Mission and church leaders joined representatives from Christian educational institutions and charitable organizations as the International Evangelical Missions Forum convened at the Association for Spiritual Renewal’s (Russian Ministries’ in-country affiliate) new ministry center in Irpen, Ukraine. Irpen is a suburb of Kiev.

Based on the final counts, over 220 people, representing approximately 100 different ministries from 20 countries—including Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States—participated in the October 24-25 conference.

Sparked by a growing concern over the crisis-like tendencies in missions work as well as a slow down in church growth in the former Soviet Union, participants emphasized that international aid and the efforts of western missionaries have not produced expected results in the former Soviet Union. In addition, national churches have not been able to use their resources effectively, and have missed unique opportunities to develop self-sufficient ministries.

The forum didn’t linger on the problems, but chose to move ahead and identify strategic directions in which to develop missions activity in the former Soviet Union.

These strategic directions include:
• social evangelism—being open to a changing society and responding to its needs
• founding new churches, not simply dressing up old churches
• informal approaches to education—motivating and training students without removing them from their ministries
• developing a new missiology.

The two-day forum also stressed that effective partnership between churches and missions in the former Soviet Union demands new methods of cooperation and communication between the missions and the needs of the local churches and their mission strategies.

Meanwhile, the urgent task at hand is to prepare new ministry leaders who can responsibly and competently carry out missions work—the work of the gospel—in times of global and national crisis.

Greg Yoder, executive director of Missions Network News (MNN) and its weekday anchor, has traveled extensively in the former Soviet Union with Russian Ministries’ Senior Vice-President Sergey Rakhuba. Greg was in Irpen to cover the conference. Click here to read his blog of this trip.

At the end of September, Gennady Terkun, Russian Ministries’ national ministry director in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, Pavel Tokarchuk, administrative director of the organization’s Moscow office, and Alexander Plukchi, School Without Walls coordinator in Vladikavkaz, traveled to Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia to deliver humanitarian aid.

“These ethnic areas of North and South Ossetia and other regions of the Northern Caucasus have been trapped in territorial disputes for years,” noted Sergey Rakhuba, senior vice-president of Russian Ministries, “which flared again the early 1990s. However, they enjoyed comparatively peaceful times until a couple of years ago.”

Christians in America, who wanted to reach out to help the refugees and others who suffered through the horrors of war, fueled this mercy mission.

As the three men drove into the city, charred cars and fallen trees littered the road. In the city itself, very few houses, if any, were left unscathed in the attack.

“Many house were destroyed beyond repair,” observed Terkun. “But life continues. We saw an old man driving his herd of goats, and an old woman pushing a gas cylinder to her house so she could cook.”

Working with local believers in the city, the purpose of this trip to Tskhinvali was to deliver a second round of backpacks and children’s Bibles in the public schools. The backpacks were filled with schools supplies, warm blankets and clothing and other aid. The team also gave away hundreds of Russian Bibles to anyone who wanted them.

“We hope the Bibles we gave out will be a source of comfort for them, and may they find the living God, who alone can make up for any loss and fill a grieving heart with joy,” explains Terkun.

At each school they visited, the students and staff greeted them with joy and traditional Ossetian hospitality. But Terkun noted that the joy was tempered by the late summer war. “We still saw its [the war] signs in the children’s eyes—the anguish and horror. Some of them had to run through heavy gunfire and others lost their homes, their fathers and mothers . . . and by some miracle they survived.”

Terkun and Tokarchuk are sadly familiar with the violence and tragedy that frequently rocks the Northern Caucasus. Both men helped bring in relief and other aid to the nearby community of Beslan during its recovery from the violent and senseless school tragedy in September 2004.