Lutheran Churches in Russia Moving Toward Unity

In the past year, the Lutheran Church in which I am working (formerly known as ELCROS, currently known simply as the Evangelical Lutheran Church) and the other historic Lutheran church in the region (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ingria - Ingria being the historically Finnish region of northwest Russia), also supported by the ELCA, have made significant steps towards unifying their ministries. The latest declaration of the Lutheran World Federation National Committee, of which they are both a part, testifies to this. I've included an English translation of (most of) their common declaration here. While I see that the process won't be an easy one, it does seem clear that the church's ministries will be strengthened by more mutual interaction and a unification of common efforts.

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Meeting of the National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation

On December 10th a regular meeting of the National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (which consists of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria) was held. The following statement was issued by the churches:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, recognizing their common history of service in Russia, their dramatic experience of testing, repression, and persecution... in the period of atheistic dominance, taking into account the common goals and tasks before our Churches now, the high level of mutual trust, common membership in international and Russian ecumenical organizations, and being led by the words of the Savior “that all may be one”

declare together

In the context of an actively changing world and of new challenges which the contemporary secular worldview create for Christians, questions of our unity gain special relevance for us, historical Lutheran churches. In the time of the open preaching of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in democratic Russia...our Churches have gained not only an understanding of the necessity of more unity, but also created the necessary spiritual and confessional grounds for such unity. With faith in God's providence as it is realized in the church's life, we declare with hope our decision to strive for a full removal of barriers to the unification of the ELC and the Church of Ingria and call our congregational members to prayerfully support this intention.

ELC Archbishop August Kruze
ELCI Bishop Arri Kugape
ELC Vice-Archbishop, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in European Russia, Edmund Ratz.

Former ELCROS Archbishop, Georg Kretschmar

A man who did much for me personally and the church in which I am working, former ELCROS Archbishop Georg Kretschmar, passed away recently after battling illness for the past few years in Germany. Archbishop Kretschmar was a very serious theological scholar, but also a very kind man. He co-presided when my wife and I were wed in 2003, and showed me great support as a very young teacher at the seminary which was so dear to him. Below you can read a bit more about his life.
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On November 19th former ELCROS bishop Georg Kretschmar died in Germany. He was 84.

Georg F.K. Kretschmar was born on August 31, 1925, into a family with a long tradition of serving as pastors in the Evangelical Church in Silesia (Poland). After finishing school in 1943 he was drafted into the army, during which time he was wounded. During his time in the army he visited an Orthodox church in Ukraine and from that moment on made it one of his goals to increase mutual understanding between the Western and Eastern churches.

Kretschmar began his theological studies in Tubingen in 1945, and continued his studies in Oxford and Heidelberg, where, in 1940, he defended his first thesis and became a teacher. He passed his second exam in the Wurtemburg church and did his internship there; in the beginning of 1953 he was ordained as a pastor in Tubingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation later that year. After a few years there, he taught in the university of Hamburg until 1967, when he moved on to help found the new protestant theology department at the University of Munich. He worked there until 1990, and remained professor emeritus there until his passing.

Georg Kretschmar always understood his church service as an ecumenical service. He was involved in various working groups, and from 1959 to 1991 took part in 12 meeting between the Evangelical Church of Germany and the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation asked that he become a part of the worldwide Lutheran-Orthodox dialogues and lead the Lutheran delegation. This he did until 2004.

In 1989 the Bishop of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Soviet Union, Harold Kalinin, asked Kretschmar to organize educational programs for the church. He agreed and found the job so important than he left his former position at the university. Although he did much for education in the church, this was not his only duties. In 1992 he became the assistant Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States (the successor Lutheran church body founded after the breakup of the Soviet Union), and lived in St. Petersburg on a permanent basis starting in 1993. He was elected bishop of the church at the first General Assembly, and his title was changed to Archbishop after the new constitution was adopted in 1999. He was responsible for the largest (in terms of territory) Lutheran church in the world, with 7 regions churches and around 600 congregations in his care. In this period of great change congregations were re-organized and church buildings were re-claimed by the church or built anew in dozens of places. He remained Archbishop of ELCROS until health concerns forced him to retire in 2005.

