Introducing
Eurasian Ministries

Welcome to the Eurasian Ministries website.

Tim McMahon - UK Director

This website provides information about training for evangelical Christian mission work in the fields of Russia and Central Asia. It also provides information on how UK and US Christians and churches can partner in this work by prayer, funding, and practical support.

From Russia to Central Asia with the Gospel

Our focus is on the work of the Eurasian College  and its graduates. Eurasian College is a missionary training college established in 1999 in the city of Kazan, in the state of Tatarstan, part of the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation constitutionally has freedom of religion, though Tatarstan itself has a majority Muslim population (the Tatar people). EMC has trained 99 graduates since 1999. Between them they have planted over 30 churches in Tatarstan and in Central Asia.

Sending church-planters from Russia
into Central Asia

Training and Supporting Workers

Training involves teaching, mentoring and practice mission sessions in a fully-funded one-year residential programme for 10 to 15 students each year. Twice a year graduates of the college in active ministry are invited to return to for continuing education.courses. In this way graduates receive continuing support throughout their ministries - epecially important for those working in persecuted regions. From September 2007 to June 2009 the College has run an evening course for students from churches in three regions within Tatarstan. We plan to resume the residential course in September 2009.

2007-2010 Kazan evening course students

Dedicated Staff Team

The staff team is led by College principal Feodor Dzuba, a Ukrainian pastor who moved to Tatarstan in the 1990s to help reach the Tatar people with the gospel, and to be involved in training them to reach other unreached people groups with the gospel. He leads a dedicated staff team who teach, mentor and practice mission with the College students.

Eurasian College Staff Team
Denis, Artur, Radik, Feodor,
Esenia, Natasha, Alfia, Zukhra

Aim, Vision and Funding

The AIM of the College is to equip local Christians in Russia and Central Asia for the task of evangelism and establishment of mission-minded evangelical churches, and to provide ongoing support and continuing education for their church-planters in the field.

The VISION is to raise up successive generations of missionaries from the mission-minded churches they establish, train them and send them as skilled gospel preachers and pastors to reach some of the least evangelized peoples of the world. This will be a long-term project spanning decades. The vision encompasses specific places where previous graduates of the College are already ministering, though time-frames for establishing new satellite training ministries are necessarily provisional due to persecution of churches in these regions. Our unchanging desire is to be available and active to be used by God to build His church in these regions, according to his timetable and in the places he chooses to bring in a harvest.

To find out more about the strategy for church-planting in Russia and Central Asia, click here

FUNDING for the work of the College and its graduates is provided by two charitable trusts:
     Eurasian Ministries UK  and
     Eurasian Ministries US
To find out more about these trusts click here

What We Believe

• We believe the Bible to be the inspired, only infallible Word of God.
• We believe there is only one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His atoning death on the cross, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory at some future time, unknown to people.
• We believe that all people are sinful and lost, and the salvation of men is absolutely essential and is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ and spiritual regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
• We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life, and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.

College News
February 2009

From 19 to 24 January, pastors, missionaries and preachers from all over Tatarstan gathered at the College for preaching training seminars run by Langham Partnership (John Stott's preacher training organisation). The these was preaching the book of Revelation. UK pastors David McCahon and Peter Comont led the sessions. Insur Shamgunov also taught!

Training to Preach from the Book of Revelation

Pastors discussing sermon preparation

During the week the participants listened to lectures and worked in groups to learn how to structure and prepare a sermon. On the weekend they had an opportunity to preach their sermon on the set passage from the book of Revelation. The seminar atmosphere helped us to better master the skills needed for preparing a sermon and to see the typical mistakes to avoid. Many of the pastors have received good material for a series of sermons to take back to their churches. Some of them have started to preach on the book of Revelation already! In the “Revival” Church at Nizhnekamsk two sermons on Revelation were preached on a single Sunday.

The seminar also included teaching on the themes of “Integrity in the life of the pastor” and ”The emotional involvement of people in our churches”. This provided the opportunity for preachers to reflect on their spiritual lives and to share experiences about the lives of people in their churches. Many of the pastors are isolated and minister in difficult places. The last seminar was of great encouragement to them. I thank you for your participation and prayers for the ministry in Tatarstan.

Intensive training in another city

Students in Nizhnekamsk working together to learn an Old Testament timeline

For a week in February, a record number of students came to Tim McMahon's Old Testament Survey course in Nizhnekamsk. There were between 15 and 20 students every night, from a wide range of ages and backgrounds. The group included an elderly married couple, a mother with her teenage daughter, and men and women of widely varying educational backgrounds. The material taught was interactive in nature, requiring the students to work in groups to place cards in their correct order on a timeline made of tape on the floor (see photo). That the majority of students came back four nights in a row, most after a full day at work, is testimony to their hunger to learn.

Prayer needs

• Pray for the fruit of the preaching seminars, that everyone who attended will proclaim the gospel more effectively in Tatarstan and feed their churches with the message of certain victory in Christ for those who persevere through persecution.
• Pray for the second part of the Old Testament Survey course to be taught in Nizhnekamsk in March and in Kazan in April, that the students will see how God's plans to save the world through Christ were set in motion in Old Testament times.

UK News
April 2009

College Founder awarded Doctorate!

College founder Insur Shamgunov and his doctoral thesis

In March Eurasian College founder Insur Shamgunov was awarded his doctorate by Oxford University! He completed his field-based research “Listening to the voice of the graduate: An analysis of professional practice and training for ministry in Central Asia” in under four years – a new record for this type of thesis in the Education faculty at Oxford University. We are now arranging translation of his thesis into Russian and distribution to Christian training institutions in Russia and Central Asia so that it can inform missionary and pastor training in the region for decades to come. If you wish, you can download his 300 page thesis - click here. Be warned, this is a 3 MB PDF file!

New Word Alive 4-9 April

If you are going to the New Word Alive Christian festival in Wales in the secomd week of April, why not say hello to me at the Exhibition stands? Below is a photo from last year. I would love to chat and bring you up-to-date on more sensitive news that I cannot put on this website.

Tim McMahon at New Word Alive in 2008

Prayer needs

• For Easter evangelism by College graduates and their churches in Russia and Central Asia.
• For perseverence in evangelism in the face of opposition to Christians by some of the authorities in these countries.

Email Tim McMahon for more detailed information about these and other items

tim.mcmahon@eurasian-ministries.org