Churches Need Coworkers, Not Tourists

Last in a series examining how Western Christians are helping reshape society in the former Soviet Union.

The social, political, and religious land-scape of the formar Soviet Union looks radically different today from what it most observers believe it will look radically different five years from now.

“The present degree of freedom we have in eastern Europe will not be there very long, because it is more due to anarchy than to design,” says theologian Peter Kuzmic, whose home country of Yugoslavia has been torn by ethnic and nationalistic fighting.

According to Kent Hill, executive director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, who is now living and teaching in Moscow, communist ideology in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is dead, but the stage may be set for some form of authoritarianism, which he noted is “deeply ingrained in the Russian political and historical situation.”

Kuzmic and Hill were among those who attended a recent gathering in Chicago of leaders of ministries active in the CIS. The consultation was sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies.

Too Much Of A Good Thing?

Activity among Western Christians in the CIS has been widely documented. By and large, church and parachurch organizations have made substantial efforts to get in on the ground floor of these countries-in-the-making. But those who have observed the activity closely say it has had negative, as well as positive, effects. And some worry that Western organizations have learned little in nearly two years of work in the once-closed republics.

“Americans have a great love for Russia,” observes Russian native Peter Sautov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Evangelism. But admirable motives have at times produced practical problems for churches in the CIS. He explained, for example, that when Russian churches host visitors from abroad, they must find hotel space, arrange for translators, and make other logistical arrangements.

“There is a need to begin a counseling ministry for the pastors in eastern Europe who have been invaded by Western ministers and religious tourists,” says Kuzmic. “[The pastors] don’t know how to close their doors. There is no time for prayer and Bible study.”

Lofty motives notwithstanding, it appears that some Christian activity has had the effect of benefiting Western organizations more than CIS churches. At the recent conference, Anita Deyneka of Deyneka Russian Ministries posed the question, “How many more Western preachers and choirs are needed in the commonwealth and in eastern Europe?” She called for ministry activity that seeks advice from nationals. While acknowledging that Western organizations have “fund-raising imperatives,” she called on ministries “not to care who gets the credit, so that we can be more free to cooperate and concentrate on the greater good of God’s kingdom.”

A Studied Approach

Other speakers expressed concern about the “hit-and-run” approach that characterizes some Western ministries. Said Hill, “Any study of the history of missions … would indicate that the amount of success is directly proportional to the amount of investment the missionary makes in understanding the culture of the people he goes to.”

Sautov pointed out that it costs $2,000 a month to support a Western missionary in Russia and only $100 a month to support a Russian worker, who already knows the language and the culture. “It is the Russian believers who should work for Russia,” said Sautov. “I don’t want to raise a generation of lazy Russian believers. We need help. But help means teaching us, training us, showing us. Let us be the ones to do it.”

The NAE-sponsored conference included discussion of broad strategies for dealing with the overwhelming response of the Soviet people to the gospel. Hill noted, for example, that church structures in the CIS are not ready to handle new believers. He called for greater denominational involvement, in spite of the potential drawbacks of denominationalism. The structure, tradition, and resources they provide are sorely needed, Hill said.

With the dawning of a new era, the church in the CIS will increasingly be forced to deal with a host of new issues. Deyneka pointed out, for example, that women make up a substantial majority of the church in the CIS, but that this is not reflected by women’s participation in church leadership and activities.

Perhaps the greatest challenge the growing evangelical church in the CIS must face, however, is the challenge of coexisting with the Orthodox Church. Many fear that the close ties between the Orthodox Church and the state threaten religious freedom. “It is not inconceivable,” said Kuzmic, “that evangelicals [and other, non-Orthodox groups] could become the new dissidents of postcommunist eastern Europe.”

Hill urged listeners, however, to be mindful of the positive characteristics of Orthodoxy, such as its beauty, tradition, and liturgy, and to seek opportunities for cooperation. Mark Elliott, director of the Institute for East-West Christian Studies, observed that on some points, evangelicals have more in common with the Russian Orthodox Church than with liberal denominations in the West.

Increasingly, leaders of ministries to the CIS are stressing the conviction that a unified approach will yield more fruit than the sum of individual efforts. This entails such goals as regular communication, shared data bases, and centralized clearing-houses of information.

Hill stressed that the success of missionary efforts in this pivotal time will depend on ministries’ willingness to cooperate. The ultimate goal, he added, is to meet the spiritual needs of people in the CIS, who currently are inflicted with a “spiritual malady characterized by pessimism and fatalism. The good news of the gospel,” he said, “is the only antidote to that spiritual malady.”

By Randay Frame

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