By Chris Thrower

By cover of night, a caravan of cars moves stealthily through Ballard’s residential streets and rendezvous in a darkened cul-de-sac. Drive up slowly, enter and exit quietly, keep conversation to a whisper when you are outside. When I first heard about this meeting with “the Russians” I thought I was going to be involved in an international arms deal or some secret espionage, but to my chagrin it actually turned out to be much less sinister than that.

Although the house appears somewhat dim from the outside, inside is a crowded and bright home with teens and twenty-somethings filling the main entrance, kitchen, dining room, and living room. The house seems tiny and crammed in comparison to the massive throng of people that occupy it. The hallway near the entrance contains a mountain of footwear, coats, and a few Bibles scattered here and there. A cacophony of jamming acoustic guitars, blaring stereo music, and conversation rising above it all, mostly in English with some in Russian and even the occasional Spanish speaker can be heard. Food is on the table in the dining room and drinks are in the kitchen, welcome to the party.

A brief reconnaissance around the premises reveals that there is also a downstairs and upstairs. Though the upstairs is primarily off limits to partiers, the basement is a dance floor complete with lights and booming speakers. On the main floor there are couches and a few seats near the dining room to lounge in. Far from being the secretive spy meeting I had imagined, there are masses of people enjoying themselves with food and drinks, perhaps the most ominous thing about it is that this is exactly the type of gathering religious leaders in Jesus’ day condemned him for attending, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in a while.

“It’s just Christians having a good time,” said Sergio Lomakin, one of the original friends who helped put on the parties. “Non-Christians come in and see these are regular people, except they love Christ. We drink beer just like they do, but we actually enjoy it, we’re not trying to forget ourselves.”

The partying got started over a year ago when a group of friends who mainly attended a local Slavic church heard about Mars Hill and began showing up for the evening services.

“All my Russian friends were going to a Russian church, but we had no place to bring all our American friends and all our non-Christian friends,” said Helena Helendi, who hosts the parties along with her mother, Monica, and three siblings Nancy, Christina, and Alex. “So we started coming to Mars Hill with all our close friends.”

Once the Helendi’s and their friends got to know Mars Hill, they quickly picked up on the justification-by-faith theology and the gospel mission of bringing Jesus to the city.

“We were sick of works related theology. The church we went to was very legalistic and exclusive, there were a lot of rules and a lot of gossip,” said Daniel Usenko, a long time friend of the Helendi family who helps supervise the parties. “I remember the first time I went to Mars Hill, it was a glorious day, I even remember right where I sat.”

“God did a lot for me through Mars Hill,” said Usenko. “He told me to be a man and helped me out of depression. Going to Mars Hill helped me talk to non-Christians about Christ. I remember about four months after going to Mars Hill I had a week where I talked to more non-Christians about Christ than I ever had before in my life.”

After attending Mars Hill for a few weeks the Helendi’s, once convicted by a sermon on Christian hospitality, began hosting parties in their home.

“One night Pastor Mark was preaching on hospitality out of first Corinthians,” said Helena, “So we said “let’s have some people over to the house’ and so we had a barbecue with our friends, and since then it’s never stopped.”

In fact, the gatherings have grown from a small group of twelve Russian friends to almost one hundred in attendance every week.

“We have meetings all the time where it’s like “what’s going on, we’re bursting at the seams, what do we do?’” said Helena. “We had to install some security and some guys to help with the parking. So we kind of have jobs, I’m in the kitchen, my sisters do all the cleaning before, Daniel along with some of the other guys makes sure that people come and go quietly.”

Perhaps even more astounding than the size and popularity of these parties is the missional heart of the Helendi’s who host these events each week in their home.

“They started to bring a lot of kids from school and unbelieving friends. They wanted a place to bring them, because sometimes you have no place to bring non-Christians that is a relaxed atmosphere,” said Monica Helendi, an exceptionally kind and uber-cool mother who hosts these parties along with her family in her own home. “Our house became a place where more and more people were gathering and we realized that we were having a good time and that the non-Christians who came were like “oh, I like this’. We understood that they needed something like this as much as a formal church service.”

Hospitality comes easy for Russians, they told me. But there is a lesson that can be learned from our Russian compatriots for those Christians who are seeking to be missional in the city of Seattle.

“If you can open your home and your heart, it’s pretty simple, people just start coming,” said Monica. “They feel the love and they just wanna come.”

As the parties expanded from small gatherings to large events, with musical acts and public gospel preaching included, there was a real propensity for the nights to become formal religious meetings. It seemed likely, and would have been very easy to do, as there were many gifted musicians and leaders amongst the Christians who attended. But, with uncanny wisdom, the Helendi’s and the Russians who ran the parties felt this would be counterproductive to the mission God had called them to.

“Our goal as a group is to reach non-Christians in an informal setting. We want to get to know them as friends. They can eat food, dance, hang out with us, its individual evangelism,” said Usenko. “We want to build relationships so that we can invite them to church and tell them about Jesus personally. We want to have a place where non-Christians can come and see how we act and live and provide them an opportunity to get to know God through our individual relationships with them.”

“We hang out and fellowship and people see love among us. Actions speak louder than words,” said Lomakin. “The Bible says that if there is love among us, people will know we are Christ’s disciples.”

While some denounce these parties as worldly because of the drinking, dancing, and relaxed atmosphere, the Helendi’s and their Russian friends are more concerned with loving their neighbors, including those who live right next door.

“We’ve talked to them about it, most of our neighbors are fine with it,” said Monica of the noise and traffic the parties generate. “We have one neighbor who is really upset with it, but we have a plan to send some young men over there to do some work for him.”

It’s impossible to avoid feeling like family at the Helendi’s house and it’s easy to see why. They all seem to share a deep and abounding love for Christ, for their community, and for each other.

“The guys were always telling us “just love people, don’t worry, don’t stress, just love Jesus, and love people’,” said Helena. “And that’s how this is growing and they are really godly brothers that we love a lot.”

“We are especially thankful for the Russian girls that are here, they are the most godly women we know,” said Usenko. “They feed everybody, show hospitality, and then clean up till like 5am. I have to kick people out at 3am because people stay here so long, they don’t complain, but I have to kick them out.”

As a new day dawns, I find myself kicked out along with everyone else. Finding my shoes is the most impossible mission I’ve attempted all night. But after a long search my mission is accomplished and I make a quick getaway into the fleeing shadows from whence I came, carrying with me intelligence reports regarding Russian activities in the Ballard area.