Introducing
Eurasian Ministries

Welcome to the Eurasian Ministries website

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 and each year since has had a full class of 18 students.The graduates do a second, supervised year on field placement, usually somewhere in Centrla Asia.
• 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. Students graduated from this course in September 2010. College staff now run preacher training sessions for churches in Kazan.

Students and graduates worshipping together at a continuing education conference

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

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
December 2011

Christmas + New Year

7 January is Christmas in the Orthodox calendar, and 1 January (New Year) is the most celebrated holiday in the year. The whole of Russia has this period as a holiday. The last week of December and the first week of January thus present a great opportunity for sharing the Good News in Russia about the Son of God come to Earth to save mankind. The students and staff at the College will be engaged in a variety of activities over this period to proclaim this wonderful message to many folk they would not normally gain access to because of work.

A staff member with some students and other church members carolling in December

Prayer

• PRAY that many people will hear the Good News of Christ's coming through the students' mission practice over the New Year period.
• PRAY for strength and stamina for the students as they do this short mission practice after the long Autumn term. Pray for the students who are a long way from home at a time of year when homesickness can be keenly felt.
• PRAY for all the churches in Tatarstan as they put on evangelistic events to share the Good News of Christmas with all people in Tatarstan.

Letter from the UK Director
January 2012

Eurasian Ministries UK Director Graham Herbert

Dear Christian friend,

Warmest greetings and very best wishes to you in 2012.

We can stride into the new year confident that ‘the gospel is the power of God for salvation’ Romans 1:16. Salvation is the greatest need of all people and nations and we have the privilege and responsibility to make it known and to help teach and train those who are eager gospel workers. Putting a well known saying into my own words “If our greatest need was an improved economy, God would have sent us the economic blue print; if our greatest need was for information, God would have sent us all a gift-wrapped Apple Mac Pro personal computer; if our greatest need was money, God would have sent us a generous banker but our greatest need is to be saved from our sin so God sent us a Saviour”.

Specific Focus

The focus of EM-UK is very specific – we exist to enable the Mission College in Kazan to teach and train men and women in Biblical understanding, Gospel priorities and lifelong Christian service.

New Training Resource

Over the last 2 years, quietly but with steadfastness and painstaking effort, a small group has been translating and preparing the Moore Theological Course for use in the Russian language.www.external.moore.edu.au

The first few modules of the Moore Theological College correspondence course are now available in the Russian language

You will be greatly encouraged to hear that a group of 28 (including staff of the Mission College and church leaders of the Faith and Life Church, Kazan) are now coming to the end of the first term of study completing the ‘Introduction to the Bible’ unit. To qualify for the Moore Preliminary Certificate in Theology they will need to study and be examined in six units. I will be the examiner on behalf of Moore College. This is a highly significant development and has huge potential throughout the Russian speaking world of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

A group studying the Moore Course

New Partnership

EM-UK has for a little while been seeking a partnership with another mission to strengthen and support its work at the Eurasian Missionary College in Kazan. We have found a partner in People International www.peopleintl.org.uk which is led in the UK by John McLernon. The PI purpose statement reads: "To unveil God's glory to Central Asian Muslims by establishing and enabling his church".

PI is increasingly aware that the gospel is spread most effectively, not by European missionaries, but by training and equipping local Christians to become pastors-teacher-evangelists. They recognise the Mission College in Kazan as a strategic centre for this.

The EM-UK Trustees are persuaded that a partnership will be a significant step forward for EM. Administrative matters will be handled by the PI Tunbridge Wells UK office and I will be left free to teach, and work with the College staff with the additional help of the experienced PI field staff. We remain an independent mission and all gifts are directed, as normal, to the ministry of EM-UK.

Thank you for standing with us in this great task,

Graham Herbert
Director, Eurasian Ministries UK