LOVES PARK, ILLINOIS -- While much focus has been given of late to the negative, nationalistic elements of youth movements across Russia and the former Soviet Union, there is another growing -- and far more wholesome -- youth movement beginning to gain attention, says one ministry to Russian youth.

A recent youth conference in Moscow brought together some 400 local church youth leaders from 61 of Russia's 88 states, and also from other countries including Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, and even from Israel. The conference was sponsored in part by the Loves Park, Illinois-based Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) www.sga.org.

According to Slavic Gospel Association president Dr. Robert Provost, Eugene Bakhmutsky, national youth director for the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UECB), recently paid a visit to the ministry while on a brief stopover in the United States.

Pastor Bakhmutsky updated the SGA team on the tremendous progress made in Russian youth ministry over the past few years.

As part of his report, he and Dr. Provost shared the highlights of the February youth conference in Moscow that SGA helped sponsor.

Dr. Provost said that the potential for this ministry is more than exciting. “Since becoming the national UECB youth director, Eugene has worked night and day developing a national network of outstanding leader-trainers at the regional and state levels.

"This great and zealous youth movement now under way involves more than 20,000 young men and women blessing their churches and impacting their communities for Christ all across Russia, and their influence for the Gospel is spilling over into neighboring countries.”

At the conference, SGA provided each youth leader with four Russian-language books including God and Man by SGA’s Dr. Roman Dechtiarenko, The DaVinci Code Quest by Josh McDowell, Preaching with Passion by Dr. Alex Montoya, and Our Sufficiency in Christ by Dr. John MacArthur.

SGA partners also shared the costs of the conference with the Russian churches that sent the youth leaders. The theme of the conference was “Be Strong,” based on 1 John 2:14, which reads…“I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

SGA staff members have been involved behind the scenes in a supporting role to Eugene and the UECB, helping in discipleship, encouragement and other capacities.

Dr. Provost added, “Please be in prayer for Eugene, his wife, Tanya, and their two young children, as well as the Russian UECB youth ministry. As the movement grows, the opposition is certainly bound to intensify. The youth are the future of the church in that vast unreached country, and the future couldn’t be more promising!”

SGA is an interdenominational mission which has been working in the former Soviet Union since 1934. SGA has served churches in Russia through pastor and layleader training, sponsorship of national church planters and provision of Christian literature. SGA represents the Russian UECB and is a sponsor of the Eurasian Federation of Evangelical Christians-Baptists.

For more information, contact: Joel Griffith (815) 282-8900.

© 2008 ASSIST News Service, used with permission