Source of Life Church Stays Young

Source of Life Baptist Church, formerly Fourth Baptist, is the outgrowth of a evangelism crusade in 1995.

For years afterward its pastor Brother Vasily was the eldest one in the church.

A four person band and worship team led the singing Sunday morning and the style of worship is noticably different than in the more traditional First Baptist Church.

Even today, with its new location on a hill overlooking the southern outskirts of Chernivtsi, the church is very young with most of church leadership consisting of men in their 20s and early 30s.

The church "elders" are shown in the second picture with me standing on the right. Wally, my interpreter who is one of the assistant pastors at this church is on the right in the first row.

The church reaches the lost in many ways, but particularly through an intensive effort of summer camps. The church provides leadership for a variety of camps that run from the end of May to the end of August.

There are camps for the physically handicapped, for children, families, youth leaders, teenagers and the blind with a goal of about 50 percent coming from the Baptist churches in the region and 50 percent from unchurched families.

The church subsidizes about half the cost of the camp to help keep the price affordable for students and families.

After the fall of communismn the church was able to acquire a former Young Pioneers (Communist youth) camp out in the country that they have been slowly renovating. While I haven't been out there on this trip, I were able to see a big difference last year compared with what it looked like on my first trip in 2001.