Pitching Out the Player and Listening Up

The Russian Union’s Youth Director reports

Report – Feature

M o s c o w – Evgeny Bakhmutsky (Moscow), four years on as Director of the Department for Youth Work for the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (RUECB), believes the Baptists of Russia have something to offer the world. He maintains for ex. that in congregational life all generations are direly in need of each other. No generation should be allowed to detour around the church. “That’s why we refuse to create a youth movement alongside the church. The service of our youth goes straight through the middle of the congregation. I keep running into youth work in various European Baptist unions leading a life of its own. We think that is not a Biblical way.”

In view of its many decades of experience and contacts, Pastor Bakhmutsky regards Russian Baptists as an avant-garde highly capable of coming to the aid of Charismatic churches. “The Charismatics are not just pro-Western, they are totally immersed in Western culture. Some­times when they remember that they actually intended to be a Russian church, they come to my office and we have a talk.” He continues: “I have the impression that Charismatics know how to put on a good show. But they do now know how to work with their people.” Charismatic congregations are known for their high rates of fluctuation. He has experienced more than once how Russia’s traditional free churches have offered the disenchanted refuge and something to hold on to.

Evgeny Bakhmutsky is convinced of the talents of his young people and hopes they can play a major role at the Baptist World Alliance youth convention scheduled for Leipzig, Germany from 30 July to 3 August 2008. A meeting will be held with Western organisers in Kiev on 7 December regarding Leipzig. Despite the fact that the Russian Baptists´ annual conference will be held nearly simultaneously in Moscow, Bakhmutsky wants to win 200 young persons from throughout the ex-Soviet CIS-countries for the trip to Leipzig. “We have terrific music in Russia,” he assures. “And it isn’t just one more form of music. This music is truly one-of-a-kind in the world!”

The Catch-Up Game

This young Baptist from the Siberian city of Kemerovo would never claim though that everything is in the best of shape in his country. The paradigm change in his society has been breath­taking. Congregations have suddenly found themselves in a completely new political and cultural age; the congregations themselves even consist at times of a completely new crowd. The Youth Director informs that over 50% of the young people in his congregations are not from Christian homes. Bakhmutsky himself is no exception. Due to state pressures, his parents stopped attending church. He found faith and the church on his own when he was 14 (in 1990).

It can also be noticed in Russian congregations that not every young person manages to keep the CD-player turned off until the end of a church service seemingly incapable of ending. But Bakhmutsky does not want to go too far on the question of alternative forms of worship. Three sermons, 10 hymns and four poems – they’re not the problem. “Content is the issue.” If the programme offered meets the spiritual needs and questions of today’s youth, they will “pitch out the player and the headphones and listen up”.

Being that political changes occur much more rapidly than our ability to adjust, Russian congregations are also continually forced to play catch-up. The break between generations is clean and dramatic; a subculture born in the era of repression is no match for the challenges of the present. “The older generation needs to understand that it dare not pass on its culture to our youth. But their moral values, their lessens of life and spiritual knowledge must be passed on at all costs. We were once taught how to survive in a repressive setting. So we didn’t know how to manage under free and libertarian conditions. That’s what we’re learning now.” Living on the fringe in the shadows – that needs to be a thing of the past. We must find our way back into the midst of society.

Structures

Due to several false starts, the RUECB was not blessed with a functioning youth department until 2001. Bakhmutsky has been department head since March 2003. The department has five salaried workers in its Moscow offices. Seven branches, each with one salaried worker, are scattered across the wide expanses of the country: Habarovsk (Far East), Krasnoyarsk, Pensa, Mozdok (Caucus), Perm, St. Petersburg and Moscow.

The department places great stress on training: In Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan it holds seminars on working with youth. Working relations exist with the Baltic states as well as Portugal and Romania. The smallest and weakest unions, Tadzhikistan and Turkmenistan, for ex., are also supported financially.

Evgeny Bakhmutsky was educated as an economist and manager. He graduated from theolo­gical studies at the Baptist seminary in Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk. He and his wife Tanya have two small children.