Church and Missions
The Christian Voice July 2001
On the Front
Missions Around the World
Storming the Gates of Hell:  

A "STREET CRY" FOR RUSSIA'S LOST YOUTH

By Dan Wooding
St. Petersburg, Russia (ANS)
 An interview with John Russell, and American who heads of a radical ministry that reaches out to a lost generation on the streets of St. Petersburg

American-born John Russell, 49, is literally storming the gates of hell. Through the ministry of StreetCry, he is seeing lives of Russia's teenagers and young adults being miraculously transformed in front of his eyes.

When I recently visited this group that echoes the work in New York City of David Wilkerson, I discovered that the atmosphere of StreetCry is non-religious, and as powerfully charged as a stick of dynamite. The believers are lovingly militant in their faith, meeting daily to pray, study the Word of God, and go about their Father's business in evangelizing the lost and effectively praying for the deliverance of those caught in sin.

Many of the staff and students at StreetCry are former drug addicts, prostitutes, criminals, runaways, alcoholics and simply disappointed people. God is miraculously healing and delivering young people from lives of addiction and sin. Others are graduates of higher education in fields such as biology, music, literature, education, foreign languages, or sound engineering. They all bum with a passionate, contagious faith that their generation and nation WILL be reached with the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Russell, who heads up this radical ministry, says that Russia's youth have inherited a society that is reaping the fruit of rejecting God. While trying to find reality, truth, love, happiness and escape from their problems, those in the young generation are dredging themselves through a depressing social, economic and political disaster, where a month's wages will usually put less than $150 in their pocket.

The Future
Looks as Hopeless as the Past

He adds that many of Russia's young people come from broken homes, where alcohol, drugs, sexual and physical abuse are the norm. They are peering into a future, which looks every bit as hopeless as the past. This has caused a cry from within many of the young generation that there must be more to life than what so depress-ingly clings to them.

"St. Petersburg is quite a bit like San Francisco was in the late sixties and early seventies," said Russell. "It's the gateway to the West; the cultural, music and arts capital of Russia and kids flock here from all over Russia and the former Soviet Union. It's the avant-garde center. As far as kids go, the music that comes out of St. Petersburg is music with an edge and kids all over the country look up to the city."

But this cultural magnet is also proving to be the downfall for many young people who soon get hooked on drugs and then, through dirty needles, acquire the AIDS virus.

"HIV/AIDS is a very serious problem here as well as hepatitis, a, b and c," he told me and Bruce Sonnenberg and Herb Hall, my colleagues from He Intends Victory, a Christian ministry that is targeted at those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS "It is all compounded by the fact that the government is doing precious little financially, with advertising campaigns, to do anything about the problems and there are a lot of kids who are dying on the streets.

"The HIV situation is beyond getting out of control. It's very far out of control. They say by the year 2006, that there will be a full-blown epidemic here with people dying on the streets and :he rate of increase of HIV/AIDS is higher here is worse than anywhere in the world, including Africa."

More than Haifa Million Heroin
Addicts in Moscow and St. Petersburg

Russell said that statistics show that 70% of Russia's young people between the ages of 15 and 25 are regularly using drugs, and an estimated 550,000 heroin addicts live in St. Petersburg and Moscow alone -many in their teens. Abortion and complications resulting in death and serious injuries to the mother are skyrocketing out of control. Venereal disease runs at a rate of 60 times higher than in the U.S. AIDS and hepatitis are seriously on the rise. They need an alternative to the harmful options they have been presented with, and God has supplied one: faith in His Son!

"The drugs here are not very expensive. You can get heroin for $4 or S5 a hit. Second of all, the drug addicts will do anything to get money for their drugs.

A strange phenomenon here is that drug addicts still have very good relationships with their parents and love their parents and their parents love them. Although some of the parents have been bankrupted by their kids, but they still don't like to kick them out. One of our girls was caught dragging a refrigerator down a flight of steps to sell it. Her mother eventually had to sell of the apartment to sell off the debt for her daughter. This kind of things are common here where the parents do everything they can to try to help their kids, but they are not really helping them.

