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Signs of Life: Russia
and Eastern Europe
by Rev. Don Richman, International
Representative of
Lutherans For Life and Founding Director of the
East European Mission Network
 I am both a parent and child of
Lutherans for Life (LFL). It was October 1978. I attended a meeting
at Concordia College in St Paul, Minnesota. There, I met Dr. Jack
Eichhorst (a friend from college days), Dr. Jean Garton, Pastor Dave
Wende, Dr. Gene Linse, and two or three other participants. After
discussing the state of the sanctity of life within Lutheran
churches, a question was asked: "should we—could we—form an
organization to promote the Sanctity of Life in Lutheran Churches of
America?" The answer was "Yes." By virtue of being concerned and
being there, I and several of those present became board members of
that new organization appropriately named Lutherans For Life. I
served on the Board for about 20 years. Currently I serve as
International Representative for Lutherans For Life.
At the same time I am a child of LFL.
Through many discussions at board meetings, conferences, and
conventions, I learned much about the issues of life. I learned from
Dr. Jean Garton’s incisive analysis of the issue summarized so
clearly in her book, Who Broke the Baby? I learned from Dr.
Jack Eichorst’s well-reasoned and clear defense of life as he
synthesized the Bible, church fathers, the Lutheran Confessions, and
modern medicine. I learned much from Dr. James Lamb’s insistence
that the center of our mission is to proclaim the biblical message
of life with the cross of Jesus Christ at its very center. I learned
from Linda Bartlett how closely the sanctity of life message is
related to femininity and chastity. Above all, I learned that the
sanctity of human life is an inseparable and essential component of
the biblical message.
To teach and preach the "whole
counsel of God" (Acts 20:27 NKJV), especially in our age of
genocide, one must include the sanctity of human life. To preach the
gospel of forgiveness and healing through the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, one must expose the sin of abortion so that sin can be
brought to the foot of the cross, confessed and forgiven by the
"blood of Jesus Christ His Son [who] cleanses us from all sin"
(1 John 1:7). He alone can bring healing from that incessant and
terrible accusation of law and conscience, "I killed my baby."
After fourteen and a half years as
pastor of Emmaus Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Lord
called me to begin ministry in the former Soviet block countries. In
the fall of 1992, I resigned as pastor and with a small group of
co-workers we began the ministry of The East European Missions
Network (EEMN) whose purpose is to encourage and help rebuild the
churches in formerly Communist countries. I began making frequent
trips to these countries. As I built relationships and trust with
many pastors and lay members of those churches, it was a matter of
being attentive to their concerns and waiting for the Lord to open
the doors for the message of the Sanctity of Human Life.
It was the fall of 1998. I had met
pastor Sevolod Lytkin of Novo Sibirsk located in the south central
area of the huge region of Siberia, Russia. He invited me to present
a seminar on the sanctity of human life. I developed a simple
approach that any of them could duplicate to teach the message.
 Teaching primarily from the Bible, I
started with the Culture of Life showing how, because we are created
in God’s image, [albeit an image marred by sin] our life is special
and is to be honored and protected from the time of conception to
natural death. Using the video Windows to the Womb, medical
charts, and other medical information, I discussed the development
of the baby. Secondly, again using the Bible, I explained the
Culture of Death. When people turned away from God to
idols, life became cheap. Despite the stern warnings of the
prophets, murder of the innocent, child sacrifice, cruelty, and
indifference to suffering became common. Then I would explain what
abortion is, what the abortionist does, etc.
 There are almost always tears as people
are made aware of the awful reality of what abortion really is and
does. Knowing that most of the women in my audience had had
abortions, and many of the men had forced women to do so, I was
always careful to declare the message of the cross of Jesus Christ
and His personal invitation to repentance and forgiveness. Almost
always someone would come, confess, and accept forgiveness and new
life through Jesus. One of those in Novo Sibirsk was Sayana, a lady
from Tuim, a village of about 5000 people in the Republic of
Khakassia near Mongolia. She had come 19 hours by train to attend
that conference. Several times she asked to talk with me. Finally at
the end we managed to find a quiet room and an interpreter. She
confessed to having had three abortions. She was very eager to trust
Jesus to forgive her. About two years later, she sent me a four-page
poem she had written entitled The Eyes of Watching Children or
The Silent Sin of the World. Here is an excerpt (translated from
Russian).
Child, I created you in the womb
I enlightened you when I knew you
My eyes observed you
Until you were ready to enter the World
I called you child, My creation
And your days were appointed by Me
I entered your name in the book of life
Even when you hadn’t been born
But those days will not come to pass
The world has already dealt with your
life
With hardened heart and cruel hand
The world murders unborn children
One moment—and the creation is destroyed
Your little heart is beating to the
rhythm—and then the knife
Where to go? There is no escape, no
protection
And you look with your life into their
eyes
Thanks to the faithfulness of the
pastors and people of the church in Novo Sibirsk, they now have a
Crisis Pregnancy and Women’s Center.
