Trip to Estonia

Recently Canon Mark spent a week in Estonia, a former Soviet bloc country in northeastern Europe. He taught (see photo of him with a translator), ministered in churches, and assisted church leaders. 

“Approximately 15% of the population is practicing Christians,” Canon Mark notes. “A combination of European secularism and Soviet Communism has sapped the soul of so many people. Yet, there’s a great hunger. My hope is that as Christians come more fully alive in the Lord and are empowered and equipped to do God’s work this hunger will lead to real, genuine revival. I have been invited back in 2012 to build on the foundations just laid.”

It is your generous donations to ICR that help Canon Mark’s work. Use the PAYPAL button on this website, or else write a check to Institute for Christian Renewal and mail it to 80 Route 125, Kingston, NH 03848-3535. You can have a part in this revival we all want to happen.

Articles About Christmas

We have just added to the website: “Why is Christmas so ‘Merry’?” How can Christmas be merry when we’re out of work, have a loved one in serious trouble with drugs, or are struggling with a serious illness?

(To access this article or any of the following,  please click the title on the sidebar.)

Over the years our Newsletter has featured a number of articles on Christmas themes and archived them right here. Check out:

* “Blue Christmas” (or, healing of the holiday hurts). For a whole variety of reasons Christmas is not pleasant for many people. What makes it worse is that everyone else around us seems so happy. What causes our Christmas to be blue and what do can we do about this? Or, perhaps your Christmas is not blue, but you know people for whom Christmas is an ordeal to get through or even a source of pain to endure. How can we help them?

* “Basic Christianity as Sung in Our Favorite Carols.” Christmas, of course, is much more than a Hallmark Moment of sentimentality, and it involves much more than the babe in the manger. This article walks us through verses of our favorite (and, perhaps, some not so familiar) carols, to give our Christmas celebration much needed fulness and depth.

* “Hanukkah for Christians.” Hanukkah is celebrated around the same time as Christmas. We want, however, to know about this Jewish festival not merely because such knowledge helps us know more about our Jewish friends. All believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, have Jewish spiritual roots, so Hanukkah has spiritual relevance to us.