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Ukraine - Kyiv (Ruka Dopomogy)OUR FOCUS
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OUR MISSION
To see Ukrainian teenagers’ lives changed by the impact of the Gospel and become life-changers themselves.
THE TEAM
Our Team
Doug & Marina Landro: Doug is from Scottsdale, Arizona and Marina is from Kyiv, Ukraine. Doug is one of the founders of Ruka Dopomogy and serves on the Board of Directors and as a trainer. Doug has been in Ukraine since September 1997 with Reach Out Youth Solutions after 16 years of youth ministry experience and graduating from Bethel West Seminary (Baptist). Marina has graduated from medical college and is taking a sabbatical from her career to raise their family. They have two children – Bogdan and Krystal Brook.
Igor Minenko: Igor has been the youth pastor for the last nine years at Living Word Church (Charismatic) in Kyiv. With 200 youth in the church, it is one of the largest youth ministries in Ukraine. In 2000, he started Youth Alpha Course in Ukraine. He will continue to serve as a trainer with this important ministry. Most recently, he was the administrator for the My Time Youth Festival, the first youth festival held by the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine.
Ghenna Vakulenko: Ghenna serves as the Director of Resources. He administrates Teenager Publishing, which is the youth ministry resource department of RD Press, our sister publishing house. He was the youth pastor of New Life Church, the largest evangelical church in Ukraine. He then worked shortly for Youth For Christ before becoming an editor for “Christianity” magazine. Ghenna completed our Mentorship Program in 1999. He currently also serves as the youth pastor at Holy Trinity Church (Presbyterian) in Kyiv.
Lena Guryeva: Lena serves as our bookkeeper. She attends Living Word Church in Kyiv where she serves on the worship team as a singer and dancer. Prior to working for us, she was a bookkeeper for a year at a construction firm.
Our Eagle Leaders
Vova Bilik: Vova serves as youth pastor in a Pentecostal church in Sumy. He graduated from our Youth Ministry School in 2004.
Dima Dishlavoy: Dima serves as youth pastor of Victory Church in Brovary (Kyiv Oblast). He is currently enrolled in the Youth Ministry School.
Kiril & Natasha Gorakhini: They serve as youth leadaers of Fire of Revival Church in Dnepropetrovsk, the largest church in the denomination Church of God. Their church was our pilot church in the new coaching format and completed the training in 2006.
Our Eagle-Leaders-In-Training
Sergey Bogamazuk: Sergey serves as pastor of the oldest Methodist church in Ukraine – Evangelical Methodist in Uzhgorod. He is also the rector of John Wesley College in Uzhgorod. He graduated from our Mentorship Program in 2000.
Volodya Demidovich: Volodya serves as youth pastor of Good News Church, the mother church of the Church of God denomination. We completed coaching his church in 2007.
Andre Doroshuk: Andre serves as the Transcarpatia regional youth leader for the Church of the Living God denomination. We completed coaching his church in Uzhgorod in 2006.
Sasha Kulbich: Sasha completed our Youth Ministry School in 2005 and then attended seminary and received his BA degree in Youth Ministry in 2007. He currently is the director of the Youth Ministry department of the Ukrainian Center For Christian Cooperation.
Alla Moskolenko: Alla serves as youth leader at Good News Church, a Pentecostal church in Verkhnidneprovsk. We completed coaching her church in 2007.
The Strategy
In an environment of prayer, our biblical strategy builds on 5 Core Principles:
LORDSHIP: How do youth leaders develop intimacy in their relationship with Jesus and reflect Him to others?
LEADERSHIP: How do youth leaders build a quality leadership team for an in-depth and long-term ministry?
DISCIPLESHIP: How do youth leaders disciple students to have spiritual passion and become spiritual influencers with their friends?
CULTURAL PENETRATION: How do youth leaders motivate and mobilize their leaders and students to penetrate the student culture?
EVANGELIZATION: How do youth leaders design outreach opportunities for students to reach their non-believing friends?
The Focus
1.Producing Resources - How to do youth ministry?
2.Coaching Churches - What to do?
3.Mentoring Leaders - Why to do?
Our Ministry In Ukraine
Our team exists to serve churches by encouraging, educating and empowering youth leaders in Ukraine so that as many teenagers as possible might come to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and grow in their faith. We do that by providing resources for youth ministry development, by training youth leaders in a biblical model of youth ministry, and by coaching churches in implementing the model in their unique local ministry. Over the last decade we have laid the groundwork for a national movement in developing Jesus-focused youth ministries
Where We Have Been
Partnerships: In the initial years of 1992-1996, the groundwork was laid by Reach Out Youth Solutions (ROYS), in partnership with the Ukrainian Center for Christian Cooperation, with the mentoring of some key youth leaders in the Baptist Union, the largest evangelical group in Ukraine. One of those leaders went on to redesign how the Baptist Union trained their leaders in youth ministry. Another one of those leaders, Sergey Suknenko, went on to establish Ruka Dopomogy (Helping Hands) in 1997 in partnership with ROYS. The purpose and mission of this national organization shadows ROYS.
