Twelve Years of Missionary Work in Russia

Twelve Years of Missionary Work in RussiaMichael McDonald

A paper done for partial completion of the B.A degree in Practical Theology Foundation UniversityProfessor Doctor Samuel Lee

Introduction

My wife and I served as missionaries for a total of twelve years in Russia. This is a brief history of that time of service.

For me, serving in Russia was necessary. In 1970, several months before I gave my life to Christ, I had found a book called Gods Smuggler[footnoteRef:-1]. While reading this book I said to the God that I didnt really know I want to do something like this with my life. Several months later I surrendered my life to follow Jesus. For the next 25 years I prayed for Russia and the Soviet Union. My wife and I mailed Gospels of John to addresses in Russia, we prayed for persecuted believers there and we supported radio ministries that broadcast the Gospel in iron curtain countries. Over many years I had a deep desire to serve as a missionary to Russia. [-1: Brother Andrew; Sherrill, John; & Sherrill, Elizabeth ( 1967,2001).God's Smuggler. Chosen Books.ISBN0-8007-9301-3.]

In the late 1980s the Soviet empire began to crumble and the door to Russia began to open to those from the west. We became part of a flood of missionaries entering the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

My wife and I, along with our teenage children served as missionaries to Russia for nineteen months from July 1994 to February 1996. At that time we were members of in independent charismatic church. After 19 months of service we had established a small church, and we returned to the United States to allow our children to complete their education.

Even though we returned to the United States, my wife and I still had a deep desire to serve as missionaries in Russia. During this period we became members of a local congregation of the Foursquare Gospel church. We approached the denominational missions committee about possibly serving as Foursquare missionaries in Russia. Through a long application period, and following much prayer, we were appointed as Foursquare missionaries to Russia in the summer of 2003. We spent the following nine months raising our needed financial support and preparing ourselves for our second term of service in Russia.

Our Initial Plan and Purpose

After more than 15 years of Evangelical missionary work in Russia the country was still only about 1.2% evangelical,[footnoteRef:0] Church planting was and remains a huge need in the country. In the early to mid 1990s it was relatively easy to plant a church in Russia. Westerners were viewed as exotic. The people of Russia were very interested in meeting Americans and other westerners. If you could put together a team and enough money, you could easily travel to Russia, do some advertising, rent a hall and have hundreds if not thousands of people come to hear a presentation of the Gospel message. We had experienced this in 1994, when we church planted in the city of Dzerzhinsk. Over a period of two weeks, with a team of fifteen people we advertised meetings in a local rented hall. We handed out 10,000 handbills announcing the meetings. Each night, for three nights the hall was packed with people. It was from those who responded at the meetings that we were able to plant our church in 1994. [0: http://joshuaproject.net/countries/RS - accessed 2/23/05]

By the time we returned to Russia in 2004 we saw a dramatic change in the atmosphere of Russia. Westerners were no longer so exotic. Americas involvement in Iraq and other Middle-east conflicts soured relationships between the two countries. Russian nationalism was on the rise. The economy was rapidly improving. Russia had a small, but growing middle class. The once despised Russian Orthodox Church was now the official church of Russia and supported by the government. Orthodox leaders denounced western sects as spiritually bankrupt and harmful to the Russian soul. [footnoteRef:1] Russian Protestant leaders and western-planted churches were being harassed by the Federal authorities and in some cases churches where forced to close.[footnoteRef:2] People were no longer looking to the West for a possible savior from the economic political a moral collapse of the Soviet Union. They had tasted capitalism and found it wanting. [1: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/world/europe/24church.html?pagewanted=all - accessed 02/23/05] [2: Ibid.]

We had been sent to Russia with an assignment to plant a church or churches that would then hopefully develop into a healthy, reproducing church-planting movement. We faced several barriers to this assignment. One the changed atmosphere as discussed above. Two - we were a couple, not a team. Experience has shown that it is always easier to church plant with a team. Three - we did not really have a sufficient budget to plant a church using the model of the 1990s.

Our initial strategy

In April 2004, leaving our children and grandchildren behind, we moved to the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, a city of nearly two million people. Having lived in this area in 1994-96 we still had several contacts among the small Evangelical Christian community. We immediately re-established these relationships and began trying to meet as many people as possible, seeking an open door for ministry. We spent time on the streets, and in open-air markets, practicing our language skills and seeking to build relationships. We also began to build relationships within the local Christian community, visiting some of the 25 or so Evangelical churches in this city of nearly two million people.

We tried beginning a home Bible study for people, but this only attracted believers from other churches. Believers were not our target, and of course with so few churches it would be easy to be accused of stealing people from other churches.

