One Year for Jesus
Name of Partnership: One Year for Jesus
Ministry Name: New Testament Church, Perm Russia
Type of project: Evangelism/Discipleship
Country/Region: Russia
Project Overview: This project will help send teams of Christians who have volunteered one year of their lives to take the gospel to every city, town and village in Russia.
Project Description:
Global Opportunities for Christ has been partnering with the New Testament Church (NTC) in Perm, Russia, for close two decades. NTC is one of the most influential churches in the former Soviet Union both in vision, size and
the number of churches it has planted. Their main congregation numbers approximately 4,000. At last count, they had planted a minimum of 420 churches in the Perm and surrounding regions.
Our ministry partner in Russia is Edward Grabavenko, the senior pastor of New Testament Church in Perm, Russia, with a membership of 4,500 believers and 380 daughter churches. Edward is also the head of the Russian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith (RCCEF—formerly the Pentecostal Union), the largest denomination in the territory of the former Soviet Union. It accounts for more than 3,400 officially registered churches and religious organizations with over 350,000 people in a regular attendance in 71 regions of Russia. As head of this influential body of evangelical believers, Edward now has a broad platform to spread his big vision and reach all of Russia with the gospel of Christ. Global Opportunities for Christ has been partnering with Edward since 1998. As long as we have known him, Edward has been a man with remarkable apostolic gifting, keen spiritual instincts, strong organizational abilities, and good business sense.
In September 2010, Edward was responsible for launching the ‘One Year for Jesus’ Project with the goal to make the Good News of Jesus Christ available for every person living in Russia. Hundreds of people of different ages have set aside their studies and work, dedicating one year of their lives to serve God by going and sharing the gospel in small, often remote communities, bringing hope to every home. Today there are 40 mission teams, totaling 700 people within the project, working in different regions of Russia. In the past ten years they have seen over 2.8 million people confess Jesus as Lord. House churches have been started in many communities that the teams have visited. Edward’s vision is to plant 10,000 new churches.
One Year for Jesus team members do not start churches and support missionaries in all the remote villages that they visit. To do so, they would need thousands of missionaries. Many of the places they reach will be places where missionaries will not be able to settle down.
But they are working on a distance-learning Bible course that will be offered through the Internet and also by correspondence classes. This way they can help those who accept Christ in remote communities so that they can keep in touch with those in larger, regional churches and learn more about God and grow stronger in their faith.
All team members have to be recommended by the senior pastors of their churches. The churches where the teams are being formed have all had a positive experience in church planting. These are churches that can gather volunteers ready to dedicate one year of their life to the ministry.
Among the unreached and least-reached nations within the former Soviet Union that RCCEF is working among, most of those are Muslim people groups.
During the era of Communist rule, Soviet leaders sought to eradicate Islam because they saw allegiance to Islam as a barrier or threat to the unity of the working class. But now Islam is making a comeback. There is a growing influence of Islam in the North Caucasus (between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea on the west and the Caspian Sea on the east) which is a reflection of the increasing disillusionment of a broken Russian political system. As a result, Islamic clerics are speaking out critically and openly of Moscow. There is also a developing favor on the part of many Muslims for the imposition of Sharia Law.
The Tatars and Bashkirs (Muslim people from the mid-Volga region) are making unprecedented claims for autonomy. With Islamization on the rise, now is the time for missionaries working among Muslim people groups to win the hearts and minds of the people before a more fundamental version of Islam becomes too entrenched.
The Joshua Project, a non-profit Christian ministry focused on gathering and distributing information about the world’s least-reached ethnic people groups, has identified and compiled statistics on these groups, among whom RCCEF missionaries are working. With the exception of the Bashkir people, evangelical Christians represent significantly less than 1% of the entire population.
|
Ethnic |
Number |
% Christian* |
| Tatars |
5.4 mil |
0.49 |
| Bashkirs |
1.6 mil |
1.10 |
| Chechens |
1.3 mil |
0.01 |
| Avars, Dagestani |
779 k |
0.01 |
| Azarbaijani |
615 k |
0.20 |
| Dargins |
447 k |
0.01 |
| Kumyks |
440 k |
0.01 |
| Lezgins |
431 k |
0.02 |
| Laks |
163 k |
0.03 |
| Tabarsaran |
152 k |
0.08 |
| Nogai |
95 k |
0.02 |
| Non-Muslim unreached/least reached people groups RCCEF is working with: | ||
| Komi |
96 k |
1.2 |
| Nenets (Reindeer People) |
46 k |
0.67 |
| Total |
11.564 million |
|
* Percentage of Evangelical Christians
Basic expenses for a missionary team of four people:
- Monthly support: 10,000 rubles each (40,000 rubles/ $530 dollars) will provide team members with meals, basic transportation and money for toiletries, enabling them to reach new communities.
- Rent for two one-room apartments: 30,000 rubles each (60,000 rubles/ $800 dollars). An additional $300 per month will equip teams with musical instruments and sound equipment to hold crusades, cover emergency costs such as vehicle repairs, as well as provide for some means of transportation to surrounding communities where local church communities cannot assist.
Total: $1,630
Every day these One-Year for Jesus teams witness the greatest miracle of all–seeing people receive the grace of God and find salvation through Jesus Christ. It is an ambitious project, and may take 8-10 years, but today you can join in this vision and be a part of the legacy of bringing the Word of God to people all over Russia.
Become a Supporter to Reach the Unreached and Least-Reached People Groups in Russia!
Leader Bio:
As Head Bishop of the Russian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith, Edward Grabovenko is one of the most prominent evangelical leaders in the Church of Russia.
When he was 21, God called Edward, a native of Ukraine, to the unreached region of Perm in the Ural Mountains of Russia – a large area famous for its prisons and lack of Christian witness. After graduating from Bible school in 1991, Edward started the New Testament Church in the city of Perm. In the last twenty-five years, the church has grown to 4,000 people. They have started 450 daughter churches in the Perm region, as well as in the Muslim republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, and in large cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, and Chelyabinsk, among others. They also started a Bible School that has been ongoing for 25 years, and a missionary school to train church-planters and missionaries.
In 1997 Edward was ordained Bishop of Perm Region. In December 2009, Edward was elected to become the Head Bishop of the Russian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith (Pentecostal Union).
Edward Grabovenko has a vision to reach every community in Russia with the gospel.
Sponsoring Organization:
Global Opportunities for Christ