Urban Ecclesiology: Who is the Evangelical Christian Missionary Union in Russia?

Based on my previous post, some have asked who the Evangelical Christian Missionary Union is. The Christian and Missionary Alliance(C&MA) sent its first missionaries into Russia in 1993 and began planting churches in the southern-most provinces of European Russia. In 1994 eleven churches were birthed that multiplied into thirty-seven churches by 2003[1] and “has now grown into a family of 60 churches.”[2] They also started a Bible school that became the accredited Kuban Evangelical Christian University. During the following decade, “over 3000 new believers were baptized.”[3] New groups that formed as a result of these baptisms led to a church planting vision for reaching urban populations in Russia’s major cities. By 2004 the C&MA made additional Russian partners beyond ECMU, and ECMU and C&MA were reestablished as independently registered structures in Russia. Moreover, since the inception of the new Russian denomination, ECMU and C&MA have increasingly expressed diverging theologies related to ecclesiastical forms and practice.[4]

            C&MA officially became a denomination in 1974. Dr. L. L. King, former C&MA president and protégé of A.W. Tozer, said that C&MA “was not established as a mission divorced from the normal activity of a church, but a church which had within it the life and function of a mission…. The mission came first and the church grew out of a mission.” The four elements of its core theology reflect this missional aspect as it focuses on the saving, sanctifying, healing and transformational power of the gospel on the community. More than 800 C&MA missionaries are currently deployed to over fifty countries “planting churches and training national church leaders, providing relief and development assistance, medical and dental care, and microenterprise [sic] projects.”[5]

C&MA missionaries are at work in “seven key cities of Russia,”[6] namely Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ryazan, Nizhniy Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, Tyumen, and Krasnodar, whose combined populations account for one-eighth of the total population of the Russian Federation. Their work ranges from church planting to church development, “theological education, small business development, collaboration in camping ministries and rehabilitation centers, and creative outreach and service through meeting felt needs and interests of people in these cities.”[7] Their Russian partner ECMU adopted the same four-fold theological standard for their logo as well as their ecclesiological expressions.[8]

ECMU was formed as a denomination in the mid-1990s “by unifying several churches and the Apocalypse Mission together under one organization.”[9] In his Mission in the Former Soviet Union, Walter Sawatsky labeled this type of unification “an ecclesial shift.”[10] Even though it, as well as the Baptist church, is scorned as cults in Russia, the number of ECMU churches has multiplied five-fold over the last fifteen years and is presently the second largest evangelism partner of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB) in Russia. IMB has partnered for several years extensively with ECMU in Moscow and St. Petersburg to plant new churches, and one such direct partner in St. Petersburg is the Great Commission Church planted by Dmitry A.Frolov. ECMU in St. Petersburg is still considered a primary partner for IMB in evangelism events.[11]

            I'll discuss more of ECMU's ecclesiology next week.

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[1] According to statistical information presented in Sharon Linzey, Christianity in Russia and post-communist Europe: Directory 2003 (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2003), 295.

[2] The Alliance Russia Field, “Four Key Initiatives.”

[3] Ibid.

[4] Original Christian and Missionary Alliance ecclesiastical teaching was “congenial” to ecstatic worship experiences like speaking in tongues and some of their number in America participated in these experiences (see Edith W. Blumhofer, ed., Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 77). However, current publications by the Evangelical Christian Missionary Union discourage such practices and recommend the use of “only clear and translatable languages” (Translated by author. See Evangelical Christian Missionary Union, “Декларация Конференции ЕХМС о Созидантии на Единой Основе Евангельского Вероучения, Объединяющего Субъекты ЕХМС,” Presented at the Missionary-Pastors’ Conference in Moscow on 12 July 2000. http://www.exmc.ru/about/declaration (accessed 17 August 2009).

[5] Christian and Missionary Alliance, “Our History: Then & Now,” (n.d.), http://www.cmalliance.org/about

/history (accessed July 8, 2009).

[6] The Alliance Russia Field, “About Us,” (2007), http://www.cmainrussia.org/go/about (accessed July 9, 2009).

[7] Ibid.

[8] Evangelical Christian Missionary Union, “Логотип ЕХМС,” (2003). http://www.exmc.ru/about/logo (accessed August 17, 2009).

[9] The Alliance Russia Field, “Making Russian Friends,” (February 10, 2009). http://www.cmainrussia.org

/news/main/111/ (accessed August 1, 2009).

[10] Walter W. Sawatsky, “Return of Mission and Evangelization in the CIS (1980s - Present): An Assessment,” in Mission in the Former Soviet Union (ed. Walter W. Sawatsky and Peter F. Penner; Schwarzenfeld: Neufeld Verlag, 2005), 94-119.

[11] Clinton J. Stewart is the IMB strategy coordinator for St. Petersburg, Russia. Interview by author, skype chat, Moscow, Russia, 17 August 2009.