Besides his work in the church itself, Georg Kretschmar did a tremendous amount of work in various academic fields, in particularly in the areas of church history and biblical theology.

Georg Kretschmar was the father of seven children, one of which has continued the family tradition of serving as a pastor in Bavaria.

Saturday, October 17

After finding out yesterday that my exit visa is finally ready for me in Rostov, I was able to follow through on my plan to fly from Omsk to Moscow and then, from there, to take the train south. I'm writing now from there...at least until my battery runs out. The day was pretty uneventful, as tomorrow is likely to be – simply being on the road or waiting for the road, while Monday, besides getting my visa, I'll try to do as much possible to prepare for the next step in getting my Russian “green card” - getting a whole bunch of tests at a local hospital, getting a tax idea number... And, so, the blogging will stop until something particularly interesting comes along.

Friday, October 16

My sermon for today was not prepared when we were all held in the room, and so I was working on low sleep this morning. Again, though, I felt like I was given the right words for the situation and the people, and hopefully everyone received a word of comfort.
We spent part of the day continuing to talk about what had happened the night before – it was really important for everyone to be able to express their feelings and care for one another. Then I had anticipated that we would close off the day by trying to do something practical – make a few Sunday School lessons based on what we had covered in the days before. As it turned out, as each was describing the Sunday school situation in his or her own church, it became clear that they also had a lot to share, especially about common problems. This, too, it turns out might be important for the future, insofar as it might be the witness that was needed that makes the church do a bit more on the regional level to meet Christian educational needs in congregations (esp., it seems, in training Sunday school leaders).
The day ended with a common worship service. While my liturgical leadership was far from ideal on my lack of sleep, it was good to be together...ah, and I also need to say how, by the end of the week, I was “converted” by the song book that had been used by the congregation in Omsk on Sunday. One of the seminar participants, Denis, someone I've known a long time, did a lot of music leadership during the week; he showed me that among the 2000 (!!!) hymns collected there, there are dozens that a just fine theologically. It, in fact, made me rather sad to see that the new ELCROS hymnal had missed many good opportunities to bring out different theological aspects that still fit into the Lutheran tradition, as well as bring some musical variety – it's clear after that seminar that the new hymnal will not be able to compete with this other pan-Protestant one (“Songs of Renewal”) in terms of songs that are full of feeling (though I must say that the ELCROS hymnal is pretty good at depressing songs) and more popular with young people.
After the seminar, I had good, in-depth discussions with a couple of the students, and had the opportunity to spend a second evening with Andrey and his wife Lena, and that was a real treat...
Off early in the morning!

Thursday, October 15

Today was an interesting mixture of experiences. On the other hand, we continued our fruitful work with the Bible (not NT); in addition we talked a bit about Luther's Small Catachesis and how it can help us understand God and creation. After that, we talked about a small section of a document the Orthodox church put out - “The Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church.” It opened up a whole bunch of things, in particular, related to the ethics (environmental ethics, personal property, social justice) and ecumenism. While the latter didn't get very far, the former was one of the most open and interesting discussions about ethics I've had here – for students at the seminary, we eventually get to the point where they can speak about Christian ethics in a helpful way, but it is usually very difficult to get to that point. After that, we talked just a bit about prayer and then had a very moving time of prayer together.
On the other hand, the day was very hard. At our lunch break I checked my email and there I saw that my grandparents were in a serious (11 car) accident while on the way from Montana to visit my uncle and his family in Denver. We are blessed that they survived; I couldn't tell to much from my parents' email exactly how Grandpa and Grandma are feeling now, though it appears that their injuries are not too serious. Of course, I'm worried, though.
And then, as the day was ending and everyone was going back to their rooms, we learned that two of the girls had had their telephones stolen from their room. They were rather in shock and Dieter and I were sitting and talking with them when others among the church staff decided that they would call the police. When the police came, they rounded up all of us who were there and put us in one room, while trying to scare the thief into the open. It was rather crude theater, though I can understand it, considering it did really look like an “inside job” (the rooms are on the third floor and someone from the outside would be taking a big risk to go up there, besides the fact that they would have to know that we were all at the seminar and that their room would be open and empty at that time). I can even understand why they singled out a few individuals (the girls' roommates, a young many who would be leaving the next day) as suspects, but it seems to me that they went too far. One of the girls was questioned for about two hours; none of the rest of us could leave the room for 4 hrs.
The police eventually left and the phones, not surprisingly, were not found; we all felt pretty rotten after the whole experience... the last day of the seminar will be interesting.

