The Protestant Crisis in Russia

by Eugeniy Nicholaevitch Nedzelskiy

An unbiased and honest analysis of the Protestant church of all denominations in Russia not only allows for, but demands, the conclusion that a serious crisis is at hand in the development of this branch of Christianity in Russia.

An unbiased and honest analysis of the Protestant church of all denominations in Russia not only allows for, but demands, the conclusion that a serious crisis is at hand in the development of this branch of Christianity in Russia.

Some statistics: In St. Petersburg there are several dozen Protestant churches. Only one of these has an attendance of over 1,000 people—the church of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (ECB) on Poklonnaya Gora. Ten to 15 more churches gather several hundred (from 200 to 800) at their Sunday services. The rest of the churches have anywhere between 15 and 100 people in attendance.

Some simple arithmetic reveals the most optimistic results: To the 1,500 attendees of the main ECB church we will add an average of 500 for each of the 15 churches with 200 to 800 in attendance, plus an average of 60 people for the maximum of 50 possible churches in our city with 15 to 100 people. As a result we come up with 12,000 people!

What does this figure tell us? On the one hand, it says that if we all gathered together we might have an impressive march down Nevsky Prospect or fill the main sports stadium, at which we could take some decent video footage to show somewhere overseas . . . .

But on the other hand…let’s remember that we are not talking about the number of Protestants in some little wayside town, but in St. Petersburg—a city of no less than 4 million people! That’s just about 0.3 percent!

And let us not forget that Protestants in St. Petersburg have succeeded in reaching such “impressive” results after 10 years of full religious freedom, accompanied by an incredibly high level of activity in every conceivable form of evangelization: crusades, festivals, marches, seminars, ministries prophetic, healing, and miraculous, various concerts, Bible schools, seminaries, Bible studies, home groups, free Bible distributions in the millions of copies, not to mention Christian books and Russian Orthodox churches! An unbelievable amount of energy, time, and money has gone into all of these efforts.

But there is a certain Russian proverb that says, “As we traded and bartered, we rejoiced, but then we settled our accounts and wept!” In my opinion, if we substituted the word “evangelized” for “traded and bartered,” then you couldn’t find a better picture of our present situation.

But perhaps “out there somewhere” in the expanses of our immense Motherland it could be completely different? Based on the figures of Patrick Johnstone, the average number of consistent attendees in Protestant churches across Russia is 393,000. If you include the number of Protestant “sympathizers,” that brings the count up to 1,041,000.

Some simple math reveals that Protestants comprise only about 0.7 percent of the general population of 150 million people! If these statistics don’t spoil your mood, all I can do is tip my hat to an eternal optimist.

Optimism is optimism, but the Scriptures persistently recommend that we “not think like children…” (1 Cor. 14:10, NIV), and that “by their fruit you shall know them…” (Matt. 7:16, NIV). So let me be so bold as to suggest that we should not only evaluate “them” but also ourselves, according to the fruit of our own labors.

But it is precisely here, in the area of self-evaluation, that we find a strange paradox. On the one hand, when we are at the beginning of a given work and evaluating our potential, we speak in categories of universal scale and scope, triumphantly announcing our intentions to subject whole cities, provinces, and republics to Christ. But when it comes to evaluating the results of such efforts, we shift the categories and begin to speak in terms of: “and if just one sinner repents…”

It seems that this sort of “double accounting” never allows us to be in the position of the loser. If everything works out relatively successfully, then we celebrate, “Yes, just as we planned!” But if it turns out that we were “shooting sparrows with a cannon,” then we put on piously wounded faces and make sure it is clear to everyone that“we’re not involved in a numbers game.” We suggest that to speak of the effectiveness of evangelistic efforts is unspiritual, or even unbridled blasphemy! In any other situation, that one, single, genuine conversion should make us rejoice more than anything else—but not if this rejoicing is a smearing of the truth, not if that single conversion is all we have to show for months of work and expense.

