John McKenna
ministers in Russia

By John McKenna

PASADENA—Flying into the Moscow airport, the city appeared like any number of cities in the U.S. Midwest. Plots of green farmland marked off by dense forests surrounded by the symmetry of buildings suggested a well-planned and neatly maintained achievement. Evidently, it appeared, Russians possess a civilization much like our own.

Once on the ground, however, the resemblance was quickly destroyed. An air of the love of authority greeted my psyche even in the airport. Authority is coveted in this place. It costs money there to get done anything unauthorized by that strange ultimate authority called "they."

My visa had a typing mistake, probably made in the Russian Embassy in San Francisco. It took four levels of authority and the spending of an hour and $100 to correct it. It was the beginning of my taste of this authority in the land.

I quickly named it the Land of Nyet (No, in Russian). It was in the air with the same intensity that the Can-Do spirit hovers over the country we call home.

I went to St. Petersburg for two days before I began teaching in Ryazan, a city two or three hours south of Moscow. I took an overnight express train to St. Petersburg with Daniel Lee, one of the Koreans who helped arranged my teaching assignment.

We were put into a compartment to be berthed with two Italian women. There was no way to explain the discomfort we felt about it to the conductor. His idea was that the railroad had ruled that we were to spend the night with the two women and it was against its authority to conceive of changing the arrangement.

When we tried to spend some time in a restaurant car without drinking vodka, we were turned away. The rule was that no one drinking only water or a soda could take up a seat in the car, even though the car was empty of customers.

No, no, no, the tall and stalwart waitress kept saying to us. We retired to our berths in the little compartment with the Italian women. Fortunately, they occupied their territory with great grace, and I was even able to sleep soundly a while as the old train rocked and rolled its way toward St. Petersburg.

I arose early to stand outside the compartment and watch the landscape go by. It was a lovely morning. I saw forests of birch trees and occasionally small towns, but few birds and animals along the way. I kept thinking about Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and his love of freedom and the monotony I felt making itself apparent to me in this Land of nyet, nyet, nyet. My reveries were broken at last by our arrival in the St. Petersburg station.

St. Petersburg will celebrate 300 years of history beginning in 2003. The city of Peter the Great is the way Russia has greeted the West. The Tzars’ symbol is a two-headed eagle because from his city he could, he thought, reign over both the East and the West of the world.

The city is alive with restoration. Tourism will flourish over the graves of the Tzars. The Russian Orthodox Church is free to restore its great Byzantine domes over the grand old architecture the Russians love along with the ballet and the violin. Natashya Sapronova, our guide to the city, explained this history with an interest that possesses no judgment of Russia’s past.

As for the former KGB building, it was known as the tallest building in St. Petersburg, because from it you could see Siberia. As for the Egyptian sphinxes placed across the river from the prison, where so many innocents were jailed, it was a mystery why such things as these could happen. Russia’s history was presented to us as simply interesting now. Natashya would have us look forward to the new Russia and the restoration of her beloved St. Petersburg.

Netsky Prospect is the favorite street in the city. People walked and shopped and dined along this wonderful street late into the nights, especially long into the famous white nights of St. Petersburg. Along this street we found the Literary Cafe with a wax likeness of Alexander Pushkin seated beside his top hat at a table in a corner of the cafe. If you take a seat across from him, they take a picture of you with him. "Why?" I tried to ask Russia’s great poet.

Natashya also took us to a synagogue being restored along with the rest of the city. Two rabbis and a young woman greeted me. The rabbi gave me a yarmulke to wear, and the young woman led Natashya, Daniel and me into the sanctuary.

I could not explain what happened to me. As I walked toward the Torah, I felt great sobs rising up within me and I went and sat down quickly in a pew so that no one would see me. I knelt in the pew sobbing and struggling to gain control of myself. I did not want my colleagues to see me. They might think I was a crazy man.

When I did gain control of myself, I realized that both Daniel and Natashya had observed my weeping. I was a man from the Worldwide Church of God in Pasadena in St. Petersburg to teach the gospel in Russia weeping aloud for the Jews of this land.

