75 years of faithful ministry…

Since the beginning of the year in InSight, we have looked back with praise to God for the way He has enabled SGA to serve evangelical churches across the lands of Russia throughout our 75-year history. This joyful service has always been rendered with the help of our partners, and with the proclamation of the Gospel in mind. While the provision of doctrinally sound Bible and theological training has been our top priority as a mission, there are many other areas where SGA has sought to be a reliable equipper and encourager to Russian-speaking believers as God granted the opportunity.

In the Early Days Equipping With Bibles and Bicycles

Even before founder Peter Deyneka began SGA in 1934, equipping the saints was never far from his mind, as daughter Ruth Erdel relates. “When my father went back to his homeland in 1925, he intended to stay as long as the Lord led. He rented a horse and open buggy in which to travel from town to town. After his marriage, my mother would sing at his meetings and at times, other ladies would join them to form a small choir. After several months of this kind of evangelism, local brothers encouraged my father to return to America and raise money in order to print more Bibles, and to enable them to buy bicycles, which would aid them in their visits between the villages.” Peter did just that, and nine years later founded SGA in Chicago. Interestingly, the provision of bicycles was an important tool for furthering missionary work in Europe and what is now the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), continuing well into the 1990s under the leadership of current SGA president Bob Provost.

The Risky Job of Equipping the Saints in the Communist Years

As SGA grew, so did our mission’s endeavors to equip churches with what they needed to reach their people for Christ. The need grew more urgent as the Soviet government brutally cracked down on the churches in the 1930s, and in subsequent periods. Doing whatever it took to get supplies of Russian-language Bibles and Christian literature to the churches was a high priority. SGA senior representative Andrew Semenchuk says it’s amazing what our Russian brothers and sisters could accomplish through their ingenuity. “From 1970 until the Soviet Union collapsed, we printed and delivered thousands of Bibles, New Testaments and Christian books to special storage locations in several countries bordering the USSR — countries such as Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The local Christians would then take these books into Belarus, Ukraine and Russia by various means when they visited relatives and friends on the other side of the border. We had a fleet of vans in France and Austria that were used to take literature into Eastern Europe. We had no secret compartments in the vehicles and did not smuggle, but the Lord protected this ministry until the Iron Curtain fell. In all those years, we only lost one van that was confiscated in Czechoslovakia. And during those years we had other means of equipping the churches.”

In the late 1970s, SGA’s work continued in the Western European refugee camps, which were populated by thousands of people fleeing from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations. We organized special programs to help the refugees find work and housing, along with language lessons in English or German — and of course, these lessons led to opportunities for the Gospel. In cooperation with the Biblical Education by Extension program (BEE), SGA offered Theological Education by Extension courses for pastors and church workers. In time, we were able to offer a Russian-language version of the Moody Bible Correspondence courses. We also utilized the power of radio, beaming thousands of doctrinally sound Christian programs across Soviet borders.

The Lord Answers The Prayers of Millions – Brings the Wall Crashing Down

Winds of change began to blow in 1985 with the ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev — the last Soviet leader. Eventually, the breakup of the Soviet Union came in 1991, and the door was flung wide open to help our Russian brothers and sisters make the most of the unprecedented opportunities. Under the leadership of president Dr. John Aker in 1992, SGA opened Regional Ministry Centers (RMCs) in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, for the purpose of supplying and encouraging Bible-preaching churches as they reached their people for Christ. In addition to facilitating Bible training and the provision of Christian literature, SGA assisted in numerous evangelistic endeavors led by local churches. These included events such as Black Sea evangelism, riverboat evangelism in Siberia, prison outreaches like Birthday for a King at Christmas, and historic evangelistic crusades such as 1994’s Christ for Kiev crusade with Dr. Grigory Komendant, which saw 70,000 Bibles distributed in Ukraine’s capital city.

The New Era Brings Expanded Opportunities

September 1994 saw more historic changes as Dr. Bob Provost assumed the presidency of SGA, refocusing our mission to serve the churches even more effectively through sponsorship of seminaries and Bible institutes. But other means of equipping the saints were also launched. SGA helped equip evangelical churches in Kazakhstan to reach leprosy victims, provided bicycles to church planters in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and began sponsorship of the Russian Christian folk music group Blagovestie (Good News), as they proclaimed the Gospel in song.

Sending Out Faithful Men

Also in 1994, SGA partners began to sponsor faithful church-planting missionaries, who are selected and sent out by their home churches to unreached cities, towns and regions. We provided them with Bibles and literature, sound systems, keyboards, overhead projectors, bicycles, and occasionally even motor vehicles. Together with our partners, SGA helped church planters with church construction or facility rental. Huge tents were provided for outdoor evangelistic events. Hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid — or funds for the church planters to purchase were provided for distribution to needy individuals and families in crisis. And resources were provided for Sunday school curriculum and youth ministry.

In more recent years, SGA partners have  assisted churches in response to horrific tragedies. Working in conjunction with SGA/England, SGA’s U.S. office helped churches respond to the Kosovo refugee crisis with a half-million dollars worth of aid, collected with the help of the Winnebago County Bar Association in Rockford, Illinois. In September 2004, SGA partners helped the Beslan Baptist Church respond to the horrific terrorist attack on a Russian public school that killed more than 330 people, including 186 schoolchildren. Pastors Sergei and Taimuraz Totiev lost six children between their families, but their own sorrow didn’t keep them from ministering the love of Christ to the grieving city. SGA partners provided aid for the church to distribute, along with sponsorship of youth ministry and grief counseling conferences in partnership with Grace Community Church in California. We also supplied the churches with the books, Safe in the Arms of God and The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness, by Dr. John MacArthur.

Today, SGA partners are sponsoring nearly 400 church-planting missionaries across the lands of Russia, and we’re asking the Lord to raise up even more faithful men for the work. While much progress has been made, a full 90 percent of Russian cities, towns and villages remain without a Bible-preaching church!

From Sunday Schools Being Forbidden to Wonderful Children’s Ministries

To the evangelical churches we serve across the lands of Russia, teaching children and future generations about the Lord has always been of crucial importance. But under communism, it was illegal, very difficult, and done at great risk. Since the Soviet breakup, children’s workers and Sunday schools have been sponsored and supplied. SGA partners have supported children’s outreaches such as summer camp ministries, and especially ministries such as Orphans Reborn, and the Immanuel’s Child Christmas ministry. As of 2008, a total of 50,369 children have participated in summer camps, while 53,521 children have been reached through Immanuel’s Child. In addition, 92,968 children have been reached through Orphans Reborn since the ministry was launched in the year 2000. Our partners have helped repair and install toilets and showers in a number of orphanages, and repaired gymnasiums that were unused because of leaking roofs and damaged floors. As a result, these orphanages are now open to our church-planters and missionaries to conduct Bible clubs, AWANA clubs and child evangelism sessions.

Praising God For What He Has Done

As you can see, there are so many “great and mighty things” that our faithful God and Father has accomplished through this tiny mission. There just isn’t room to mention it all! No matter what we’ve done over the past 75 years of ministry, our goal has always been to see the people of Russia and her neighboring nations won to saving faith in Christ. And untold thousands have been gloriously saved. We have much for which to be thankful, and much yet to do. Until He comes again, may the Lord continue to find us faithful to the mission He has given us to fulfill. And may we all remember that wonderful motto of Peter Deyneka — as true today as it was on that cold January day in 1934 . . .

Much prayer, much power!