2002 was a very difficult year for the ministry. RD began the year with a financial and leadership crisis that almost shut down the ministry. The RD board of directors asked ROYS to take over the leadership of RD. The merging of ROYS and RD was a good thing that erased many hindrances of the past in developing a national ministry. The struggles soon subsided and RD became leaner and stronger than ever.
In 2004, we became the one of the founding members of the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine, which is a network of denominational and ministry leaders who are involved in the development of youth ministry in Ukraine. We served as the leader of the Alliance for its first two years of existence and will serve again in 2007.
In 2005, we directed the first annual Youth Festival of the Alliance. 4200 delegates attended this festival which climaxed with a prayer concert for Ukraine. Igor Minenko joined our staff as Director of Training.
In 2007, Ruka Dopomogy became a ministry of International Teams Ukraine.
Producing Resources: We have translated and published several resources vital to youth ministry development in the Russian language. In addition to our Jesus-Focused Youth Ministry (JFYM) manual, we have a 36-week course on leadership development; five 12-week discipleship courses for teenagers, as well as a six-week course for new believers; three prayer journals; and a couple of “How To” books. Overall, we distribute over 95 resources published by us and other organizations.
In 1998 we launched the Idea Packet, a magazine packed with ideas, articles, and Bible studies for youth leaders. Over the years, this magazine has grown into a respected journal within the Ukrainian church. One can not go anywhere within Ukraine where the magazine is not known. Starting as a four page, black-and-white bulletin freely given to a handful of youth leaders, it has grown to a professionally-looking and respected journal consisting of 48 pages with a circulation of 500.
In 2001, we launched Teenager Publishing (which is now part of RD Press) to produce a line of youth ministry resources to assist the church youth leader in the development of his/her ministry.
In 2003, the first books were published which were our JFYM manual, the first prayer journal, and a discipleship course titled Jesus No Equal by ROYS founder Barry St. Clair. In 2004 we published three more resources: two prayer journals and How To Speak To Youth by Ken Davis.
In 2005, we published the first youth ministry resource written by a Ukrainian leader in partnership with The Wilson Foundation (NavPress). The book, Thoughts Out Loud, by RD founder Sergey Suknenko, is a discussion from a veteran youth leader with Ukrainian pastors on paradigm shifts that are needed if young people are to be reached with the gospel in Ukraine. This momentous project is hopefully the first in many ventures to produce indigenous resources.
In 2007, we published Magnet Effect by Barry St. Clair, a step-by-step resource on planning, promoting, leading, and follow-up of an effective evangelistic event. We also published the second editions to the Building Leaders series by Barry St. Clair; Getting Started by Barry St. Clair, a six-week discipleship course for new believers; Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry by Doug Fields; and Holiday Ideas. In addition we created a video training resource so that churches can take their leadership team through the training on their own.
Coaching Churches: In 1995 ROYS created a mentorship program in Ukraine which produced several significant youth leaders. From this first class came leaders such as Sergey Suknenko who founded Ruka Dopomogy and wrote the first youth ministry resource from a Ukrainian youth leader.
RD ran the second mentorship program which started in 1998. Graduates included Sergey Bogomazuk (rector of John Wesley Bible College and a current Eagle Leader-in-training) and Ghenna Vakulenko (Director of Resources for RD).
The mentorship program was re-evaluated and turned into a Youth Ministry School in 2000 with ten initial students. This two-year mentorship program contains 170 hours of in-class instruction as well as several hours of practical experiences. During the two-years we help them develop or improve their local church youth ministry. Vova Bilik (Eagle Leader) and Sasha Kulbich (Eagle Leader-in-training) were a product of this format.
In 2004, another major change occurred in the school. Instead of students coming to the school, we began taking the school to students. We then could require the pastor and youth leadership team to also go through the training so that the whole church was receiving the coaching. We have coached ten churches in this new format with another five in the program. Of the churches that have completed the program, they have seen their leadership teams grow by an average of 85% and their youth ministries by an average of 245%.
Mentoring Leaders: From 1994 – 2004, we have trained over a thousand youth leaders in a Jesus-focused youth ministry strategy. We have done this primarily through our annual National Conference and several regional conferences held annually.