Not long ago I spoke with one native Russian “missionary” who had been specially trained by a Western mission to work among students, with whom he held regular studies. I asked him about the size of his groups. Without losing his nerve, this “missionary” explained that one of his groups has one person, and the other has twice as many!

This system of “double accounting” only fosters within us a deafness of heart and an anemia of the mind. My dear brothers and sisters and fellow Protestants, let’s leave this worthless “double accounting” behind and honestly admit that we are struck to the depths of our souls and disillusioned by the miserly results we have attained in the last 10 years of persistent and often self-sacrificing labor. So let us try and analyze together the reasons for our present situation.

In my opinion there are two groups of reasons: objective and subjective. Under the former, I recognize the main one to be the direct action of the will of God, which does not depend in any way on our efforts or desires. At the very least we need to remember that ultimately neither we, nor our sermons, nor prayers save men, but only God himself saves! We may distribute Bibles free of charge, but we cannot hand out the kingdom of God. Only God in the counsels of his will can decide whom he will save, how, and when (Rom. 9:16, 18).

Yet should we still expect, seek, and strive for the big results? Absolutely. It is just such energetic and capable striving on our part, and in the Lord’s name, that I will call the subjective factor. Since we can do nothing about the objective factor, it is the subjective factor that depends entirely on us. I am absolutely convinced that God wants and is inspiring us to actively use all of our opportunities in every kind of situation, in such a way that our labors are not only energetic and sacrificial, but also rational and reasonable.

The heart of the matter is this. The absence of these qualities inevitably leads to the deterioration of the effectiveness of our efforts—in a best-case scenario! In the worst cases it can neutralize our efforts, or even produce a result that is exactly opposite of what we had hoped for.

Let’s look at the life of the apostle Paul. On the one hand, this amazing man always attempted to be sensitive and obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit. For example, he went as planned to preach in Asia and Bithynia in obedience to God’s voice (Acts 16:6-7). On the other hand, wherever he turned up by the will of God, he strove to fulfill the evangelistic task “not like a man beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:26, NIV). Paul invested his whole being in preaching the gospel. He reflected a great deal about ministry in general, and about his own personal ministry in particular. It is no accident therefore that after the Gospels the majority of the New Testament is taken up with the labors of the apostle Paul. It is also then no coincidence that Paul, at least in my opinion, laid the foundation of Christian culture in Europe. Thus by much reflecting and striving to understand God better, Paul developed the one, all-important, and useful characteristic of a Christian minister: He always strove to minister in order to be maximally received by his audience (1 Cor. 9:19-22).

Having met a certain young man in the town of Lystra by the name of Timothy, Paul wanted him to join his “team,” as we’d say nowadays. The young man was a wonderful Christian, and had the best recommendations of the elders, and was clearly and dearly liked by Paul. But he could not join the ministry of the apostle’s “team” until he had been . . . circumcised! And circumcised by none other thanPaul himself. Why? Because Paul supported the idea that Christians should fulfill the Mosaic law? By no means! Paul did it “because of the Jews who lived in that area” (Acts 16:3, NIV). Paul, who harshly criticized the circumcision of believers (Phil. 3:2-3), did so in order to not arouse a negative response from the surrounding Jews!

What a shameful compromise! What an example of “man-pleasing”! Yes, and he may have received just such “compliments” from many of our present-day Protestant leaders. . . . Only his apostolic halo might have saved him from such reactions today, but then it hardly spared him from many problematic encounters with various church leaders in a host of cities. Paul performed the circumcision, despite the contradiction with his own personal convictions, despite the possible complications for Gentile Christians. On one side of the balance stood his convictions, but on the other side the reality of the Jews in Lystra. Paul knew if he had an “uncircumcised heathen” among his co-laborers that the Jews would never give him a hearing. They could not have let him into their houses, let alone into their hearts, and he would never have been able to communicate the news of salvation. Something had to be sacrificed on one side or the other, and Paul, without a moment’s hesitation, made a major sacrifice, in order “that I might by all means save some”! By circumcising Timothy, Paul did not save one Jew, but he won the most precious opportunity to be heard; then he could try to be understood, and in that God helped him.

