A colleague and I just returned from a weeklong trip to two republics in the Volga region of Russia where we visited Russian Baptist church leaders and explored several unengaged people groups. The words “unreached” and “unengaged” are sometimes misleading, so let me be more specific. According to a 1992 report by Missions Frontiers, the Chuvash people group of Russia had a population of 1.3 million. Today, that population is closer to 2 million (with some ethnographers telling us on this trip that there may be as many as 3 million children of at least one Chuvash parent). Of those, there are approximately two-tenths of a percent (0.2%) evangelical Christians. This makes this group the single largest non-muslim minority people in Russia. There are no registered evangelical churches who work solely among the Chuvash, but we now know a couple of Baptist churches in Cheboksary, the capital city, that have sermons and hymns in both Russian and Chuvash. They desperately need New Testaments in the Chuvash language, and it seems they like the 1911 printing of the New Testament; but they are almost out of copies for distribution. They also need praise & worship hymnbooks in the Chuvash language.
They are some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. Descendants of the ancient Bulgar people, the official word is that they are Russian Orthodox, but from our first-hand discussions with Chuvash people, we have found that there is more of a moderate atheism mixed with a revival of ancient Chuvash animism. The Chuvash language belongs to the Turkic group of languages, said to be the only remaining branch of the Old-Bulgaric language. With two-thirds of the republic made up with Chuvash, Chuvashia (official name from 1991) has the lowest relative Russian population of any ethnically defined area of the Russian Federation.
What is more interesting is the huge shift toward urbanization. At the beginning of the 20th Century, only about 5% of the population lived in cities, but today 3/4 the population now dwells in urban centers.
Today, they are a factory people, making machines for factory or everyday human use. They make huge
looms for textile factories and diesel engines for cars and trucks.
We have met with the pastors of the Baptist churches of Cheboksary where about 170 members gather to worship (90% of whom are Chuvash). After talking with them about their vision for evangelism, I personally think it is going to take a three-pronged strategy to reach the Chuvash with a church planting movement: 1) urban- with a specifically urban ministry through the local church of the city, 2) regional- reaching each small town with church planting, and 3) people group- helping to facilitate the current ethnic revival among the Chuvash.
Will you pray for the Chuvash with me? These are the requests the Central Baptist Church pastor asked me to pass along to our friends and partners:
- Pray for quality spiritual leaders to be equipped in Cheboksary so that their missionaries could be trained and sent out to the villages throughout the republic.
- Pray for Christian resources- Bibles and hymnbooks for distribution.
- Pray for a Spiritual Awakening among the Chuvash.
- Pray for the strengthening of small groups which are meeting in Chuvashia.
3 comments:
This is so interesing, Buck. I prayed for these requests today. I pray that God will work in the lives of the Chuvash people. May God bless them!
thanks, Stacey! I'll post more about this same trip in another entry. We visited the Mordvin people groups (Ersya and Moksha).
I lived in Cheboksary for 6 months in 1997 and can agree that they are gentle, kind, welcoming people. I didn't know this information that you have printed, it makes me want to return only with a different purpose.
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