In 2004, we evaluated the effect of our strategy of mentoring leaders. Although significant fruit was produced as a result of our National Conference, we felt a new more-effective approach was needed. So in addition to the National Conference, we developed a ministry that would coincide with our Youth Ministry School for the purpose of developing Eagle Leaders in ministry who would partner with us in mentoring other church leaders. After we complete the 1 year school program at a church, the youth leader will then join us as we coach another church for a year. During that time, we will have mentored that youth leader for two years. They would then go on and coach other churches and mentor leaders. This network of Eagle Leaders will gather annually for fellowship and developing a national strategy for youth ministry development. We currently have three Eagle leaders with another five in training.
Where We Are Going
Producing Resources: Our goal is to develop a quality publishing company that will partially fund our training ministry.
In 2008 we will publish Four Views of Youth Ministry by Mark Senter, chair of the Educational Ministries department of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
We will begin placing our classic issues of the Idea Packet on CD for youth leaders to collect hundreds of ideas and Bible studies for their ministry.
We want to expand our resources to organizations and Christian bookstores beyond Ukraine so that every Russian-speaking community has access to our resources.
Coaching Churches: We begin the year 2008 coaching five churches with two staff trainers, three Eagle Leaders, and five Eagle-Leaders-in-training. We will begin coaching another seven churches in 2008. By the end of 2012, we will have coached 95 churches and will be in the process of coaching another 48 churches. We will have three staff trainers, 47 Eagle Leaders, and another 26 Eagle-leaders-in-training.
Mentoring Leaders: We begin the year 2008 mentoring 13 youth leaders. Three of these are Eagle leaders, five are Eagle-leaders-in-training, and the other five are youth leaders in the churches we are coaching. By the end of 2008 we will have seven Eagle leaders, seven Eagle-Leaders-in-training, and be mentoring another seven youth leaders. By the end of 2012, we will be mentoring 47 Eagle Leaders, 26 Eagle-Leaders-in-training, and be another 48 youth leaders of churches we are coaching.
In addition, we will be training 250 youth leaders each year at our National Conference, as well as dozens of students in institutes, universities and seminaries. Through our summer projects, we will be assisting our leaders in developing effective camp outreach ministries. And through our participation in the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine we will be impacting hundreds of other churches.
Doug & Marina Landro: Doug is from Scottsdale, Arizona and Marina is from Kyiv, Ukraine. Doug is one of the founders of Ruka Dopomogy and serves on the Board of Directors and as a trainer. Doug has been in Ukraine since September 1997 with Reach Out Youth Solutions after 16 years of youth ministry experience and graduating from Bethel West Seminary (Baptist). Marina has graduated from medical college and is taking a sabbatical from her career to raise their family. They have two children – Bogdan and Krystal Brook.
Igor Minenko: Igor has been the youth pastor for the last nine years at Living Word Church (Charismatic) in Kyiv. With 200 youth in the church, it is one of the largest youth ministries in Ukraine. In 2000, he started Youth Alpha Course in Ukraine. He will continue to serve as a trainer with this important ministry. Most recently, he was the administrator for the My Time Youth Festival, the first youth festival held by the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine.
Ghenna Vakulenko: Ghenna serves as the Director of Resources. He administrates Teenager Publishing, which is the youth ministry resource department of RD Press, our sister publishing house. He was the youth pastor of New Life Church, the largest evangelical church in Ukraine. He then worked shortly for Youth For Christ before becoming an editor for “Christianity” magazine. Ghenna completed our Mentorship Program in 1999. He currently also serves as the youth pastor at Holy Trinity Church (Presbyterian) in Kyiv.
Lena Guryeva: Lena serves as our bookkeeper. She attends Living Word Church in Kyiv where she serves on the worship team as a singer and dancer. Prior to working for us, she was a bookkeeper for a year at a construction firm.
Our Eagle Leaders
Vova Bilik: Vova serves as youth pastor in a Pentecostal church in Sumy. He graduated from our Youth Ministry School in 2004.
Dima Dishlavoy: Dima serves as youth pastor of Victory Church in Brovary (Kyiv Oblast). He is currently enrolled in the Youth Ministry School.
Kiril & Natasha Gorakhini: They serve as youth leadaers of Fire of Revival Church in Dnepropetrovsk, the largest church in the denomination Church of God. Their church was our pilot church in the new coaching format and completed the training in 2006.
Our Eagle-Leaders-In-Training
Sergey Bogamazuk: Sergey serves as pastor of the oldest Methodist church in Ukraine – Evangelical Methodist in Uzhgorod. He is also the rector of John Wesley College in Uzhgorod. He graduated from our Mentorship Program in 2000.
