Why Should We Adopt Eurasian Churches?

If you have read the purpose statement and goals of the CREC Eurasia Mission you will note that central to the strategy are church adoptions that include financial support of Eurasian pastors and church planters. Why have we made this central to our ministry in Eurasia?

If you have read the purpose statement and goals of the CREC Eurasia Mission you will note that central to the strategy are church adoptions that include financial support of Eurasian pastors and church planters.  There are at least the following 5 reasons for making church adoptions essential to the strategy of the CREC Eurasia Mission:

I: Long Distance Church Adoptions are Biblical

With the advent of the jet airliner, the internet and skype Americans can now keep in touch with churches in Eurasia 7,000 miles away more easily than the Church in Jerusalem could keep in touch with their church plant in Samaria in Acts 8, Antioch in Acts 11, and certainly Antioch could keep in touch with all the rest of the churches planted through their mission that started in Acts 13. Acts 8, in Samaria, Acts 15, the temporary missionaries sent to Antioch from Jeruslame, and II Cor. 8, the Macedonians and Corinthians call to care for the Jerusalem church from afar, are excellent examples of the dynamic equivalent of the church adoptions we are proposing and that already exist.

II: CREC Church Adoptions Make Missions Come Alive, and Give an Opportunity for Real Influence on the Foreign Mission Field

The CREC of North America already has two successful church adoptions going on. One pastor of an adopting church writes:

For the last couple of years Grace Covenant Church of Nacogdoches, TX has had the privilege of assisting our sister church, The Presbyterian Church of the Annunciation, in Pushkin, Russia. By adopting them we have been able to come along side of our Russian brothers and sisters and join with them in extending the gospel reach. Working together we can do things that neither of us can accomplish alone. As a result, we are both blessed by God as the international Church fulfills her mission to the world. We have especially enjoyed getting to know Pastor Oleg Volkov as he has visited our church and also as some of our elders have been able to visit the Pushkin church. We have even turned Pastor Volkov into an “honorary Texan.”Pastor Randy Booth

In Ephesians 4:15, 16 we read:

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.

When a North American church adopts a CREC church or church planter in the former Soviet Union, the global body of Christ begins to be knit together and a two-way relationship of love, compassion, and strengthening begins. Unlike working through full-time missionaries or a mission board, church adoptions give American churches a chance to personally influence the mission field. Nothing stirs interest in the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ like real ownership of an overseas mission. Matt. 6 reminds us that “where your treasure (money, time, prayers, blood, sweat, and tears) is there will your heart be also.”

Echoing Eph. 4:15, 16, II Cor. 8:13, 14 in the RSV also reminds us that there are no one-way relationships in the global body of Christ.

For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply(Q) their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be equality. As it is written, "Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack."

Eric Sauder shares that in when his church in Springfield Missourri remembers Ravil’s church in prayer, they are also reminded of how faithful the believers in Siberia are, and joyful, in the midst of much more oppression and opposition than American Christians face. Ravil and Julia with their 1 year old son Nathan, and the rest of their church love the Lord, have the joy of the Lord, and reach out to their community compassionately in circumstances that are exponentially more daunting than in the United States. By adopting a Eurasian church Christ the King church has the privilege to glimpse far more clearly how the power at work within us is indeed able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, as Eph. 3:20 proclaims.

III: The Former Soviet Union Has Few Senior Pastors to Mentor Younger Pastors

When I was at our intensive in Russia just this past March of 2010, I asked all the 11 students in class that day, “How many of you had a good relationship with your father growing up?” No one raised their hand. “How many of you had your father in your home growing up?” I continued. Again no one raised their hand. Our Eurasian pastors have not been mentored in life skills by their biological fathers.

At the same time evangelical protestant Churches make up only 1% of the population of Russia, and there are no mature CREC type Reformed churches known outside of our movement.  These two phenomena mean that Russian pastors that would like to reform their churches and follow more biblical and traditional forms of the historic Christian church have no native mentors and few native senior pastors and elders.  They are forced to create theological, liturgical, and familial traditions from scratch in a hostile culture. They need more mentoring than North American pastors, and they have access to far less, without church adoptions.

IV. The Current Church Adoptions Have Had a Very Real Positive Effect

The church adoptions that have taken place so far have proven that North American CREC churches can have a huge impact in other parts of the world. The adoption of Oleg Volkov's church by the CREC church of Nacogdoches Texas has allowed him to stay focused on evangelism to grow his local church, helped him purchase a ministry car, and enabled him to have much needed dental work that has greatly improved his quality of life.  Without this kind of help Oleg would not be available to pastor and grow the CREC Church of Pushkin.

Likewise, Eric Sauder's CREC church, Christ the King, has already played a critical role in the life of the CREC church in Tyumen, Siberia. Eric and men from his church have visited Ravil and Julia and their congregation two times in Siberia, and Ravil has visited them in Missouri.  When tragedy struck and the kidneys of their 18 month old daughter, Margarita, failed, Eric was in regular contact by phone and email with Ravil.  Later Ravil shared that Eric’s contact and Blake’s "weeping with those who weep" ministry to him were all that kept him encouraged.