One more glaring example. Paul went on to Athens and saw what he had earlier only heard about: a huge city filled with every possible idol. And so we read that “Paul was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16, NIV). Paul’s spirit obviously could not accept what he saw; his mind must have been screaming at him in protest, not to mention how his blood must have boiled at the sight! What would he then say to these pathetic, idol-worshiping Athenians? He probably could have confronted them with something like this: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom. 1:22-23, NIV).

But at the Areopagus he says, “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship. . .” (Acts 17:22-23, NIV). These idol-worshipers that are “very pious” (Russian synadodal translation)?! Well, it probably wasn’t very easy for Paul to say. But for the sake of receiving the right to a polite hearing, he stuffed all those emotions. And for the most part, precisely because of this approach, “a few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others” (Acts 17:34, NIV).

How does the experience of the apostle apply to our Protestant practice, where every possible effort is being made to advance the gospel? Let’s begin with a bit of history. What first brought Protestantism to Russia near the end of the 19th century, and now again at the end of the 20th? First were the efforts to preach the gospel. And how wonderful it would have been if Protestantism’s arrival were only marked by those holy efforts, but it also brought in a whole host of other things.

Remember how Paul behaved “as a Jew amongst the Jews, and as a Gentile amongst the Gentiles”? That is how he behaved, but our brother Protestant was not such an apostle. On the contrary, he held up high his very own brand of Protestantism with pride. The German Protestant forms came to us in the Volga regions and the Ukraine, just as they had been conceived in Germany. So also the English Protestants brought their own forms of Protestantism through the Caucasus and St. Petersburg. Likewise the American Protestants have now dashed in mounted on spirited steeds, brandishing their Stetson hats. And we Russian Protestants adapted toand exist in a form that is not at all Russian, but some kind of German-English-American mixture, with shades of Russian eclecticism added in for good measure.

Is it any surprise, then, that the average Russian citizen looks on us as somewhat strange, sometimes amusing, or even dangerous and eccentric aliens? How much can we then count on our efforts to be heard or understood?

That’s the first point, and now a second. Remember the apostle Paul’s conversation with the Athenian heathens? That was Paul, but our brother Protestant missionary, on the other hand, made absolutely no ceremonious attempts to establish contact with the representatives of the obviously dominant church in our land—the Orthodox Church. What did it matter to him that the Russian Orthodox Church had been here for over 1,000 years?

Without trying to whitewash all of the dark spots of their reputation, I think we must admit that the Russian Orthodox Church’s historically negative attitude toward Protestants has, to a large extent, been provoked and fed by Protestants themselves! In our relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, we have displayed far too little love, or patience, let alone reasonableness. The Russian Orthodox Church has established itself as the major spiritual authority in the Russian conscience. And we may beat our breasts as much as we like, and try to prove that we Protestants are really “good guys,” and desire to teach what is good and pleasing to God, and quote the Bible and point to miraculous healings, just as the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Russian folk sorcerers do, but the Russian people will always turn to their recognized spiritual authorities to confirm or reject our message. The spiritual authority in Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church.

How can she possibly have anything positive to say about those who consider her full of “idol-worshipers”? The answer is not hard to guess.

Is it any wonder then that we still comprise less than 1 percent of the general population? Of course, not! No one should be surprised. It’s not so much that the remaining 99 percent of Russian citizens don’t accept us; they can’t even comprehend us—just as we cannot hear ultrasonic waves or see infrared light.

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Eugeniy Nicholavetich Nedzelskiy is senior pastor of the Evangelical Russian Church, St. Petersburg, and founder and general manager of "Radio TEOS," an interdenominational Christian AM station broadcasting from St. Petersburg.

EMQ, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 292-297. Copyright © 1998 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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