Dyatkovo Baptist Church

Lead Pastor, Alexander (Sasha) Stephenovich Kuzin

The city of Dyatkovo is a beautiful “country feeling” smaller city set in a lovely countryside accessed by long country highways, wide open wheat fields, dramatic clusters of birch trees, and endless miles of pine forest. The city itself has a long and colorful history, founded in the 17^th century when some glass and crystal business people moved to this area from Trupchevsk, a hundred or so miles south, due to the preferable sand in the making of their product. The leaders of this business needed some expertise in the crystal making business, so they recruited craftsmen non-Russian foreigners from Europe, a common practice in those days. However, the local Russian citizens often had a difficult time pronouncing the foreign names of the new workers, so they called them by a common Russian friendly name… Dyatka… or uncle. The name stuck and  the  name of the city came to be known at “Dyatkovo” .

Today, Dyatkovo is a “county seat” town for its region that is a 40 minute drive from the city of Bryansk, and is the most influential city in the northern section of the Oblast (state) of Bryansk. The population is around 30,000 people. It is close enough to the city of Bryansk that it is influenced heavily by the city. There are regular buses and regional trains that commute people back and forth to the larger city. But Dyatkovo itself has industry that keeps it alive and active. The two most significant industries are the Dyatkovo crystal glass factory and the now famous Dyatkovo furniture factory. Both companies have substantial employment of thousands. The crystal factory has shrunk some in recent years, but it still famous for its crystal that they supply the Kremlin and many national state affairs. There are many advertising photos of former President Vladimir Putin and other national leaders hosting state events using the beautiful cut glass crystal from Dyatkovo. This factory, museum and store is a favorite stop for many tourist and visitors to the region.  In the recent days the Dyatkovo furniture factory has been the fastest growing business. You can see Dyatkovo furniture stores all over Russia including many in the city of Moscow. It is a thriving business that has helped keep Dyatkovo a thriving city and good place to live.

Even though it has some national prominence because of these businesses, Dyatkovo has kept its sort of cozy smaller town feel. It has a charming center street running north and south, with the main square and a statue of Lenin (as in almost every Russian city) surrounded by the city and regional government offices and courthouse. There are several schools in different parts of the city, plenty of stores everywhere, and some growing and developing modern malls taking over and growing.

Dyatkovo Baptist Church today has a prominent building. This facility began in 1996 during the later part of the Russia financial depression years of the 1990’s. It took a decade to complete this project due to the ever changing landscape of members from this church (they lost 150 members to immigration alone), foreign financial support that was waning, and the economic uncertainty of this country itself.  but finally in 2006 the facility was finished and dedicated for use. It is an extremely large prominent church building that has a European cathedral look to it, but dominates the landscape for many to see.  It is about 4 blocks off the main street near the center of the city. The total seating capacity of this facility is about 400 people. It has a main floor, a balcony, offices, a bookstore, and some classes and a “fellowship hall” with a full kitchen in the basement that is used virtually every day.

The Church itself is a member of the Bryansk Baptist Union of Churches, and the larger national Russia Baptist Union. Today it is actually a merger of two different Baptist congregations that met in two different parts of the city. In the mid 90’s there was a division among the one Baptist Church in this city over typical issues that often divide Christians….just a difference of opinion, and the one became two for a few years.  Pastor Sasha Kuzin in the early new century was instrumental in bringing these two congregations back together feeling they could make a stronger impact on the city in the long run by uniting as a one strategic body instead of two smaller and much weaker bodies. This merger took place in the year 2002. This merger did help them focus on the completion of the church building that we see today.

The membership in 2008 is about 250 people. They baptize about 15 to 20 people per year. The current attendance is about 250 per Sunday as well.  Pastor Sasha is a paid full time church pastor here in this church, something that is not tremendously common in Russia.

