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From communism to true community: Lessons from a young Kazakh church
KAZAKHSTAN Spring 2008
Alma’s wide neon grin shone in startling contrast to the gray, cold world in which she lived. It was spring 1992, when the dust of the fallen Soviet empire was still settling across Central Asia. For the first time in hundreds of years, the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan were hearing about Jesus, and young people like Alma were embracing Him.
I was 22 years old at that time. Hearing about the opportunity for students to live, study, and share their faith in a place long closed to a Christian witness, I had answered the call to pack up and move there. Of all the people I met during that two-year adventure, Alma was one of the most unforgettable.
Among the first to believe, Alma joined a gathering of likeminded young Kazakhs and Russians and began to learn a definition of community that was more life altering than Communism. One of my memories of Alma continues to challenge me 16 years later as I seek to discover not just what church means to people in a Turkic culture, but what God intends for it to mean to me and my own family.
The Kazakhs’ overwhelming response to the gospel in the early years of their freedom meant that young, untried missionaries were given the huge task of church planting, one for which we felt ill-prepared. Our God who magnifies his strength through our weaknesses showed us the best way to help these new believers to define their faith was to turn them loose in his Word. After Alma and about 15 others were baptized in a public pool, we instructed them to read in Scripture about the Lord’s last supper and to figure out what the sacrament of communion would look like in their culture.
We American Christians had no idea what to expect. When and how would our new brothers and sisters celebrate communion? What might they see in Scripture that we did not? This fledgling church was one of the first among the Kazakhs, and while many would come after them and define their traditions in different ways, this group had the privilege and responsibility that came with being the first.
They made several choices that diverged from our own tradition. First, communion was part of a meal. As a group that met in a home, they could easily incorporate a meal into their gathering, just as they saw pictured in Scripture. Secondly, rather than using wine, they chose pomegranate juice. Wine was a drink so abused in the Soviet Union that these believers thought pomegranate juice, called “the blood of the earth,” was a better choice for their celebration. Third, prior to the Lord’s supper, they decided to wash each other’s feet.
The foot washing was the biggest surprise to me. The church separated into groups of men and women, and then each person took a turn washing the feet of the person next to him or her. Alma was the person who washed my feet, and when she finished she grabbed me in a hug proportionate to the size of her smile and said, “Now you are a part of me!”
I immediately remembered the Scripture that had been read before the foot washing. Jesus told Peter that unless he allowed Jesus to wash his feet, Peter would “have no part” with Him. Alma had heard it to say, “If you do let me wash your feet, you are a part of me.” For her it was a statement not simply about Jesus’ service, but about the very nature of community: we are eternally connected through the sacrifice of Christ and through humility and service to one another.
Sixteen years have passed since that day. Christianity among the Kazakhs has grown from a handful of people meeting in a three-room flat, to hundreds of congregations of all shapes and sizes. Much of the dust of a fallen empire has been swept under the covers of independence and materialism. And many Kazakh believers are more eager to build nice buildings than to wash each others’ feet.
But others, like Alma, like Nurzhan, are being transformed from the inside out by the truth that liberates us to be Christ-like servants. Please pray for them and for the Kazakh church.
*Names changed to protect believers. Photos do not depict the people in the story.
Pray for Kazakh Believers
- Pray for the people of Kazakhstan to see the transforming power of Christ at work in Kazakh believers who are growing in maturity, love for one another, and faithfulness to him. Ask him to bring in a great harvest of new believers.
- Ask God to strengthen the character of the Kazakh churches, purifying them from gossip, legalism, and apathy. Pray that Kazakh believers will catch a vision for planting reproducible house churches across Central Asia.
- Pray for Christian workers among the Kazakhs to learn the best ways of washing the feet of those to whom they have been called.
Related stories
A new day: Discovering cultural roots in a globalizing world
Nurzhan: Portrait of a Kazakh believer
Learn more about the peoples of the former Soviet Union
Dagestan :: Kazakhs :: Kyrgyz :: Muslims of Moscow :: Tatar :: Turkmen :: Uzbek