A seminar entitled Children, Church and Christian College took place on December 15, 2009 at Donetsk Christian University. Olga Zaytseva, teacher of Scriptural languages at DCU, was the speaker. Her presentation began with a true story about a rural school playground on the top of a hill. There was a steep slope at the end of this playground and children would fall down and get injured. To solve this problem, the village leaders decided to build a hospital at the bottom of the hill.

A seminar for local pastors and Christian workers took place at Donetsk Christian University on November 21, 2009. More than 300 representatives of evangelical Christians from various denominations, in particular the Fellowship of Independent Churches and Missions of Ukraine, Light of the Gospel, Donetsk Regional Baptist Union, the Union of Donbass Fellowship Churches and Azov Baptist Independent Churches.

Two reports were made during the seminar. S. Tupchyk, the presbyter of the Narod Bozhyi church, presented Faith and Ministry - the Biblical View. His report edified and reminded us that crises happen and are even sent by God for us to reconsider our lives, review and accept the new reality, and to renew our relationship with God and people.

On November 10, 2009, Donetsk Christian University held a seminar on the history of the Russian Baptist movement. The participants of the seminar listened to and discussed the paper of history teacher Mary Raber on the theme of money taken from the pages of Baptist magazine for the period from 1905-1914.

Baptist was the first magazine of the Baptist Union, which was published even before the beginning of Soviet times. Dei Mazayev was its publisher. He was also the leader of the Russian Baptist Union and a very wealthy person of his time. The duration of its publication embraced the period from the first Russian revolution to the beginning of the First World War.

On October 7, 2009 a pastors’ meeting took place at the campus of Donetsk Christian University. Pastors came from different churches and Evangelical Christian Baptists (ECB) unions. Among the participants there were representatives from the Brotherhood of Independent Churches and ECB missionary organizations (V. Kiyan, S. Shaptala, L. Shatohin), the Donetsk regional union ECB (A. Budaretskiy, V. Velgus, A. Zhurba), the Christian Association “Light of the Gospel” (P. Minayev, F. Bespalov, A. Salfetnikov, A. Malov, L. Malov, P. Kislyak) and some pastors from independent churches (A. Nagirnyak, P. Ilchenko, V. Semyonov, N. Dudnik, A. Moseichuk, V. Yakubovskiy).

On October 6, 2009 we had a regular meeting of the DCU Board of Trustees. It was the first meeting after DCU’s new ministry development plan was accepted, with program of reforms of the administrative, financial and educational structure of the school. Among the people attending the meeting were the leaders of Evangelical Baptist unions, pastors and church ministers, and new candidates for the Board of Trustees: Nellie Nikonchuk-Klimenko and Alexander Kirichuk. These candidate board members are influential in government and business circles, and have been prayer and financial supporters of Donetsk Christian University for a long time.