"Petty crime is sky high here. Everybody keeps their car locked up behind a fence or they take their windshield wipers and mirrors off their cars and their car emblems. Those things are stolen nightly by the drug addicts who prowl the neighborhoods who steal and then sell them to auto-part stores."

StreetCry, The Mission

Russell said that StreetCry is a Christ-centered evangelistic, teaching, music, worship and prophetic ministry, reaching out to Russia's unsaved and backslidden young generation. "We are dedicated to seeing them saved and delivered at any cost. We are deeply sure that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation."

Creative means of evangelism include:

Street Cry, worship, giving a chance for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to flow.

"We also have a Bible School and we take people right in if they receive the Lord and there is a real hunger to know God," said Russell "It is a two year course. We are not tremendously funded. We don't have a budget for everything that we do. We believe that with every additional mouth. God will provide and this is our philosophy. That is if God brings them, then He will take care of them. We started with a little apartment; then we had two, three and then four apartments. We are a faith-based organization.

"We have about $1,750 worth of pledges every month and our expenses are about $6,000 a month. We feed and house about 50 people and give them medical help, with dental and eyeglasses."

Russell said that the street work is often dangerous. "I've had my life threatened a couple of times," he said. "Most of our staff that have been with us have been with us for more than four years have either had their nose broken, teeth knocked out, spit at and also had their lives threatened. It goes with the territory of the kind of people that we minister to which includes Satan worship and people like that."

Russell says that Street Cry's mandate for the future includes expanding the vision throughout the country, as well as reaching more young people through the mass media of radio, television, newspaper and magazine.

A spokesman on their website - http://www.streetcry.org - said, "Satan has captured them through these communication vehicles, and God has shown us that it is through these avenues that the Holy Spirit will also recapture many. Other plans are to establish our own drug rehab center, a larger Bible school facility, a music studio, and to see the publication of anointed Christian books and periodicals in the Russian language.

"We are a ministry concerned with results and not just theory. A transformed life is precious in the sight of God, and well worth committing full attention to. Seeing people repent and get baptized in the Holy Spirit, water baptized, and delivered from past habits of sin; we plug them into the Kingdom of God's new life of daily prayer, Bible study, and proclaiming the gospel to others. We are committed to 'equipping the saints for works of service" (Eph.4: 12)."

"StreetCry believes that Christians are not born into the Kingdom of God to sit as spectators while a few committed people run a church. "The Biblical mandate is to equip all of God's people for service, and by His grace we are trying to do that. Anything of eternal value in ministry is a result of fervent prayer. That is why much time is devoted to individual and corporate prayer and to the development of strong prayer habits. Intercessory prayer for the youth, cities and nation are important aspects of our work.

"We are committed to unity of spirit in the body of Christ. We are committed to the restoration and full functioning of all the offices and gifts within the body of Christ, including the apostolic and prophetic. Through books, conferences and other means, we are committed to making available anointed and effective teachings from leaders in the worldwide body of Christ. We are committed to the restoration of worship to its very high place of priority. We believe that worship in spirit and truth is a key to an open heaven and seeing the end-time harvest reaped.

"We cooperate with a number of Christian drug rehabilitation centers in Russia. Although God delivers many addicts without the need of a rehab center, it is an important and necessary step for many other former addicts. Working in close connection with a drug rehab center allows us to maximally cover those that desire to be set free from drugs."

Through this ministry, God is raising up an army of young believers. The cry of their hearts is for intimacy with the Lord, and a crying out to God for, "more souls Lord, more souls!" Their heroes of the faith include those found in Hebrews 11, Foxes Book of Martyrs, and others who spent time on their knees in prayer and were persecuted for their faith. They are bold in their faith and are not afraid of the enemy. They love the battle and are storming the gates of hell to set the captives free; and by the grace of God they will continue their forward march until God's full harvest is reached. This is not a spare time hobby. This is an all out war on the strongholds of Satan."

To contact John Russell, you can e-mail him at streetcry@onebox.com

StreetCry Ministries: www.streetcry.org

Contributions: All tax deductible support checks should be made payable to: StreetCry

StreetCry
PO Box 7971
Athens, GA 30604
USA