In his book Your Church Is Too Safe, Mark Buchanan shares the following story about a Russian pastor named Father John Sergieff. Buchanan writes:

John was a priest in Kronstadt, Russia, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. That was a time and place of dirty marketplaces. Imperial Russia was decadent, rotting beneath its own weight, and the streets were dangerous, rife with poverty and depravity. Crime ran amok. Alcoholism was rampant. Prostitutes crowded the corners, thieves the alleys. There was no safe place, so most people who weren't part of that world didn't venture out into it. Most of the clergy, used to a life of privilege and status, used what waning powers they had to insulate themselves from the widespread peril and hardship.

Not so Father John. His daily practice was to don his robe and descend into the meanest part of the city. He'd walk among the addicts and the predators, the whores and the thieves, the orphans and the widows, and he did it with healing in his wings. He would find the most broken and dissolute man or woman he could track down, lying in a gutter or standing on a street corner. He would cup their chin in his large hand and lift their face so they were looking directly in his eyes. "This," he would say, meaning this way of life, this means of survival, this condition I found you in, "this is beneath your dignity. You were created to house the glory of the living God."

Father John, in his lifetime, was called the Pastor of All Russia. And everywhere he went, revival came with him.