Volodya Demidovich: Volodya serves as youth pastor of Good News Church, the mother church of the Church of God denomination. We completed coaching his church in 2007.
Andre Doroshuk: Andre serves as the Transcarpatia regional youth leader for the Church of the Living God denomination. We completed coaching his church in Uzhgorod in 2006.
Sasha Kulbich: Sasha completed our Youth Ministry School in 2005 and then attended seminary and received his BA degree in Youth Ministry in 2007. He currently is the director of the Youth Ministry department of the Ukrainian Center For Christian Cooperation.
Alla Moskolenko: Alla serves as youth leader at Good News Church, a Pentecostal church in Verkhnidneprovsk. We completed coaching her church in 2007.
The Strategy
In an environment of prayer, our biblical strategy builds on 5 Core Principles:
LORDSHIP: How do youth leaders develop intimacy in their relationship with Jesus and reflect Him to others?
LEADERSHIP: How do youth leaders build a quality leadership team for an in-depth and long-term ministry?
DISCIPLESHIP: How do youth leaders disciple students to have spiritual passion and become spiritual influencers with their friends?
CULTURAL PENETRATION: How do youth leaders motivate and mobilize their leaders and students to penetrate the student culture?
EVANGELIZATION: How do youth leaders design outreach opportunities for students to reach their non-believing friends?
The Focus
1.Producing Resources - How to do youth ministry?
2.Coaching Churches - What to do?
3.Mentoring Leaders - Why to do?
Our Ministry In Ukraine
Our team exists to serve churches by encouraging, educating and empowering youth leaders in Ukraine so that as many teenagers as possible might come to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and grow in their faith. We do that by providing resources for youth ministry development, by training youth leaders in a biblical model of youth ministry, and by coaching churches in implementing the model in their unique local ministry. Over the last decade we have laid the groundwork for a national movement in developing Jesus-focused youth ministries
Where We Have Been
Partnerships: In the initial years of 1992-1996, the groundwork was laid by Reach Out Youth Solutions (ROYS), in partnership with the Ukrainian Center for Christian Cooperation, with the mentoring of some key youth leaders in the Baptist Union, the largest evangelical group in Ukraine. One of those leaders went on to redesign how the Baptist Union trained their leaders in youth ministry. Another one of those leaders, Sergey Suknenko, went on to establish Ruka Dopomogy (Helping Hands) in 1997 in partnership with ROYS. The purpose and mission of this national organization shadows ROYS.
2002 was a very difficult year for the ministry. RD began the year with a financial and leadership crisis that almost shut down the ministry. The RD board of directors asked ROYS to take over the leadership of RD. The merging of ROYS and RD was a good thing that erased many hindrances of the past in developing a national ministry. The struggles soon subsided and RD became leaner and stronger than ever.
In 2004, we became the one of the founding members of the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine, which is a network of denominational and ministry leaders who are involved in the development of youth ministry in Ukraine. We served as the leader of the Alliance for its first two years of existence and will serve again in 2007.
In 2005, we directed the first annual Youth Festival of the Alliance. 4200 delegates attended this festival which climaxed with a prayer concert for Ukraine. Igor Minenko joined our staff as Director of Training.
In 2007, Ruka Dopomogy became a ministry of International Teams Ukraine.
Producing Resources: We have translated and published several resources vital to youth ministry development in the Russian language. In addition to our Jesus-Focused Youth Ministry (JFYM) manual, we have a 36-week course on leadership development; five 12-week discipleship courses for teenagers, as well as a six-week course for new believers; three prayer journals; and a couple of “How To” books. Overall, we distribute over 95 resources published by us and other organizations.
In 1998 we launched the Idea Packet, a magazine packed with ideas, articles, and Bible studies for youth leaders. Over the years, this magazine has grown into a respected journal within the Ukrainian church. One can not go anywhere within Ukraine where the magazine is not known. Starting as a four page, black-and-white bulletin freely given to a handful of youth leaders, it has grown to a professionally-looking and respected journal consisting of 48 pages with a circulation of 500.
In 2001, we launched Teenager Publishing (which is now part of RD Press) to produce a line of youth ministry resources to assist the church youth leader in the development of his/her ministry.
In 2003, the first books were published which were our JFYM manual, the first prayer journal, and a discipleship course titled Jesus No Equal by ROYS founder Barry St. Clair. In 2004 we published three more resources: two prayer journals and How To Speak To Youth by Ken Davis.
