Project 250: Strategy for Changing a Nation

Following the initial evangelism boom of the early 1990s, Russia's Christian leaders faced a stark reality. Even if the Gospel could be preached to all of Russia, they realized, there were not enough churches to disciple the thousands of new believers. It was clear that starting new churches had to be as important as making new believers.

So began Project 250, a mustard seed of a plan to train 250 church planters who would, in turn, start new congregations in Russia. Wheaton, Ill.-based Peter Deyneka Russian Ministries, an organization founded in the waning days of the Soviet Union, conceived and implemented the plan with the help of Russian church leaders.

At the outset the ministry faced opposition from church leaders who viewed church planting as a formula for church splits and competition, according to Sergey Rakhuba, one of Russian Ministries' first indigenous workers. The first training seminar, held in 1992, was marked by disagreements as pastors argued that church planting would weaken existing churches and cause them to fight over members.

There were also those who feared that bold evangelistic activity would bring unwanted attention from the government. Many were fearful that the communists would return to power and immediately crack down on the church to stifle any advances it made, Rakhuba said.

Despite the obstacles the ministry exceeded its modest goals and by 1995 Project 250 had trained 2,000 church planters.

"God did something miraculous through that vision. He gave us the resources to do training seminars all over the former Soviet Union, in places like Siberia, Kiev, Minsk," Rakhuba said. "More than that, those guys that were opposing us were now starting to join us and partnerships were developing."

The support was so strong that Project 250 grew in scope, evolving from a plan to train individual church planters into a long-range strategy for starting churches in every region of the former Soviet Union.

The revised Project 250 is a plan to start 250 regional centers to train and support thousands of church planters. Each regional center serves as a hub for church planters in a particular geographic region where they receive ongoing training, meet with their directors to review their activities, and have fellowship with other church planters, Rakhuba said.

Like forts scattered through the countryside, the regional training centers are a home base for the church planters. They come to the centers every month to meet with the director and their fellow missionaries to talk about their work and to pray for one another. Periodically, they attend intensive training courses to help them develop the skills they need to pastor, evangelize or counsel.

Through these centers, Russian Ministries looks to fulfill the new goal of Project 250: to train enough planters to start 62,500 new churches, one for every 2,000 Russian families, by the year 2020.

"It looks impossible humanly speaking but all is possible for God," Rakhuba said. "I believe that...we will accomplish this."

The Partnership of Western Ministries and Indigenous Church Planters

Partnership is key to implementing a plan as big and complex as Project 250. No one ministry is equipped to deal with all the facets involved in identifying and training church planters and then putting them in the field and supporting their work.

Perhaps the most important partner is the Union of Evangelical Christians Baptists - Russia's oldest and most widespread Protestant denomination. With its network of church leaders and buildings throughout the former Soviet Union, the UECB provides many of the people and much of the capital infrastructure needed to identify and train missionary church planters. Many missionary trainees come from UECB churches, training is held in their buildings, and some churches raise the support needed to keep missionaries on the field.

"It is a good situation for us because we identify new leaders and [Project 250] trains them," said Ruvim Voloshin, the denomination's liaison with Russian Ministries. "Also, the missionaries often work with our pastors to help build up our churches." When a church planter starts a new congregation it often becomes part of the UECB and receives support from the denomination.

The partnership benefits all Russian Christians because they see the body of Christ working together, Voloshin said. "It is better for them to see that different organizations are not in competition with one another, but in cooperation."

Many international Christian groups work alongside Russian Ministries in support of Project 250. The Alliance for Saturation Church Planting, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ International, Samaritan's Purse, and Russian-American Christian University are among the many groups who contribute their resources and expertise to the enterprise.

The Alliance plays a central role in helping train church planters. Alliance staff goes to the Project 250 regional centers where they instruct "regional trainers" in how to train church planters in their territory. So far they have trained about 150 regional trainers who have passed on their knowledge to thousands of others.

The partnership works well for the Alliance because it gives the ministry the structure is needs to effectively minister, without the burden of maintaining it, the Alliance's Bob Mackey said. "[Russian Ministries] brings an infrastructure that we don't have. We are rather free floating and loose and through these training centers we are able to work throughout the country, but without the responsibility of maintaining them," he said.

Russian Ministries benefits because it gains instructors who don't have to be trained or supported. Also, Alliance workers observe and report on how the regional centers are faring and offer suggestions for improvement, he said. "We bring objective consulting to their network."

Project 250's emphasis on Russian nationals to do the actual church planting is probably the most important key to its success. Raising leaders from within a nation to reach its own people rather than relying on foreign missionaries is more effective from a cultural standpoint, especially in Russia, where Westerners are sometimes regarded with suspicion, Rakhuba said.

Christian leaders are slow to trust foreign workers, especially those who attempt to apply Western methods to Russian culture. An indigenous missionary who understands the language and culture will gain trust and acceptance from local church leaders sooner than a foreign missionary, he says.

It's also much less expensive to fund a Russian national.

"It takes $45,000 a year to train and support a foreign worker. With that much money we could train and support 10 indigenous church planters," Rakhuba said.

Training national church planters is crucial for another reason, said Dave Henderson, a CBI missionary who develops training works in Russian Ministries' Moscow office. "We don't know how long this country will be open. It's important to train as many as possible who will pass on the baton if the country closes again."

Tomorrow: A Generation of Young Church Planters Answers the Call to Evangelize Russia. Most of the Project 250 church planters are less than 30 years old and some have only been saved few years but they are passionate about taking the Gospel to their country.