Mature men helped him to gain perspective on the tragedy and assured him that God was working a greater good.  He said that the Russians in Siberia were not able to help him and Julia face and deal with the realities of Margarita's untimely death.  Christ the King played a very real role in keeping one of Siberia’s only Reformed pastors in the ministry.

V. The Visiting Professors and SRS Cannot Provide Enough Oversight

As the movement of the CREC of Eurasia has grown to include 15 churches spread over the former Soviet Union and over 1,000 congregants over 7 time zones, the traveling and resident professors of the seminary, myself, James Jordan and John Mahon, and others are not able to provide enough shepherding for our native Eurasian pastors.

VI. Churches Should be Planted Under the Authority of Other Churches

Biblically, even if the seminary had enough professors in it, church sessions are the best coaches for new church sessions, and in Acts 11, we see that the Jerusalem Church planted the Antioch church. There were clear lines of accountability of Barnabas to Jerusalem, and in Acts 14, Barnabas and Paul were responsible to the session/presbytery of Antioch for their work. Churches plant churches in the bible, not seminaries or an ad hoc group of professors.

VII: The Eurasian Economy and Corruption Make it Unlikely that a Native Eurasian Church Planter can plant CREC Churches without Financial Support from Non-native Churches

Reality is the best teacher. Andre Burkin, a student in our seminary, is a gifted and dedicated pastor in Sosnovi Bor, but even though he has pastured for twelve years, his church of twenty-five cannot support him enough to give him any time for ministry. He has a very hard time making time to even be a student in our intensive course program. Every church that we know of that pays a pastor enough to free him up to do significant ministry in the former Soviet Union either gets financial help from non-Eurasian churches, or got significant help for a long period of time before they became financially self supporting. Why is this? Two reasons.

First, when communism fell in 1991, communist leaders were on hand to snap up stock in the Soviet Union's enterprises. These oligarchs have become some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world, in control of more natural resources and oil than any country in the world.  These two realities have continued to make Eurasia what it always has been, one of the most powerful and corrupt places on earth.  Christians purposefully avoid the better paying jobs because they usually require violating your conscience, breaking the law, and supporting a corrupt system.

Corruption and prejudice of local authorities also means that renting public property for worship is difficult and disproportionately expensive. Most Evangelical churches spend much of their tithe simply on renting public meeting places for 2 hours on the Lord's Day. The tithes of Russian churches are very small. (See: [Corruption Perceptions Index])

Secondly, only 1% of the Russian speaking population of Eurasia is Evangelical Christian or Protestant. Though most Russians have never heard a sermon from the Word of God, they defend their national church and resent Protestant churches. This means that our church planting pastors can expect very little church growth from members coming in from other churches.

The CREC churches now are growing, and those of the future, will grow, through winning men from the world only, which is a very slow process and requires that pastors have time to spend visiting non-believers that visit the church. More often, the church planters must visit husbands whose wives are members in our churches. Men make up about 5% of most Evangelical congregations.

Ours are some of the only churches in Eurasia in which the husbands lead their wives and children into the church. (see: [List of countries by Human Development Index].  This shows that the quality of life and standard of living of the United States and Canada are much higher than that of Central Europe, and those of Central Europe, Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, are much higher than that of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and the Ukraine.)

Without support from outside their local churches, Russian speaking pastors work 40 to 60 hours a week to earn money to live on and have almost no time to minister to their flock or to expand their church.

VIII: The Historic Window of Opportunity for Planting CREC Churches in Eurasia

Christ proclaimed in Mark 10:31, "But many that are first will be last, and the last first."

The former Soviet Union, in some ways, is one of the last regions of the world anyone would want to church plant in.  It is one of the most tragic countries in the history of the world with as many as 40 million dying in the 20th century from war and in gulags and from famine.  The USSR also exported more misery than any country in the history of the world by enslaving and brutalizing Eastern Europe and supporting communist regimes around the world.

But with 220 million people Eurasia is the only pre-Christian (more or less) world power that has enough religious freedom to plant churches of the Reformed faith, and in the tradition of the historic Church. (The Islamic countries do not have religious freedom and neither does China).

As such, the evangelical churches of Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine represent the most historic and largest opportunity for the Reformed and historic Presbyterian movement on the face of the earth at this point in time.

After 20 years of religious freedom, more pastors than ever realize that they need serious ministry training and real help studying the Word of God.  For the first time in the 20 year ministry of the Purcell's, and 11 years of the Biblical Seminary of St. Petersburg, the pastors of Krasnodar, Kazakhstan, and the Far East have asked for the ministry to expand into their countries and regions.

The first step of this expansion will be an intensive course and conference in Vladivostok in September of 2010 in which James Jordan, David Shoremann, Greg Lawrence, Oleg Volkov, and Blake Purcell will be the featured preachers and teachers.

It is a peculiar thing, but even though the public as a whole is not experiencing quick wide spread revival, God has raised up such a rich harvest of men of God and ministers of the Gospel that are thirsting and desperate for teaching and mentoring that we have more men to train than we have churches and elders able and willing to train them. The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few! (Matthew 9:36-39)

By God's grace and power, with ever growing interest and opportunity for the Reformed faith in Eurasia, the last are truly becoming the first!  We invite you to join with us in laboring in the harvest for the glory of God.