We also taught the sanctity of life
seminar in Abakan, the capital of Khakassia. Speaking to a group of
social workers, psychologists, and even a representative of Planned
Parenthood, I have seldom found such openness not only for
information about abortion but for the message of the cross of Jesus
Christ. I will never forget one of them remarking, "Why haven’t we
heard of this before?" The message of the sanctity of life can truly
be an evangelistic opportunity.
It was June 2002 in Petrozavodsk,
northwestern Russia. As part of the annual Friendship English
Language and Bible Camp, the director of the Language department of
Lyceum #1, Professor Vera Smirnova, recognizing the damage abortion
is causing in Russia, asked us to include some teaching about
abortion, drugs, and sexuality in our curriculum.
As part of the teaching on abortion we
used the video Windows to the Womb, which shows a baby in
various stages of development kicking, jumping, sucking his thumb,
etc. Nina, one of the Russian English teachers who was helping us,
asked if she could borrow the video. Her unmarried daughter was
pregnant and wanted to abort her baby. After we left, she showed the
video to her. The next year Nina came to me while I was eating
lunch. With a big smile she said "Could you come with me?" She led
me to the hallway. There stood her daughter with a baby carriage.
Wrapped in a soft, warm blanket was one of the most beautiful babies
I had ever seen. Knowing how close this baby had been to death I
could hardly keep from crying there in front of them.
Without God, human life inevitably
becomes cheap and expendable. In the former Soviet Union, where
"scientific atheism" was the law of the land, abortion was a
completely accepted part of their way of life—or, more accurately,
death. The average woman has had at least eight abortions. (That
statistic varies from 4 to 14.) A friend in Latvia told me his
mother had 11 abortions.
The womb is indeed the most dangerous
place for the child. Abortion has become so deeply and tragically
entrenched in the culture that even the medical community considers
it a duty to encourage it. When a pregnant woman goes to the doctor
often his first act is to try to schedule an abortion for her. He
will say something like this: "When would you like me to schedule
you for ‘the break?’" Others call it "the interruption" or "the
cleansing." He is referring to the break from having to bare and
care for a child. When the lady across the hall or her friend finds
out she is pregnant, frequently her first question might be "when
are you going to have it taken care of?" If the mother is going to
keep her baby because that living baby becomes a testimony to her
own sin and guilt, the indignant reaction might be "what right do
you think you have to have your baby, do you think you’re better
than we are?"
During the fall of 2002, I was visiting
EEMN missionaries Pastor Martin and Gunta Irbes in northern Latvia.
The Latvian Parliament had just passed a law legalizing abortion.
Because the Christians in Latvia were upset by this law, there was
much discussion among them. Some had introduced a petition which,
because it was so poorly crafted, most knowledgeable Christians
couldn’t sign. I was eventually interviewed by a local television
station. Because they forgot to turn on the sound, the
interview could not be broadcast. As a result Gunta Irbes asked if
we could do a seminar in Riga. I agreed. She made a few phone calls.
The next night there were 50 to 60 people in the auditorium of the "consistitory"
or main church offices. That prompted us to plan a national
conference for the next year. Subsidized by Lutherans For Life
(USA), this conference was held in St. Matthews Baptist church in
Riga as it was the only one with enough space for the
conference. All of the main churches were represented. Archbishop
Janis Vanags of the Latvian Lutheran Church was the first speaker
followed by bishops of all the main churches. He and his staff have
been very supportive of this effort. This was the first such
conference in Latvia. It received much press and media coverage
while broadly expanding the sanctity of life message in Latvia.
Thanks to the ongoing work of Pastor Martins and Gunta Irbes,
every year since, there has been a sanctity of life conference.
As part of the conferences, I have
always been asked to write an article for the church paper and a
sample sermon which is sent to all the pastors. As a result of his
sermon, one pastor received a call from a member of his congregation
who had been planning an abortion but because of his message decided
to keep the baby.
We have presented the Sanctity of Life
message in several schools. Many women have found forgiveness of
the sin of abortion as a result of these conferences.
I am usually asked to preach a Sanctity
of Life message in the Riga Dom, the cathedral of the Latvian
Lutheran Church. In an attempt to honor pregnant mothers and their
husbands, if there is a couple attending the service, I will ask
them to come forward and pray for them and their unborn baby. We
also present the biblical teaching on sexuality. The little brochure
Made For One (one God, one Savior, one spouse and sexual
relationships only with that spouse) has been very helpful in
presenting that message. A crisis pregnancy center has opened in
Latvia. In part because of the exposure given to the issue of
abortion through the conferences, there were more than enough
volunteers to staff the center.