Ministries of significance:

Before and After School Kids Club Program:  Dyatkovo Church is one of the more active churches in outreach and missions of many I have seen in this region. They have a consistent before and after school program for children. Schools in Dyatkovo have either morning or afternoon classes for children. So this church has developed both a program in the morning for those kids who have classes in the afternoon, and an afternoon program for those kids who attend in the morning. In recent days they have seen some decline in the attendance to this program, but it is still active and they have seen many kids come to Christ and attend the church, and they have reached some of these parents as well. This ministry alone provides such a great need in this city.

Village Home Groups:  Dyatkovo Church also has a progressive village outreach ministry. They now has five  ”village home groups” that meet regularly.   Surrounding the city of Dyatkovo is a whole collection of smaller villages in varying distances away. As people have come to the church from these villages, the church leadership have worked to develop “home groups” in those villages using the members from the church. They find that they are able to make a greater impact on the village if they begin to develop a presence in that village instead of just getting people to commute to the city for worship. They encourage the attendance in the home church, but work at developing these home groups to make them stronger. The villages they currently have home groups in are; Slobodishe, Ivot, Lubokhna, Starr, and Bytosh.

Missions to New Churches: Under Pastor Sasha’s leadership, Dyatkovo Church has taken up the challenge of holding up other churches in the Bryansk region. One of the significant ones has been their work to help the new and developing churches in the city of Regnedina.  The Dyatkovo Church helps pay the gasoline money for that missions Pastor Vova, to commute to this city a few times a week to carry out ministry. They have sent several times teams from Dyatkovo to help build on the small and run down facility in this town and helped pay for their upgrades. They also took an evangelism team during the summer of 2008 to this city to show the Jesus movie and build relationships. The Dyatkovo team camped out at a nearby beautiful lake every night, and worked during the day and early evenings.  Regnedina is not the only town they have done this kind of work with. Dyatkovo Baptist Church is a very mission minded church, led by a very mission minded pastor.

Current Evaluation:

I have had a relationship with the Dyatkovo Church for 10 years now. Our Church, (LifeWay/Palisades) came in 2000 to help for three consecutive years in a summer day camp program.  We have also worked side by side with them in all these years with summer camp programs, pastors conferences, and now the “Church Health Plan.”  In the early days of our relationship I remember a much simpler church that had a good number of people, but was not very well developed. Today this has changed dramatically. I believe this change has come for two main reasons.

The Church Facility:  First, because of the completion of the building. Buildings themselves are certainly not the answer to all ministry needs, but they have not only completed a very lovely facility … keeping it bright, clean, welcoming with a nice outdoor courtyard and great night time lights on the outside, but even more importantly they actually use this facility for real ministry it seems. It is a place that actually feels alive. The Sunday services are friendly and well organized and thoughtfully prepared. The programs that they use the facility for throughout the week are actually for many in the community instead of just for the church people. I believe they could use it even with greater effectiveness, but they really have done a noble job so far at using what God has graciously given them.

The Church’s Pastor Leader:  Secondly, I believe that Pastor Alexander Kuzin has lived out his part in a noble way so far. He is not a perfect man, but he has been a man of vision, integrity, and strong will that is tempered by God, and is strongly led by the calling he has from God.

Many years ago he was asked by one of the original two congregations to become their lead pastor. In the Russian Baptist Bryansk Union, the individual Church seeks the ordination approval from the regional “bishop” or “eldest Pastor.”  The bishop at the time did not feel Sasha should be its pastor and refused to ordain and approve Sasha. The Dyatkovo Church and Sasha, after a great deal of prayer and soul searching, continued to live by their personal conviction and the church asked Sasha to lead anyway. This took great courage in spite of enormous peer pressure from the regional brotherhood. Sasha also felt strongly the strategic need to bring the two Baptist congregations together as well, even though he again received enormous criticism from the Baptist brothers circles of the larger Bryansk region. Even through the complaints and criticisms, they brought this to pass.

