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

• From September 2000 until June 2007 the College ran a fully-funded ONE-YEAR FULL-TIME RESIDENTIAL MISSIONARY TRAINING PROGRAMME for 8 to 15 students each year. Training involved teaching, mentoring and practice mission sessions. The programme resumed in September 2009 with 20 students.
• Twice a year graduates of the college in active ministry are invited to return to Kazan for a CON|TINUING EDUCATION PROGRAMME. In this way graduates receive continuing support throughout their ministries - especially important for those working in persecuted regions.
• In September 2007 the College began EVENING COURSES for church leaders in three different regions of Tatarstan. This course will run until to June 2010.

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
Feodor, Artur, Aslan, Radik,
Marina, Natasha, Mariam, Esenia

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.

Mission News
December 2009

Church helps community and changes lives

Eurasian College graduate Radik G serving in DERBYSHKI shares with great joy of the district officials changing their attitude to the church and allowing them to use the town’s “Culture House” for meetings, including evangelistic events. This came about because of the good work the church did during the summer among children.

Children attending a Derbyshki church event

Radik also shares of the tragic home-life of some children due to alcoholism of parents, and the refuge that church members and the church children’s work provides. Two 14 year old girls went to summer camp because of the church’s ministry, have professed Christ, and are now growing in the Lord. The church is gearing up for a number of evangelistic Christmas events, and ask for our prayers.

Prayer needs

• PRAISE God for the new life – spiritually and emotionally – that the gospel and God’s people are bringing to young people in Derbyshki, and for city officials recognising the benefit the church brings to the community
• PRAY for evangelism over the Christmas season, that people will accept invitations to see the Jesus film and come to meetings where they will hear about Christ.

Bearing fruit in the Crimea

Misha G serving in THE CRIMEA relates a remarkable opportunity he had to explain the gospel to five leaders of another faith, and dispel their preconceptions about Christianity. The meeting went so well that the men wish to have further meetings!

People are interested in the library books even in cold weather

Despite the cold weather, educated people are expressing interest in the library Misha and Nikolai run. God’s word proclaimed and Christian lives of integrity are having an impact in the Crimea!

Prayer needs

• PRAISE God for Misha's meetings with leaders of other faiths.
• PRAY for future meetings - for a true understanding of following Christ and willingness to do this.

College News
January 2010

Preaching Training Enthusiastically Received

A pastor preaches after a week of intense training for 12 pastors and 18 students training for missionary service at the Eurasian College in Kazan, Tatarstan.

Pastors travelled hundreds of kilometres from all over Tatarstan, in low temperatures (typically -20 degrees C) on snow-ploughed roads, in order to be at the conference. They had to work hard when they arrived, learning three aspects of sermon preparation:

Understanding the meaning of a text: Associate Pastor of Faith & Life Church in Kazan, Seva Sarandov taught this material, helping the preachers to identify the main idea of any given Bible passage, rather than preach the ideas the words or ideas that the verses trigger in the preachers’ minds.

The message of the book of Acts: After shovelling snow for a day to free his car from snow in Devon to drive to Heathrow, Graham Herbert (photo below with interpreter Alfia) arrived in Kazan to teach the theme of the spread of the gospel from the book of Acts. It was exciting material that encouraged the church-planters in their endeavours, and gave them an understanding of Acts that will inform their preaching in coming months.

Graham Herbert teaches from the book of Acts

Preaching to the heart: I (Tim McMahon) taught the late-afternoon session each day. We considered how to preach the message of grace from every biblical text in a way that addresses the hearts and changes the lives of our hearers. Despite tiredness after a long day’s work, the students and pastors were highly motivated to engage with this issue, and saw how the most common method adopted by Russian preachers for applying God’s Word to the lives of hearers (stressing just the moral imperatives in a text) can undermine the Bible’s overall message of grace to which each text contributes. I gave some sample sermons so the pastors could experience being captivated by the grace of Christ, and see how this can motivate profound change. I was pleased to see the pastors wrestle with changing their approach in the workgroup sessions, and to hear them trying to preach grace in their practice sermons at the end of the week.

Some play, not just work!

Pastors and teachers having dinner together

Conferences such as this provide an important opportunity for much needed fellowship between pastors doing gospel ministry in difficult contexts. Graham and I shared in meals and conversations (through interpreters!) that continued long into the night after we left (photo with pastors). The students training at the College were able to hear directly from pastors what church planting ministry is like over the long term, as some of the pastors have been labouring for more than 15 years. All were spurred on to serve!

Prayer needs

• THANK God for the students’ and pastors’ commitment to become better expository preachers.
• PRAY that they can put into practice what they learned in their ministries.

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

tim.mcmahon@eurasian-ministries.org