LifeWay Church in Federal Way (Seattle), Wash., is not a huge body of believers. On Sunday mornings it usually consists of about 300 people meeting for worship. Yet despite its smaller (according to some) size, LifeWay’s leadership, including Senior Pastor Billy Arnold, has developed a great passion for being involved in a long-term partnership that extends far beyond a one-time missions experience with believers in Bryansk, Russia.

“It’s not a trip, it’s a relationship,” Billy said. “Mission trips imply this is a trip for a certain time, but this is a blood brother-type relationship.”

LifeWay has been involved in reaching the lost in Bryansk since 2000 when Russian immigrants to the Seattle area requested help with a summer camp in their native country. After assisting the Russian believers two years in a row, the church agreed to take their work in Bryansk, which is located about 250 miles southwest of Moscow, to a new level.

LifeWay helped the local believers purchase old Soviet camp facilities that have since hosted multiple summer events focused on sharing Christ with Russian youth.

Billy said LifeWay’s long-term partnership with Bryansk believers can be seen as a triangle. One side involves helping existing churches develop a mindset of expanding the kingdom and partner with bodies of believers in the United States. A second side is developing new churches primarily geared toward reaching younger generations. An underlying or third side includes assisting with recurring summer camps and upcoming leadership development programs.

In addition to watching more than 5,000 students come through the summer camps over the past seven years, LifeWay has seen a new church planted that reaches Russian young adults. The average attendee at History Makers Church is 13-30 years old. Billy describes the group as “young people … reaching very, very disconnected young adults.”

“We believe … we’re going to see God use this (area) as a missionary sending place to the rest of Eastern Europe,” he said. “God is doing some real work in that direction.”

However, individuals in Russia aren’t alone in feeling the impact of this long-term relationship.

“We are trying to grow a partnership that … when you agree to this work overseas, you’re also agreeing to apply the same principles to your home church. The lost around the world aren’t more important than the lost across the street,” Billy said. “It’s not an either-or, focus internationally and not focus locally. It’s a both-and.”

Billy believes while each church needs to follow God’s leading in involvement, not being involved internationally is not an option.

“Churches so badly need to do stuff like this,” he said. “There’s an unlimited amount of places in the world where people can. It’s biblical. Ultimately you have to be responsive to what God leads you to do, (but) you have to connect.”

As far as how to be involved, Billy recommends churches join “something with a strategy. Stop the random mission experiences that become refrigerator magnet missions.”

Instead of sending teams to different locations each year, he suggests a church seeks where others are strategically involved in international partnerships and then takes a vision trip that allows a small team to get hands-on exposure. This can present opportunities for projects to develop and follow-up teams to return to the location.

Billy said while LifeWay is continually learning how to develop long-term international partnerships, he is interested in assisting other pastors and their churches–regardless of size–with connecting in specific ways with the work in Bryansk, and can help point to other needs in Russia. Two churches in the Seattle area currently are joining LifeWay in working in Bryansk, with a third considering a vision trip to the area. Two ministries also are involved in seeing the lost know Christ in this part of Russia.

Contact Billy to learn more about long-term international partnership opportunities in the Bryansk region.

Explore more opportunities for international vision trips by learning about Jet Set tours.

Written by Natalie Kaspar. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in Texas. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work in a few years.