Wednesday, October 14

I'm not sure what to think about the way the seminar is going in terms of the materials we are presenting. For example, we talked about the two creation stories in Gen 1 and Gen 2 and about the different time periods these stories come from... I would have expected some resistance to the idea, actually. But I guess a key element here is the approach we took – we didn't come in with some highly academic theory as to what the sources of OT texts are. Instead, we looked at the texts and compared them, then looked at the history of Israel and its religious development. After that, the idea that different texts were written for different times (and were written for different theological purposes (answering questions like “why?” “who?” and “what does it mean?”) instead of attempting to give accurate and scientific detail (answering the question “how?”).
The most difficult thing today for me was leading and preaching at morning prayer (which happens daily for those who work in the church center in Omsk); I was nervous and am afraid the sermon wasn't well understood. On the other hand I find that working so intensely with a group (from 9 am to 8.30 pm) is really beneficial in understanding what message might be able to reach them.

Tuesday, October 13

The theme of our seminar is “I believe in God the Father;” while at first I had had in mind to do quite a bit of work with them about the relatively difficult to grasp questions about God's existence, the Trinity, etc., we've seen that the students varying levels means that we need to stay closer to the questions that arise directly from relevant Biblical texts. As it turns out, I see how fruitful it would have been if I had started this way with my students in Novosarataovka, too, in those days when I taught Systematic Theology. Knowing the Biblical base and the wide variety of Biblical voices as the texts speak about and describe God helps in a lot of ways – it makes us humble in our claims to “know” what is really unknowable about God; it helps us open up new sides of the witness of the faithful about God (i.e.., when looking at OT names for God, I saw that Hagar calls God “the God who sees me;” it is an image that I really like and that will stay with me for a while); it helps us understand Jesus and his witness about the Father. At any rate, I'm liking it.

Monday, October 12

Yesterday evening I met the seminar's participants, and was a bit surprised by our small numbers. Last year we had around 20, and it looks like this year we'll have around 10. It seems that there are a number of reasons for this, but the prime one being that not many places got the invitation on time. After today, though, I see that our small numbers are not really that much of a disadvantage – we have a few people in the group who are really new to church life (in addition to being quite young), so I'm happy we'll be able to work with them in a smaller group and address the various levels among the students. There were 4 people back from last year, all of whom are quite experienced; I hope we'll be able to make it interesting for them. One of them, Andrey, is a preacher in Magadan, in the northeast part of the country. It turns out that he was on the same flight as I was yesterday. That means he flew first 7 hours to Moscow to the west and then 3 hours to Omsk to the east! Apparently that's the cheapest way to go – there is no train service up there...and don't even ask about roads.

"I Believe in God the Father." Seminar in Siberia. October 2009.

Since I did not have regular email access on my recent trip to Omsk, I've decided to publish my daily thoughts on the trip a week late. Hopefully, these entries will give a bit of insight into what daily life is like when I'm teaching seminars here.