After about 6 months in the city, we were invited by a local pastor to begin attending his church. He was interested in planting new churches and thought perhaps we could work together toward the same goal. Over the next two years Pastor Igor introduced us to three men in his church whom he said had a desire and potential gifts to church plant.

As we worked with two of these men we held evangelistic outreaches and sponsored several of their contacts to enter drug rehab. We sponsored the publishing a small evangelistic newspaper every month, and we purchased hundreds of dollars of Bibles and other Gospel literature for distribution to hospitals, prisons and other venues. These two bothers had a passion for the lost, and a gift for evangelism, but every time a small group was started it only held together for a few weeks.

We worked with the third brother for more than a year, helping him begin a small church. He had pastoral gifts, but unfortunately, in the end we discovered that his primary interest in ministry was for some Western group to sponsor him so that he did not have to work. We ended our relationship with him after 15 months.

We were able to work with several authors and publishers to translate, print and distribute books in Russia. We are most happy to have worked with the translation and publishing of the book, The Foundations of Pentecostal Theology.[footnoteRef:3] [3: http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Pentecostal-Theology-Guy-Duffield/dp/1599793369]

During this time period we had some minor successes, but by the winter of 2006/7 we were frustrated and wondering if we were headed in the right direction.

In early 2006 I had begun praying a specific prayer, Lord, give us the keys to this city. I prayed this because I believe that in every city, in every place, there are people crying out to God. They might not know the God that they cry to, but they are desperate to know if God exists and will help them. As believers it is our responsibility to seek out these people and introduce them to the living God.

Breakthrough

In January 2007 we hosted a small Native American evangelistic team to our city. Together we did several outreaches. While we were attending a local pastors meeting with them a young pastor introduced himself and asked if we could bring the team to his rehabilitation center. That night we visited this center and saw what this young pastor was doing to serve the Lord. As we rode back to the city Pastor Dmitry asked me Michael, do you know what the keys to Russian cities are? Pastor Dmitry told me about their social outreach to the addicted and homeless. We understood that the Lord was speaking to us through this young man, and answering my prayers for the keys to the city.

Over the next several months we began to build a relationship with Pastor Dmitry. We began to attend his small church, and we were invited to preach several times. Soon Dmitry asked us to come alongside him to help him build this one-year-old church.

The Association of Cornerstone churches

As we began to work with Dmitry we learned that he was a pastor, church planter with a fellowship of churches called Cornerstone.

Pastor Sergei Nyehpomnyehsheek, a former Baptist 1999, began the first Cornerstone church in Achinsk, a Russian city in the Siberia. Over the next few years the church grew to about 100 people, but then plateaued. After some time a family in the church brought to the pastor a young drug addict. Pastor Sergei had never worked with addicted people before, but he believed that Jesus would set the young man free. This indeed happened and soon other addicts began to come to the church seeking freedom. Within a short period of time the church began their first center for rehabilitation.

As this work grew other pastors asked Pastor Sergei to help them open rehabilitation centers. Sergei sent several young men to help other centers began, but there was a problem. The other pastors were not used to working with addicts, and they wanted to control the young leaders that Pastor Sergei sent to them. Sergei, realizing that this was not going to work, called his young men home.

The Lord then began to give them a strategy to plant new churches. They began slowly to send small teams of former drug addicts to new cities. These teams would reach out to the addicted community and immediately open a small rehabilitation center. As addicts came to the center their families were also evangelized. Soon the small church would begin to grow. When we met Pastor Dmitry in 2007 the Cornerstone Association had grown from the first mother church to almost 40 churches! The largest church at that time was nearly six hundred people. Dmitry was a team leader planting the Cornerstone Church in our city of Nizhny Novgorod.

A change of direction

As we began to work with Pastor Dmitry and his church it was clear to us that the Lord had opened a new door for us and that the direction of our ministry was changing. Dmitry asked us to serve his new church. He himself was a young pastor and almost everyone in his new church had come to Christ less than one year before. Dmitry said to us, We need for you to model the Christian life for us. You have been believers for many years, we need to see that it is possible to grow older and still be serving the Lord. We agreed to set aside our own plans and to follow where the Spirit of God seemed to be leading.

As we began our work with Pastor Dmirty and the Cornerstone churches we faced a new set of challenges. Up to this point in time our Russian language skills were poor. We had been taking language lessons but our progress was slow. We were paying for our language lessons and that was stretching our budget. We had to make a decision. Would we hire a translator to work with us in order to minister in the Cornerstone churches or would we continue to pay for language lessons with the hope that our language skills would increase quickly enough to begin teaching in the native Russian language?

