which combined weekend preaching trips to the villages with weekly Bible study and prayer. I selected four students from each bachelor level class and began to disciple them. Over the years of our second term, these are the best memories. I saw students preaching and counseling in real life situations. I saw them change as they realized what God would do with them after graduation. It was a win-win situation. The village churches received a hand in the difficult tasks of rural ministry and my students received experience that enhanced their classroom experience.
Debby continued her music ministry. She began to teach piano to the children to missionaries in Odessa. She loved this new experience and has a sense of accomplishment with the time spent with them. She also organized a Christmas Diner Theater. WE invited several of our close Russian-speaking friends to a sit down meal at a restaurant in Odessa. We encouraged our missionary friends to do the same. Debby and her friends presented live background during the meal. Between courses, there was a monologue by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It followed her as she transitioned through the various stages of her life and clearly presented the gospel to these close friends.
We also continued our hospitality and hosted several teams of summer workers as well as Americans visiting their sister churches in Poltava and Kilya. It was a tremendous gift to have these people in our home and feel their passion for the gospel in Ukraine. We also supervised an American seminarian through his internship. It was an excellent experience for the both of us. He and his wife are now career missionaries in Europe. We also assisted a retired American nurse to launch a rural medical ministry. She brought a large camper from Europe which she uses as a mobile medical clinic. It was a real testimony to see someone retired who was using her own time and funds to help the poor in Ukraine.
During our second term, I began to see that 85% of all the bachelor level classes in the seminaries and Bible schools of the Russian-speaking world were being taught by foreigners. This was necessary because the schools had just being started. With the introduction of an accrediting system, the instructor had to hold a degree higher than the one in which they were teaching. But, this is not a healthy long term solution. I began to seek God's will for our third term. Greater Europe Mission, The Odessa Theological Seminary, the Baptist Union, and the Euro-Asian Accreditation Association all agreed that one of the largest needs that they had was the need to develop national faculty.
After eight years of work at the Odessa Theological Seminary, I saw that there were nationals who were able to continue most of the things that I had started. I was able to hand off my responsibility of the public relations office to a former graduate. Another OTS graduate had returned from the United States after having received an advanced degree. He was more than qualified to teach the classes that I had been teaching. One of the students that I had discipled through the ministry team expressed an interest to stay connected with the team after graduation.
In 2001, I received an invitation from the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic to come and work with them. There were several events which confirmed this invitation and we decided to move to Prague. It was not easy to leave the city and the people that we had poured our lives into for nearly a decade. God is good, all the time and we believe that He has called us to assist the Russian-speakers on a new level.
We (Gregory and Deborah Nichols) were married
in 1990 while I (Greg) was finishing graduate school. Several months after our
wedding, we attended candidate school with Greater Europe Mission and were the
first appointees to the former
Our first term was occupied with language study and ministry teams. I studied Russian at the Mechnikov State University and Debby took lessons at home. She had a knack for it while I had to work. We eventually got to a point where we could do ministry in Russian. I taught several cycles of lessons in Russian to the youth group of the First Baptist Church in Odessa.
We also hosted four Eurocorps summer teams which taught English as a form of evangelism. This was an excellent way to build relationships with the nationals and their churches. We provided a balanced curriculum of Bible content and English grammar. A good proof of this was the number or returning students we had. We always had more applicants than classroom space.
In that first term, we also hosted and assisted various American churches with sister church relationships involving Ukrainian churches. We were heavily involved in Poltava and Kilya which were partnering with US churches to bring the freedom of the gospel to their areas of Ukraine.
Debby used her music skills to organize and perform in several evangelistic Christmas concerts. She organized the local talent, rented the Odessa Philharmonic Hall, and invited the Odessians. Over 4,000 came to her concerts to hear her music and the gospel.
During this first term, I began to teaching classes in Bible, Church History, and Historical Theology through a translator at several schools. My primary group of students were at the Odessa Bible School. This was the original school which gave birth to the Odessa Theological Seminary. I also taught classes at Socium, which is an attempt to start a community based social work program on Christian ethics. I loved my teaching there and the contact I had with university students. I also helped out at the Zaparozha Bible School in eastern Ukraine. There I taught and administrated some of the future pastors and Sunday school teachers of that oblast. I also assisted the independent churches with several lectures in their schools as well.