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As with my travels last year to Omsk, the days rather run together on this trip. Public transport got me to the airport just in time to make my flight to Moscow...where I had to wait 7 hours in the Vnukovo airport before the plane from Omsk was to take off. Vnukovo isn't the type of airport where you can really find things to do for 7 hours, so I tried to read and make suggestions to drafts of student thesis and forget about the clock. The flight took about 3.5 hours, and was relatively unremarkable except for the large quantity of food that they gave us and the scariest moment I think I've ever had in an airplane. At one point, about an hour from Omsk, it felt like we were just plan dropping. Three times in about 30 seconds there was a a loud swooshing... followed by a free-falling sensation. What was particularly strange is that no explanation was given... it did remind that I am thankful for life. :)
My former student, Andrey, picked up me and others at the airport; Omsk isn't a big city (somewhere in the range of 300,000 people?), but its airport is particularly small; what is more surprising, however, is that when you fly in, a bus takes you to the edge of the airport territory and just drops you off outside – you can go over to another building if you have baggage to claim, or simply walk through the airport territory gates.
Omsk is 3 time zones east of Moscow...and that puts you only in western Siberia. The country really is enormous. At any rate, this made it morning but, since I hadn't slept, I was happy that I didn't need to get up except to make it for the Russian language service at 2 pm, which would be just in the other side of the Christ Church Center, where I'll be sleeping for the next week in the “Erlangen” room.
The congregation gives a good impression – their friendly and well-organized and today's preacher (Dean Dieter Grimmsmann, with whom I'll be teaching) was good. The only hard part for me at their services is the hymns they sing. The problem is not at all with the musical style (which I don't know how to describe other than “Baptist,” meaning not classical, yet not quite contemporary piano music played at quite a lively tempo), but the theology of the texts completely contradicts what the Lutheran church tries to teach. I'll have to talk with Grimmsmann about that...

Third General Synod of ELCROS Undertakes Major Structural Reform

Over 40 delegates from around the Former Soviet Union took part in the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia and Other States (ELCROS) September 16-19 in St. Petersburg. They were joined by guests and friends, both local and international, from both Lutheran churches and ecumenical partners.

The Synod, the first since 2005, gathered together around the theme “Fellowship Over Borders;” it was the reality of borders (in particular, cultural and political changes in the post-Soviet climate) that presented the greatest challenge for the delegates. For while all of the churches do face a number of common problems (searching for a new, multi-ethnic Lutheran identity first among them), the legal and financial challenges of remaining together were particularly apparent in the months that led up to the meeting. In the end, delegates made changes to the constitution of the church so as to avoid the legal ambiguities caused by the previous situation, i.e., a single, multi-national church.

The way these changes are to be incarnated are yet to be seen. What is clear at present is that the legal entity that was ELCROS has now become the Evangelical Lutheran Church, uniting two regional churches - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in European Russia in the west and, in the east, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Urals, Siberia and Far East. Delegates chose Bishop August Kruze (background, below) of the Siberian church to be the new Archbishop, though Dr. Edmund Ratz (former ELCROS Archbishop - foreground) will remain on for some time to assist in the transition.

The Russian churches will be united with the churches abroad (the largest of which are the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kazakhstan, which are joined by smaller bodies in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Belarus) by covenants of agreement and through common ministries, regulated by a committee of delegates from all member churches. At present it is planned that the Russian churches will continue to provide educational, public relations, and women's ministries resources for all of the former ELCROS congregations.

The changes undertaken at this meeting were vast, and it is likely to take a number of years before the effects of the changes become clear. The needs of Lutherans in this area, as they strive to preach the Good News despite small size, isolation, and meager resources, are still great. It is not clear, in fact, that the new structure will meet these needs. And yet, I feel privileged to be accompanying my brothers and sisters here on their journey, and am confident that God will continue to work wonders even through all our flaws and all the challenges we face.

