Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

Sergei Sannikov and Iurii Reshetnikov remains outstanding, but there is much more to be found.“ The oral history project (1994-ca2002) was more a failure than success, but much of its intended vision can still be pursued.** As a movement of * Donald M. Lewis (ed), Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). ** S.I. Golovashchenko (compiler), Istoriia evangel’sko-baptistskogo dvizheniia v Ukraine: Materialy i dokumenty (Odessa: Bogomyslie, 1998). A fuller source collection, also in digital format, is maintained by the EAAA. *° A collaborative project between four theological schools (Moscow, Odessa, St Petersburg Christian University, Donetsk Christian University), the Baptist and Anabaptist Studies Centre at IBTS, and the Mennonite Central Committee, with this author, Walter Sawatsky, as coordinator, it involved students, many of whom became teachers, interviewing a sam- pling of leaders and average church members for the period 1945-1990. Selections were published on CD by the EAAA when it assumed oversight. Some interviewing continues. 208 the people, the evangelical movement had many women leaders, yet only a few are so far included in the oral interview collection, and fewer still are known sufficiently to serve as models today. Many of the incidents of lived faith and witness that occurred - without the cover of organisation and funding - during the years of difficulty still need to be discovered and told. So many experiences and theological discoveries about real people finding forgiveness, lives of alcoholism transformed to the service of the Lord, and visitation of the old, the sick and the imprisoned in the name of Christ remain to be collected and told. It would bea happy conclusion were | able to promise that Western Chris- tians would help historians and the churches. Such possibilities remain truly modest, and it is not guaranteed that Christians in the West will truly see and understand when the stories get told. Historians must all the more see themselves as a small community linked globally, following the model of Luke, the early historian of the Church, to preserve for the future the marvellous deeds of the Lord and the Lord's unobtrusive servants. Walter Sawatsky is Professor of Church History and Mission at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Indiana, USA), co-editor of Religion in Eastern Europe journal and author of many articles on evangelical history in Eastern Europe, as well as the book Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II (1981). 209 Visible and Invisible: Observations on Social Service Ministries among Evangelicals in Ukraine since Independence Mary Raber t a year-end meeting at First Baptist Church in Odessa (Ukraine), held after Sunday morning worship on 18 December 2004, members reported on a variety of activities in which the church had been involved. The reporti