In Russia it is not unusual for foreigners to minister through an interpreter. The Russian churches have come to expect this. Indeed some foreign leaders who minister in Russia are rather fluent in the Russian language but still preach or teach through an interpreter. Pastor Dmitry was anxious for us to begin working with his church, so we made the choice to at least temporarily stop our Russian language lessons and hire a teacher who would be available for most of our local teaching and preaching ministry. Thus we began teaching on a regular schedule in the Nizhny Novgorod rehabilitation center.

How Cornerstone Church rehabilitation centers operate\

As we spent more time with the church and teaching in the rehabilitation center we understood what an amazing system of discipleship the Cornerstone churches had developed. The system works as follows:

A small church planting team enters a new city. The team is usually made up entirely of former drug addicts and/or homeless people. Many of these people have criminal backgrounds and some have been in prison for as much as half of their lives! They had been evangelized and then given ministry opportunities and now they were church planters.

The team is self-supporting. Often the only help they receive is a one-way train ticket to their target city, paid for by the association. They live communally and find part-time work to support themselves. They begin to evangelize the addicted community and usually rent a small village home outside of the city. As people enter the program they are told that it is the Gospel that changes lives. Those that stay repent and begin to follow Christ.

The rehabilitation program is broken into tow parts or steps. In step one the addict begins to understand what it means to be a Christian. There is a daily regimen of Bible study, prayer, worship, Scripture memorization, small groups, discussion and teaching. Slowly the former drug addicts become changed by the Gospel. It was amazing to see the transformation of these people over the months as they submitted themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. This first period is a transformative. The new convert is not allowed to leave the center. They live communally. If they decide to leave they are not allowed back again until a three-month period is passed.

If the rehabilitant successfully completes his/her first step they are encouraged to stay in the program and begin to serve the new people at the rehabilitation center. The purpose of this next step is to help the rehabilitant to begin serving other people and find their calling as a believer.

During this next step several things begin to happen. These people are now called leaders. They are given some responsibility to care for and serve the newest people coming into the program. They are often assigned 1-3 people to care for. They help the new people to become acclimated to the rehabilitation program. They help them to begin to read the Bible. They teach them how to pray and how to worship the Lord. They help them and challenge them to memorize the Scriptures and to actively participate in the daily activities.

As this happens a person who was a drug addict just four months before, is now a disciple maker. These young leaders gain real skills in leadership and as a result of their serving another person their own life also continues to be transformed. This is amazing when you understand that the average Christian never disciples even one person during their lifetime.

These new leaders have more freedom in this step. They are no longer required to live at the rehabilitation center all the time. They serve at the rehabilitation center for one week. They then go into the city to serve in the church and the ministry for the next week. They continue to do this for at least the next four months. In the city they continue to live communally in a small apartment that is rented by the church.

In the city they are responsible for street ministry, reaching out to the addicted. They do this by handing out informational flyers that explain to interested people what the rehabilitation program is all about. They hold weekly meetings where people who are seeking help attend, sharing their story of how Christ changed them and gave them hope. They attend and serve in all the ministries of the church. Some are ushers and servers. They greet people at the door of the church. They help clean the church, serving on the worship team and do anything that the church has a need for. In doing this they begin to understand how a church functions and what church ministry is like.

Because of this service and training these young men and women desire to become pastors and leaders. This is a natural, but deliberate plan of the leadership of the church. The churches have one goal, that is to disciple men and women who will continue to reach people by planting new churches in new cities.

During the course of rehabilitation teachers and ministers from other Cornerstone churches are often visit and teach. The rehabilitants hear how these leaders were once addicts, criminals and homeless themselves. They see the great transformation that has taken place and a desire to become like these leaders is planted in many hearts. All during the course of rehabilitation the rehabilitants are told that they were saved by God in order to go and serve others. They are told to pray about how they will serve when their rehabilitation is complete. They are challenged to form a team and go to the missionary training school. A desire forms among them and some of them begin to discuss how they can form a team and attend the Cornerstone missionary training school.

The result is that every year fifty to one hundred former drug addicts form teams of three to ten people. They go to missionary training school as a group. At this six-month school they learn the basic skills needed to go to a new target city, open a rehabilitation center and plant a church. As of the writing of this paper there are now almost one hundred Cornerstone churches in Russia with three hundred rehabilitation centers for the addicted, homeless and criminals. In the spring of 2015 sixteen teams will graduate from the missionary training school and will go to plant sixteen new churches and open rehabilitation centers. This years class includes two teams who will plant the first Cornerstone churches outside of the country of Russia.