Another greater strength in Pastor Sasha’s leadership is that they have not changed “senior pastor” leadership in a very long time. In Russian Baptist circles, the most common thing is that every three years or so the church votes to keep their current pastor or elect a new pastor leader. I find this very disruptive in so many of the churches I have worked with, as they can quickly change direction and personality.  These pastors are often elected from within their own church. Sasha has been the lead pastor now for just about fifteen years. I believe this continuity has been a great strength and growing maturity in this church. Not only could the church have elected another leader over the years, but Sasha has had multiple opportunities to immigrate to the USA. He has many family members, including now a daughter, who live in the USA. He has traveled many times now the USA, and still has chosen to remain loyal to the ministry and the calling in this city of Dyatkovo, his hometown. The pull to immigrate to the US has been amazingly strong, especially in the later years of the 90’s and the early new century, and I applaud Sasha for his convictions. I believe that this has brought about a much broader understanding and vision than most.  His travels and his English speaking skills have given a greater depth to Sasha’s global understanding of so many things about life and ministry in the modern world.  It has made him a much broader person and more effective leader.

Sasha carries with him good community wide respect as well. He has brothers (siblings) that are respected and influential businessmen in the community. Sasha often rubs shoulders with city officials, business people, school officials, and common citizens around town. He is one of the very few Baptist pastors that I know of that has a great relationship with the local Orthodox priest in his city. At the opening service of their church facility in 2006, the local Orthodox priest attended and delivered a message, bringing words of welcome, congratulations, and a gift from his congregation. This is an almost completely unheard of event in Russia. Sasha has great respect among the citizens of Dyatkovo.

Sasha is an unusual man of vision as well, something I have had a difficult time finding from older Russians who have traditionally had to just settle for whatever life would throw at them. He realizes that as a pastor of now 50 years old with 20 years of ministry experience, he needs to raise up young leaders in his church, including a pastor or pastors to take his place. He is also feeling strongly that his church needs to extend itself in a missional way, not even just in the surrounding area, but in places where missions to Slavic people live and are lost. Recently on a trip to Israel he was privileged to take, he saw 1 million Russian speaking Jews with maybe only 500 total believers. His heart was stirred and is asking himself, “what is God calling Dyatkovo Church to do?

Sasha has, by examples in his personal life and home, a true Pastor’s heart as well. He and his wife Shura, in the last couple of years adopted a young teenage girl from a difficult home situation. There are many examples of social ministry concern that has come out of this church and out of Sasha and Shura’s lives personally. Sasha appears to be well loved and respected among his church family.  He is a very good, stable,loving husband and father. He has the greatest respect and feeling of responsibility to his family. His deep love for his wife shines out in so many ways.

The Alexander Kuzin family : Alexander and his wife Shura. They have six children (including one adopted daughter) and two grandchildren. Sasha (25); Katiya (23) with husband Dema and their 2 children Vitali & Eugeniv; Zoya (21); Lena (19); Julia (16); and Victor (12)

What is needed next?  I believe the Church Health Plan evaluations will help the Dyatkovo Church come to grip with where they are exactly and where they should go. They have made such great progress in the last few years from becoming a sort “mission feeling” church with such great needs, to now becoming a “mission minded” church that is developing its vision. I believe they are today NOT a leading church in Bryansk or Russia, but have the real possibilities to become just that. This Church is one of those bright spots spiritually that can lead the way for so many others. Russian Churches so badly need to become as I stated above less “mission feeling” churches, and more “mission minded.”  The difference is those churches that are “mission feeling” alway have their hand out, constantly asking for  things can help them. Most of these “things” they ask for are also really just for the Christians, and not the lost in the community. Dyatkovo has already mentally I believe made this shift, and I find this rare exception in Russia.  It is time though that Dyatkovo truly make another major leap forward.