On the express train back to Moscow, we shared the berths of our compartment with a young American couple delighted to begin their study of Russian at Moscow University. Opening up the mysteries of Russia was exciting for them. Again, we slept well in the rock and roll of the train.

In Moscow, we were met by Pastor Euri, assistant to Pastor V.P. Fokin, director of the Seminary in Ryazan. He drove in two hours a distance that takes a normal person about three hours. He was the first real "yes" I met in Russia. At their church, where we conducted our class of some 25 students, we were greeted with Russian warmth and welcome. It is a deep and hearty embrace that they have for you.

For 12 straight days I taught the Russian pastors in a seminary begun by Korean missionaries from the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles. The students, however, were not all Russian. One man had fled from the Congo and was married now with a child in Moscow. As a black man, he experienced quite a challenge in Russian society.

Another man from Pakistan was once a great lawyer famous for his defenses of Mafia figures from Moscow to Kazakstan. He had become a Christian only a few years ago. He was also something of an artist seeking to have his wife and children join him in Russia safe from the growing Muslim persecution in his land.

The others were men and women from Pentecostal or Baptist communions, many of whom had become pastors of their various churches fairly recently. Something new, they felt, was going on in Russian Christianity. All the students had university degrees. All were devoted Christians. All were deeply committed to learning to articulate the gospel. I admired them very much.

And I could not have asked for a better interpreter. His name is Arthur Matorin. He is 23 years old, born and raised in the city of Ryazan.

He had an independence about him that I admired. He was a rebel in his youth with the support of his family because his father never liked communism’s authority in Russian life, even without being a Christian.

As a result, Arthur got into the nightclub life and drugs and the self-destruction such people know so well. It was in the midst of this kind of life that he came to Christ. There is in Ryazan, believe it or not, a Calvary Chapel.

From age 15 until about 19, he learned the gospel with this church and knew all the music it had produced in Southern California. He had been a pretty good guitar player. He told me that he eventually left Calvary Chapel because of the lack of depth in the growth of his brothers and sisters.

Since his hair was too long for the Baptists, he began his own fellowship, and it was not the only unregistered church in Ryazan. It was made up of mostly ex-night club people, and they met in their homes and tried to evangelize their generation. He had taken up the study of the violin in Ryazan and hoped to become a composer who writes Christian music with some depth to its humanity.

When I gave him Pastor General Joseph Tkach’s book Transformed by Truth he read it in one night. He was interested in the movement experienced by the Worldwide Church of God because it resonated well with what he saw as the kind of changes Russian Christianity must experience. Because of him, I had frequent opportunities to share what God was doing with our church in America. I had great confidence in him as a communicator of my thoughts to the pastors, and we indeed experienced God’s blessing on my teaching with these wonderful pastors.

How can I report this ministry without reference to the 70-year-old couple who gave Daniel and me their living room while we were at the Ryazan Seminary? If you stand before people who throughout the Revolution and the Great Patriotic War attempted to stand in their witness to Jesus Christ, you cannot fail to feel that in comparison your life has been a walk in the park.

Peter and Tanya were among those Russians who suffered Siberian or some other form of hardship right up until the time of President Mikhail Gorbachev. Tanya quickly became a mother to us. Peter was proud to share what he had with us. There was no hot water, but the food was recently harvested and plentiful and their love for Jesus Christ touched us doubtlessly.

I returned to Pasadena amazed by my experience. I report it with some trembling, knowing I can tell only a little of what occurred. I hope this is enough however to give you a taste of it and to let you know why I had to promise to return and to thank you for your prayers for me and these wonderful Russian Christians.

The full text of Dr. McKenna’s report is available on the Internet at www.wcg.org/wn/russiatrip

FELLOWSHIP--From left, Arthur Matorin,
John McKenna and Tolmachov Bichkali in Ryazan.

SEMINARY CLASS—The class at the Moscow-Ryazan
Seminary taught by John McKenna Aug. 13 through 24.

CLASS IN SESSION—Arthur Matorin (left) translates
for John McKenna.

Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2001