Our WorkWe began our work with the Cornerstone churches by teaching weekly at the local rehabilitation center for drug addicts. In just a few months another center was opened for homeless people. We began to teach at this center also. Later a third center opened far outside the city. Karen and I would drive there once every week, often times helping the leaders get to the center. Many times we delivered food supplies for the centers. Soon new churches were planted in several cities nearby and our ministry expanded.

In our third year of relationship with the Cornerstone churches we began to travel into the Ural mountain area and into Siberia. Doors were opened for us to begin preaching in all the churches. Often we would travel for 15-30 days at a time, speaking every day in churches and rehab centers.

During these times of ministry we would preach and teach and then do personal ministry. Many of the people we ministered too had either just recently entered the rehabilitation program, or were just several months old in the Lord.

We found two things too be important in these times of ministry. The first was the need to clearly preach the basic message of the Gospel. Many of these young people could be classified as born again, but they actually had very little understanding of the Gospel. Often they thought that every individual sin committed would make you lost. They needed a clear presentation of how our sins are forgiven and what it means to follow Christ. These new believers had become followers of a set of rules, rather than followers of Christ.

We also found that the Holy Spirit would really touch peoples lives when we took time to individually pray for people. During a time of worship at a rehab center we would begin to lay hands upon people, pray for them and speak words of encouragement into their lives. Sometimes people would begin to weep as the Spirit healed their minds or emotions.

This was the basic form of our work with the Cornerstone Churches over eight years. We were given an open door by the leadership to speak and travel in their churches across Russia. The churches were both appreciative and generous to us. They often paid our travel expenses, something that is unusual for most missionaries.

In 2010 I was able to open the door for some of the pastors in the Cornerstone Association to travel to America. We did this not in order to seek funds or other help for the Russian churches, but rather to introduce them to our denominational leaders and to allow them to see various other ministries in the United States. They were able to spend time at First Baptist church in Houston TX, a very influential church. We also took them to Saddleback Church, Pastor by Rick Warren. While I hoped that our denominational leaders would reach out to these men and begin a relationship, this did not happen.

In 2011 Pastor Sergei Nyehpomnyehsheek and I went to Cuba for 10 days of ministry. The ministry time was good, but more importantly this trip deepened our relationship. We had many long talks during this time, and I was able to speak some things into Sergeis life that had an impact upon the entire church planting movement.

Some frustrations

Our ministry in Russia was fruitful. We saw hundreds of people make commitments to follow Christ as we preached. People were physically healed and delivered. We saw emotional and spiritual restoration. Many people called us their spiritual parents. The Cornerstone Churches asked us to move to Siberia, where they would rent us a flat and we would travel all over Russian speaking in their churches and conferences.

Despite the complete acceptance of our ministry by 2012 we began to feel discontent. We were impacting lives, but because of our lack of fluency in the language we felt that we were not personally making disciples. It was at this time the Lord also began to speak to us about returning to the United States and beginning a ministry to the addicted. We spoke with the leadership of the Cornerstone churches about this in the fall of 2013. In February 2014 we made the decision to leave Russia. In August of 2014 we attended the national conference of the Cornerstone churches. The leaders sent us back to the United States with their blessing through the laying on of hands. We also received a substantial financial gift from the Russian churches as they sent us to the United States as their missionaries.

Results and Testimonies

The results of our ministry in Russia are best shown by the words of our friends

Pastor Sergei Nyehpomntehsheek says about us, Michael and Karen are not Americans, they became a part of us, they think like Russian believers. They might call themselves Foursquare, but they are also Cornerstone.

Pastor Dmitry Zaborski says, Michael and Karen helped me build my church. They taught us what it means to serve as a missionary. Michael taught me how to preach. Michael and Karen opened the world up for us.

Oleg Lukoyanav, leader of a rehabilitation center says. Michael is my spiritual father, he showed me how to follow Christ.

Pastor Oleg Kuznetzov says, Michael and Karen served our church and our center and laid a foundation for our ministry, we will never forget them.

Pastor Ivan Beshlyaga says. Michael and Karen served our church and Bible School, they were like spiritual parents to us.

Ending Comments

In looking back at our years of service in Russia we clearly see the hand of the Lord at work both in us and through us. Our personal lives have been hugely impacted by this time. We grew in our faith and our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. While we served the Russian church and taught in their churches, we received from them far more than we gave to them. We are better human beings and better Christians because of what we experienced in Russia. We never thought that we would leave Russia. A large part of our heart will always be in Russia. I thank God that the dream of ministry to Russia, that he planted in my heart 44 years ago, was fulfilled. We give Him all the glory for what He has done in us and through us.

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