There are 4 observable challenges for Dyatkovo Church:

• Dyatkovo Church must intentionally grow HEALTHIER… thinking thoughtfully and carefully, line by line, about what they do in ministry and its effectiveness, with the end result that they can be a major influence spiritually in this city that has far less than 2% total believers… and less than 1% who attend any kind of Christian Church regularly. They are now well respected in this city, but it’s time to become influential in this town and region. We have calculated that out of a city of 30,000 souls, less than 500 attend any kind of Christian service with any sense of consistency. And when you count the close by villages (suburbs) to Dyatkovo, the number goes up to over 50,000 people… and Christian service attendance increases only by a handful of people. They need a strategic plan that will mark out the next decade for them which will include “healthy planning” for church strength, and a “city influence” plan of how to impact their area for Christ.
• Dyatkovo Church is called to grow to be a Powerful Mission Sending Church, into other parts of Russia and Eastern Europe. This can be one of the great mission sending churches I believe in all of Russia. They are far from being there at the moment, but the ingredients are there. Russia needs to have some stronger churches step up and lead the way to mission efforts in some of the difficult places and hard to reach places of the world. I have had so many conversations with Russian Church leaders that feel defeated and beaten up and unsuccessful. So many Russian Churches today even use theology (end times theology especially) in what I think is “warped” ways to excuse themselves for why they are shrinking. Dyatkovo does not seem to be caught up in this negative self-defeating mindset. The rest of Bryansk, middle Russia, and even Eastern Europe needs churches like Dyatkovo to lead the way and show the way to a different kind of ministry.
• Dyatkovo Church must become a transformational church its community. It can develop this attitude by pressing the question… “What are some of the greatest needs in this community that we know that Christ is the answer to?” Answers to this question will provide the framework for its ministry for years to come.
• Sasha Kuzin needs to be empowered to be the leader of this kind of church, and take a stronger leading role as a pastor for his region. He has a unique gift set and a good grasp on pastoral ministry. He now needs to lead… lead his church in a more bold way, lead the way for other churches to follow as a missionary church, and develop his skills as an empowering leader of others who will follow his path.

Partnership:

What is a Partner Church to do?  Any partnership that is developed with Dyatkovo needs to come here with these four significant objectives in mind.  These

• Possibilities of growth areas where a partnership can bring specific help in areas of great need:
• Growth needed in Dyatkovo of Small Group Ministries. How to do it??? Training??? Etc.
• Gift Based Ministry help – a “spiritual gifts” seminar and implementation of people performing ministry out of spiritual gifts
• Help with the growth and broadening of the Dyatkovo Leadership Team.
• Some work at improving the “inspirational” side of the worship service in Dyatkovo
• Growth in the areas of “Need Oriented Evangelism” for the Dyatkovo Church… possible revisiting of the need for a Christian alcoholic/drug addiction program… orphan/foster parenting ministry… etc.

A Prayer for Dyatkovo Church and its partner Church, Meadowbrook Church of Redmond Washington USA.

Almighty God, may you empower Dyatkovo Church to be the church that you created it to be. May you bless Pastor Alexander Kuzin, his wife Shura, and their family, giving them great wisdom, great vision, and even greater courage. May you bring renewal and revival to the people of the city of Dyatkovo, seeing thousands of people come to faith and trust in you for their lives and their eternal destiny. May you raise this Church Body up to grow in health in such as a way as they become a bright light of hope that spreads to other parts of Russia, Eastern Europe and even the world.

May you bring out of a partnering relationship the same kind of zeal and passion for health, growth, and reaching out the lost on both sides of the ocean. We pray for Pastor Scott Brewer, his wife Sheri, and their sons. God may you be with and strengthen the leadership of Meadowbrook Church.  May you give them great vision, and even greater courage. We pray for the entire church family of Meadowbrook as they carry out God’s work individually and collectively.  May you help them to grow healthy and become that bright light of hope that spreads to other parts of Redmond, Seattle, their nation, and those parts of the world that you have called them to.

We come to you realizing that you are not restricted by nor partial to the national borders that separate governments and people. You have no preferences to languages, cultures or tribes. You know people not by whether they are rich or poor, dark or light, this language or that one… but whether they are lost or found. Help us as your people to connect with human souls and show them in a clear way how to come into a relationship with the God of the Universe in Jesus Christ. Help us as the members of your Church Body to strive for health, so that we may grow your kingdom’s work and see it multiply in a transformational way in the hearts and lives of the souls you love.

We give you all the honor and praise for all this.

In Jesus name, Amen