The Great Commission of Jesus Christ to go and make disciples of all nations, preaching the gospel to every creature, remains unchanged and relevant for the Church, even when living in a period multiplying everyday concerns and spiritual indifference! After experiencing a surge of spiritual interest during the 90's, today's Christians with amazing confidence increasingly claim their "right to spiritual privacy" when it comes to the importance of missionary work and preaching the gospel to unsaved people in new places.

We enthusiastically read the story of the selfless service of the first Christians and 12 apostles of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, but when it comes to fulfilling the mission of our time, we have thousands of weighty reasons why we can't do it. The main arguments are "I don't have time" and "I'm no good at it!" We take on ever more concerns in life, so that we even regard attendance at the Sunday church service as a great spiritual achievement. An involuntary question arises: "How do we in fact carry out the Great Commission? And whose duty is it anyway? " Duty?! This is what the modern church has come to - the command to preach the Gospel to all nations has come to be regarded as a heavy burden, from which Christians try to free themselves with the best-intentioned justifications.

Christ's words, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few!" are becoming more and more relevant today. So it is time to challenge the indifference and passivity, the excuses and complaints of excessive busyness and of the difficult economic situation, the monotony of the weekly church schedule, and the unwillingness to sacrifice one's own comfort for the sake of spiritual growth! Let's look at the harvest of the Lord in Ukraine using the Poltava region as an example:
The population of the Poltava region now stands at about 1.5 million, with no more than 10 000 evangelicals. This means that at least 1 490 000 people in our region are not yet saved. Even a cursory glance at the map of the area will not leave anyone indifferent - for 15 cities, 21 towns and 1826 villages today there are only 73 Baptist churches - it's obvious that the harvest is still very great! Here are the questions that arise:
Who today is ready to go out into the Lord's harvest?
Who today is ready to become a missionary?
How do we prepare missionaries today?
Who should take this training?

A critical step towards the resolution of these issues was the creation of the Missionary Training Center (MTC). The training approach was removed from the confines of academia and moved into those local churches in the Poltava region that are living out the idea of missions and trying to be at the forefront of the missionary movement, both at home and abroad - in Russia and Georgia, for example!

The first MTC session took place at the Christian Ministry Center in Poltava, in November 2012. At the start of 2013 we had the second session from January 21 to 26 - this time in the Kremenchug Regional Bible College (so as not to overlook the cradle of biblical education of Poltava).

The training principle in the MTC is the same principle that Jesus used, raising up 12 apostles - and life and ministry along with them! The priority in this education is the character formation of the Christian minister, for which an element of personal mentoring is included for each student! Thus, in addition to the classroom time during the session, students have regular mentoring conversations that develop spiritual accountability of the student to the mentor that greatly improve the quality of teaching and application of theoretical material in practice between sessions! In order for the mentoring process to have a real-life dimension, at each session students and teachers prepare breakfast and dinner together, and clean the rooms and bathrooms.

The schedule of the school day is divided into classroom time and case studies related to the themes of the material taught. Thus, during the first session in Poltava, students engaged in a prayer-walk in the Levada district and conducted a sociological survey among the population. During the second session each of them practiced in conducting a small group. The practice of fasting during one of the sessions is also an important element in the formation of future missionaries, because without fasting it will be difficult to overcome the spiritual strongholds of the enemy in the implementation of the Great Commission! Each session ends with the Lord's Supper.
So, eight students from Ukraine and Russia, and five mentors - pastors and missionaries, together started the difficult, but blessed task of preparation of new laborers for the harvest of the Lord!

Andre Khudyakov