Kim invited me to join a teaching team at the Moscow Presbyterian Theological Academy in the winter of 2005. It was a thrilling experience and I have been there twice since as my heart for this movement grows.
It is fairly well known in our circles that we sent the Moffett family to Korea in 1890, a land that had been resistant to missionary activity. God honored their faithful witness and Korea has experienced powerful waves of the moving of God’s Spirit. South Korea is overflowing with tremendous churches. There are something like 140 Korean Presbyterian denominations (did we teach them that too?), with about three or four large ones. Now South Korea is sending mission workers all over the world, including Russia.
In 1992 a humble man named Hueng Rae Lee, called Elder Lee, left South Korea for Moscow. As a young man at a youth rally Lee had heard an evangelist say that he was trusting God to help him win something like 100,000 people to faith in Christ. Lee thought that was admirable, but too large a number for him to undertake. He made a covenant to win 10,000 people to Christ. He went to seminary thinking he would need to be a pastor to fulfill this commitment, but found that that wasn’t the right fit for the ministry. Eventually he went into business and was very successful. He was active in his church over the years, giving generously and serving as an elder.
Years later Lee’s wife had a serious stroke. As he sat by her bedside and prayed for her, he remembered the commitment made in his youth. His desire to fulfill it grew. He figured that South Korea was not the place to win 10,000 people because the churches were so large and effective and there were evangelists and church planters everywhere. He sold his prosperous business and was free to travel.
About that time the Soviet Union fell and Russia began opening itself to the world under the new policy of perestroika. He sensed that he should go to Russia. With his wife’s blessing he purchased a ticket and flew to Moscow alone. Knowing no one there, and not knowing the language, he walked the streets of Moscow, praying for wisdom. He began to identify some Koreans that had become Muscovites and, with time, a vision took hold. He would use his resources to start an academy, a seminary of sorts, to train Russians to become pastors. If a hundred pastors started a hundred churches and each reached a hundred people, that would honor his commitment to reach 10,000 people, though they weren’t Koreans.
The Presbyterians in Korea were and continue to be very supportive. The staff and administration of the academy are all Korean. Korean churches regularly send financial gifts, short-term teachers, and groups from congregations to sponsor new Russian Presbyterian congregations. To be in the Moscow Presbyterian Theological Academy is an intercultural experience. In one wing of the U-shaped building (a former factory) staff, administration, and guests are eating beautifully prepared and served Korean meals. In the other wing students are eating hearty, simple Russian meals in a less formal way. When a few Americans are there it is a tri-cultural experience of great joy and wonder.
There are now well over one hundred congregations in this network. Some of them have their own buildings, while others are renting whatever is available.
The conversion stories are thrilling. One pastor was the highest-ranking Soviet officer in his town. He had become a heavy drinker and his wife had left him. Meanwhile his daughter started going to a church and became a believer. He couldn’t believe it. So he went to see what this silliness was. Instead, he was impressed by the joy he saw in their rather primitive worship. His wife became a believer. Then he became a believer. Their marriage was restored and renewed. Within a year of his conversion the congregation told him that he should be their pastor. He agreed. With no formal theological training he began learning on the job, while taking once-a-month 26-hour train trips to the academy in Moscow. What a thrill to be the teacher for such a pastor and servant leader.
Another pastor was a professional wrestler and mafia-style hit man. The woman he was dating became a believer and took her new faith seriously. Since he wanted to keep dating her, he went to worship with her and very soon was a believer.
There are second-generation believers in this movement as well. The pastor of the largest church in the network is the son of a pastor. His father was pastor of a house church during the Soviet era and was eventually sent to a gulag prison for more than five years. The father never saw the new day of open and public preaching and leading churches, but his son is doing that now.
I can hardly explain what a privilege it has been to go three times to Russia to teach working pastors and pastors-in-training, knowing how great their faith is, how meager their resources, and how deep their joy. I don’t have the words to tell what it is like to preach to these emerging Presbyterian churches in Russia. When I was a youngster in Los Angeles there were bomb drills in the public schools. We knew that the Soviets had missiles aimed at us. Of all people on earth, the Russians were most to be feared and hated. And now I go to Russia and am welcome by brothers and sisters in Christ. I see a movement of the Spirit most of the world does not know, but is an every-day reality.
I have heard that the Moffetts first sent to Korea went there prepared to die in order to see a vital church take hold. God honored their faithful service. Elder Lee, his wife, two of their daughters and sons-in-law have made a similar commitment to the Church in Russia and God is bringing forth fruit. There are many challenges before them, but this is another example of what many have called Acts 29, another chapter in the never-ending story of the Church of Jesus Christ taking the good news of Jesus into all the world.
Harry J. Heintz is pastor of Brunswick Church in Troy, N.Y.