Dorogi - Russian Roads

There is a saying here attributed Nikolai Gogol - "Russia suffers from two grave misfortunes - fools and roads." When traveling by car here, the latter is particularly apparent. But when it comes to Russia's other roads, its railroads, they make getting around here a relatively easy, if relatively slow, process. Last week, the boys and I helped along our cultural re-integration after the summer away and took the train (36 hrs each way) to Rostov. The reason for this? That takes us back to the first misfortune of Gogol's quote.

That's probably being too harsh. But over the past two years of trying to find a way to avoid the hassles of getting a visa every year (with that chance that I could be rejected), I've not yet learned to love the Russian bureaucracy (or, for that matter, to learn how to spell bureaucracy without spell check). As I attempt to get permanent residency here, I have to get all my documents processed in Natasha's hometown, even though it is one, nation-wide agency that works on immigration questions. In way with my current status I have to get a new exit visa every time I want to leave the country - that happens only in Rostov (where there are only 4 hrs a week available for submitting such

applications), and only after the FSB (the successor to the KGB) does a background check on me (which takes up to 6 weeks). And so, I'll be going to Rostov again in October in order to have the chance to leave Russia in an emergency, or to get to Finland to talk with my dissertation adviser.

Yet, this little adventure is not so bad, preciously because the "fools" seem to have so little in common with the actual people I meet when traveling here. In the 3rd class wagon that we took, sure we were a little crowded (with the 3 of us all sleeping on one of the bunks you see to the right), but the boys and I had lots of people to talk and play with, people who,

inevitably, shared their food and their stories.

The way back to St. Petersburg was particularly

interesting. There our wagon was full of families

with young children, coming back from their vacations in the resort areas or with families in the south. Our neighbors across the aisle were traveling with their 8-month old son, Andrey, who really was interested in his older peers. Since our train got in at 3.50 n the morning, nearly 2 hrs before the subway opened, his parents, Marusa (Maria) and Tolik (Anatoly) kindly offered to give us a ride home with their friend who was to pick them up. This sounded great. And here, Gogol's two grace misfortunes meet.

Maria and Anatoly's friend stuffed all our things into his Russian station wagon and we were off. On the way from St. Petersburg to the seminary (a little over a mile outside of the city limits), we have to pass by a police post. The police can stop any car without reason, and, this time, the Russian station wagon looked like a good target. Our driver got out of the car and showed the police his documents...and didn't come back. 10 minutes. 15. 20. Finally, Tolik went to look for him. Our driver, it turns out, was driving with a suspended license. He was deep into negotiations with the policeman, who was threatening a jail sentence of 15 days. And so, we waited some more. All the money we had between us wouldn't be enough to get him out of the situation, though this was obviously the policeman's hope. And so, eventually, our driver worked it out that the policeman would take him to his apartment to get the remainder of the $1000 it was going to take to get him and the car out of there.

By then, though, the Buerkle clan had already split. It was 5.30 in the morning, and we had been given the rare chance to take an early morning walk down our last stretch of road. For now.

"Home"

Every two years, as the days of my home assignment draw to a close, I get hit by a rather strange nostalgia - "this will be the last free continental breakfast I'll eat in two years;" "time to stop expecting strangers to make conversation;" "I wonder if it will get over 80 degrees in St. Petersburg in the next 12 months?" These little things that pull me back to my home country, it seems to me, are part of my coping mechanism - they help distract me from the hardest thing about going back to Russia - people. While I'm quite blessed by those with whom I have a chance to serve, our travels this summer helped me realize once again the great group of friends and supporters we are leaving behind, both among those whom we saw and those whom we did not. If you are reading this from the U.S., know just how much I appreciate you. If you are reading this from Russia, know that, even if I might seem a little homesick for the next couple of weeks, I really do consider my life here as my call. I feel privileged to be even a very little part of all of your lives.