It was May 2003 when Pastor Bill
Moberly, the new director of EEMN, and I were visiting at the
seminary of the Ingrian Lutheran Church. Just before we were about
to leave we met missionary Leif Camp, a pastor of the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod. Within minutes we discovered a mutual concern
for the unborn child. Because his Russian-born wife had gone through
the indignities of their medical system, they were very concerned
about this issue. For example, it appears to be quite common that a
woman who has just given birth to her child can be in the same room
with another woman who has just had her baby aborted. Besides the
very inadequate sanitary conditions, we frequently hear how women
are treated almost like animals.
Though one would be tempted to ask what
she think happens to her baby, the treatment given Olga Lipovskaya,
35 years old, married three times, and with two children, and seven
abortions, illustrates this callous treatment: "You stand in line
before the door of the operating room, seven or eight of you,
waiting to be taken in. The clinic’s staff is too busy to do
anything but operate, so as each woman who’s finished staggers out
you take turns getting out of line for a few minutes, just to help
her get to the resting room down the hall. Then it’s your turn, and
you go into a hall splattered with blood where two doctors are
aborting seven or eight women at the same time. They’re usually very
rough and rude, shouting at you about keeping your legs wide open .
. . if you are lucky they give you a little sedative, mostly Valium.
Then it’s your turn to stagger out to the resting room, where you’re
not allowed to spend more than two hours because the production
line, you see, is always very busy." Olga estimates she will have
had about 14 abortions in total, which she guesses to be the
national average. (See the University of Utah’s Journal of
Undergraduate Research, 1996, pp. 11-24.)
We have now had two sanctity of life
conferences in St. Petersburg, Russia, and one in Petrozavodsk.
Also, thanks to the enthusiastic leadership given by Pastor Leif and
Genia Camp, they have had conferences in other cities. Bishop Arre
Kougappi of the Ingrian Lutheran Church has always opened the
conferences with a strong biblical pro-life message and is
encouraging the pastors and people of his church to share the
message of Life. In the last year, they have opened Hope (Nadezda) a
family counseling and crisis pregnancy center in the church
headquarters building in the heart of St. Petersburg. Oleg Rymmin,
the director of the center is opening a counseling office in
Maternity Clinic # 6 in St. Petersburg. Pastor Leif Camp and his
wife Genia along with several Russian pastors are giving leadership
to this new Lutherans For Life ministry in Russia.
 In October of 2005, I was attending a
conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Christian
Fellowship, an organization of lay people dedicated to evangelism,
church growth, and renewal. They were especially important during
the Communist years when pastors were carefully controlled by the
secret police. Sitting across the table from Renata Hinrichs, wife
of EEMN missionary Tim Hinrichs, and Pauline, the president of the
Polish Lutheran Church women, we discussed the issue of the sanctity
of life. She asked if we could help them with a pro-life conference.
We began making plans. Soon the Center of Mission and Evangelism
who, among other things, sponsors a widely-heard radio ministry,
indicated they wanted to participate. In April 2006, we held the
first such conference in the Polish Lutheran Church. We met with
about 25 pastors, with youth, and with a general audience. I am
grateful to Mike and Mary Means, pro-lifers from Oklahoma, who came
to help. I am also deeply grateful to God for the Polish
participants who spoke. They displayed remarkable insight into the
issue.
It is assumed that because of the
convictions of the Roman Catholic Church there are few abortions in
Poland. One of the speakers, a young female seminary professor,
indicated there is in fact a high incidence of abortion in
Poland. Many of them are called "tourist abortions" as they can go
across the border to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, or Bela
Rus and obtain one very easily. Remarking that this was the first
time they had ever had a public discussion of this issue, the people
were very receptive and grateful to learn that Lutherans have an
opinion about this issue and that it is not "just a Catholic
issue."
July 24, 2006, I completed
a seminar for youth in Poland on the Sanctity of Life. One of the
participants, a university student from the Ukraine, was in tears as
she shared the news that her cousin, with whom she was very close,
was going to have an abortion the next day. After we talked and
prayed, she sent an e-mail to her cousin, pleading with her not to
make the terrible mistake of killing her own child. Of the 25-30
students present in that seminar only two indicated they had
received any teaching on this issue.
I have also been asked to share the
biblical message of the sanctity of human life at conferences in
Slovakia. Again, the participants were very receptive to the message
of life and healing through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Because of the enormity of the damage
the culture of abortion has done to the people in Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union, as a matter of course when I am counseling,
I almost always ask if they have had an abortion or induced someone
else to have one. I recall no incidence when people were offended by
this question. To the contrary, if they have had an abortion, they
are relieved that they can talk about it, confess it, and find new
beginnings through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In conclusion, I thank the Lord of Life
for the privilege of sharing His word of grace and hope, and the
Lutherans For Life family in the U.S. who support and pray for this
ministry. I am grateful to the faithful people of God in those
formerly Communist countries where it was dangerous to confess Jesus
as Savior and Lord who now want to learn how His Word can produce
among them a culture of life.
May the emerging Signs of Life become a
monumental wave of love for human life from conception to natural
death.
Pastor Don Richman |
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