The Twenty Largest Sending Agencies

Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 1995, Covering the Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe

Missionaries to the Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe:
the Twenty Largest Sending Agencies*

ORGANIZATION	FSU	ECE	TOTAL	SHORT	CAREER
Assemblies of God	28	64	92	0	92
Biblical Education by Extension	12	51	63	2	61
Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa	8	25	33	0	33
Campus Crusade for Christ	234	165	399	172	227
Child Evangelism Fellowship	25	64	89	0	89
Christian & Missionary Alliance	39	10	49	0	49
Church of Christ**	104	128	232	0	232
Church Resource Ministries	17	129	146	110	36
Evangelical Free Church Mission	12	52	64	21	43
International Teams	20	47	67	31	36
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship	32	12	44	44	0
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod	32	15	47	36	11
Church of the Nazarene	16	21	37	19	18
Navigators	193	27	220	146	74
OMS International	87	14	101	83	18
Operation Mobilzation	40	43	83	62	21
Salvation Army	50	2	52	0	52
Seventh-day Adventists	49	10	59	25	34
Southern Baptist Convention	80	76	156	60	96
Youth With a Mission	1600	700	2300	2000	300
Total for 20 Agencies	2678	1655	4333	2811	1522

*To avoid double counting of many of the 862 one-year CoMission missionaries, this cooperative effort involving 12 sending agencies is not listed separately.

**Church of Christ totals do not include 200-300 mission-trip participants (1-6 weeks) because this short term of service falls below the 3- to 24-month designation for short-term missionaries.

Compiled by Pamela Meadows, research assistant for the Institute for East-West Christian Studies, Wheaton College.

Editor's Notes:
EWC&M Report staff recently contacted the 20 agencies which we presumed would have the largest number of Protestant missionary personnel in the former Soviet Union and East Central Europe. If we have overlooked any agencies with comparable missionary staff in former Soviet-bloc countries, we would welcome and publish corrections or additions.

Readers should first note that these figures, representing the 20 largest sending agencies, give no indication of the missionary personnel of hundreds of smaller ministries. At this point, the EWC&M Report is not aware that anyone possesses current totals for all Protestant missionaries in former Soviet-bloc countries. (Compare these figures for 20 agencies with Patrick Johnstone's estimates for total missionary personnel previously reported in the EWC&M Report 2 (Winter 1994), 5.) The Editors' impressions, admittedly based on no hard data, are that few agencies beyond this list have more than a handful of career missionaries each in the former Soviet Union and East Central Europe.

A second caution is that while the 20 agencies report a total of 4,333 missionaries, the majority of these (2,811) are short-term (from three months to two years). Also, bear in mind that recent Russian and Ukrainian government actions blocking CoMission access to public schools undoubtedly will have an impact on future short-term totals for sending agencies associated with the CoMission.

As for interpretive remarks, the Editors consider 1,522 career missionaries to be a relatively modest number for the 20 largest agencies for such a large and populous region. Considering the sizeable missionary concentrations in such cities as Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev, it would appear that many smaller cities and rural areas lack a significant missionary presence. Accounts of a missionary invasion penned by Western, Orthodox, and nationalist writers would appear to be overstated. But if the focus is on easily accessible cities and on large-scale, short-term summer ministries, it is easy to deduce the source of misleading impressions.

Finally, no Western missionary statistics should obscure the fact that indigenous Protestant missionaries and evangelists are less heralded but certainly more numerous than Western missionaries in such countries as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. (See EWC&M Report 2 (Winter 1994), 6.)

Pamela Meadows, Compiler, "Missionaries to the Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe: the Twenty Largest Sending Agencies," East-West Church & Ministry Report, 3 (Spring 1995), 10.

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