Visits to Sponsoring Congregations

In July, Natasha, Matvey, Martin and I visited congregations throughout the great state of Montana (and its not-so-shabby neighbors, Idaho and Wyoming) as part of our "home assignment" for ministry with Global Mission of the ELCA.

View Summer 2009 in a larger map

If all goes well, here you'll be able to see a map of where we've been so far.

After that I'll be going to Missiouri and California to visit great sponsoring congregations there.

Russian Orthodox Church Elects New Leadership - the effect on other Christian churches

Elected in the year before the fall of the Soviet Union, Patriarch Alexei II died on December 5th, 2008, after heading the Russian Orthodox Church for 18 years. Alexei, while born into an Orthodox family, had experience with other confessions from his youth - he was born in the capital of then-independent (and mostly Lutheran) Estonia, Tallinn, and spent many of his first years in church service in congregations in that country (by then already a part of the Soviet Union). Alexei rose quickly through the church hierarchy (something which at that time could only happen with the blessing of Soviet officials) and was an active participant in ecumenical affairs in the years before the fall of the Soviet Union. Alexei’s growing up in a predominately Lutheran country and his good relationship with former ELCROS Archbishop Kretschmar certainly contributed to the better-than-average relations between the two communions in Russia.
However, the 1990s showed a slow but consistent movement by the Orthodox church to hindering the work of other Christian confessions here, especially by influencing the laws of registration of religious groups and by attempting to gain a monopoly on the teaching of religion in schools. Granted, many groups deserved to be treated harshly - without seriously attempting to understand Eastern Christianity, it was dismissed as "not Biblical," and therefore no meaningful dialogue was possible. It was no surprise, then, that once elected Patriarch, Alexei did all he could to regain the church’s position in the country (and in the Orthodox world in general) after 70 years of repression. In this he no doubt had a great measure of success. Literally tens of thousands of congregations have been re-opened since the fall of the Soviet Union, and Alexei did much to organize the structures, funding, and educational programs that such restoration required. It is here, however, that there is the most room to criticize Alexei’s (and his successor's, Kirill's) legacy. The church clearly has business interests, though there is no transparency or financial accountability for them. Some have speculated about the wisdom of the symbiotic relationship between the church and the state that has developed in which the church is given access, influence and financial advantages by the while the church gives unquestioning support for government decisions (in particular during the two Chechen wars). In addition, Orthodoxy in Russia faces a challenge insofar as structures of the church are now so closely tied to the surrounding culture that in some ways they also reflect the weaknesses of the culture (for example, corruption).
The importance of Alexei for Russia can be seen by the reaction of the public to his death. Between eighty and one hundred thousand people lined up outside of the Church of Savior in Moscow to pay last respects to Alexei as he lay in state.
The Orthodox Church was fortunate to find a worthy successor of Alexei in Metropolitan Kirill. Kirill was well-known in Russia even before his election as Patriarch in the end of January - he was the Church’s media representative, and led a well-produced weekly program on state-run television. It was this program and some of the things Kirill had to say during its broadcast about other Christian groups that made many non-Orthodox Christians rather nervous when they heard, after Alexei's death, that Kirill was a leading candidate for the post. On the other hand, it also became clear as the months went past that Kirill was not from the "right-wing" of the church - not by far. A recently excommunicated Bishop in the Russian Far East was an example of a reactionary form of Orthodox (rather apocalyptic in character, very anti-ecumenical) that is relatively popular among "serious" believers.

Non-eastern Christians, then, can be glad that the council of the church elected a very talented new leader – a competent theologian, an able administrator, and a successful populizer of Russian Orthodox values in wider society. And while it is probably not realistic to hope for great gains in ecumenical dialogue under Kirill (despite his activity in ecumenical circles early in his career), the Orthodox Church under Kirill should at least have the resources to resist those elements within itself that would tear it out of dialogue with other churches. This gives us good reason to pray for this man, whose influence is great, that he might enable all Christians here to work for clear preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our words and in our deads.