In 2005, we published the first youth ministry resource written by a Ukrainian leader in partnership with The Wilson Foundation (NavPress). The book, Thoughts Out Loud, by RD founder Sergey Suknenko, is a discussion from a veteran youth leader with Ukrainian pastors on paradigm shifts that are needed if young people are to be reached with the gospel in Ukraine. This momentous project is hopefully the first in many ventures to produce indigenous resources.
In 2007, we published Magnet Effect by Barry St. Clair, a step-by-step resource on planning, promoting, leading, and follow-up of an effective evangelistic event. We also published the second editions to the Building Leaders series by Barry St. Clair; Getting Started by Barry St. Clair, a six-week discipleship course for new believers; Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry by Doug Fields; and Holiday Ideas. In addition we created a video training resource so that churches can take their leadership team through the training on their own.
Coaching Churches: In 1995 ROYS created a mentorship program in Ukraine which produced several significant youth leaders. From this first class came leaders such as Sergey Suknenko who founded Ruka Dopomogy and wrote the first youth ministry resource from a Ukrainian youth leader.
RD ran the second mentorship program which started in 1998. Graduates included Sergey Bogomazuk (rector of John Wesley Bible College and a current Eagle Leader-in-training) and Ghenna Vakulenko (Director of Resources for RD).
The mentorship program was re-evaluated and turned into a Youth Ministry School in 2000 with ten initial students. This two-year mentorship program contains 170 hours of in-class instruction as well as several hours of practical experiences. During the two-years we help them develop or improve their local church youth ministry. Vova Bilik (Eagle Leader) and Sasha Kulbich (Eagle Leader-in-training) were a product of this format.
In 2004, another major change occurred in the school. Instead of students coming to the school, we began taking the school to students. We then could require the pastor and youth leadership team to also go through the training so that the whole church was receiving the coaching. We have coached ten churches in this new format with another five in the program. Of the churches that have completed the program, they have seen their leadership teams grow by an average of 85% and their youth ministries by an average of 245%.
Mentoring Leaders: From 1994 – 2004, we have trained over a thousand youth leaders in a Jesus-focused youth ministry strategy. We have done this primarily through our annual National Conference and several regional conferences held annually.
In 2004, we evaluated the effect of our strategy of mentoring leaders. Although significant fruit was produced as a result of our National Conference, we felt a new more-effective approach was needed. So in addition to the National Conference, we developed a ministry that would coincide with our Youth Ministry School for the purpose of developing Eagle Leaders in ministry who would partner with us in mentoring other church leaders. After we complete the 1 year school program at a church, the youth leader will then join us as we coach another church for a year. During that time, we will have mentored that youth leader for two years. They would then go on and coach other churches and mentor leaders. This network of Eagle Leaders will gather annually for fellowship and developing a national strategy for youth ministry development. We currently have three Eagle leaders with another five in training.
Where We Are Going
Producing Resources: Our goal is to develop a quality publishing company that will partially fund our training ministry.
In 2008 we will publish Four Views of Youth Ministry by Mark Senter, chair of the Educational Ministries department of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
We will begin placing our classic issues of the Idea Packet on CD for youth leaders to collect hundreds of ideas and Bible studies for their ministry.
We want to expand our resources to organizations and Christian bookstores beyond Ukraine so that every Russian-speaking community has access to our resources.
Coaching Churches: We begin the year 2008 coaching five churches with two staff trainers, three Eagle Leaders, and five Eagle-Leaders-in-training. We will begin coaching another seven churches in 2008. By the end of 2012, we will have coached 95 churches and will be in the process of coaching another 48 churches. We will have three staff trainers, 47 Eagle Leaders, and another 26 Eagle-leaders-in-training.
Mentoring Leaders: We begin the year 2008 mentoring 13 youth leaders. Three of these are Eagle leaders, five are Eagle-leaders-in-training, and the other five are youth leaders in the churches we are coaching. By the end of 2008 we will have seven Eagle leaders, seven Eagle-Leaders-in-training, and be mentoring another seven youth leaders. By the end of 2012, we will be mentoring 47 Eagle Leaders, 26 Eagle-Leaders-in-training, and be another 48 youth leaders of churches we are coaching.
In addition, we will be training 250 youth leaders each year at our National Conference, as well as dozens of students in institutes, universities and seminaries. Through our summer projects, we will be assisting our leaders in developing effective camp outreach ministries. And through our participation in the Alliance of Youth Ministries in Ukraine we will be impacting hundreds of other churches.
OUR MINISTRY - website
* Mentor church youth leaders
* Coach churches in youth ministry strategy
* Provide quality resources for youth ministry
* Coach churches in youth ministry strategy
* Provide quality resources for youth ministry
