A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

his renewal movement, consisting of several phases. 1. A Bible School in the Crimea. 2 ' The first Bible school of the Mennonite Brethren in Russia was not started in the pre-war era of cultural progress and material prosperity, but in 1918, the year of anarchy and civil war. A missionary on furlough from India, Johann G. Wiens, who was prevented by circumstances from returning to the mission field, was the man God used to respond to a vision and a need. The Missions Committee of the M.B. Church favored the idea and promised support. When the Friedensstimme brought this prospective venture to the attention of the general public, it was discovered that not only missionary candidates were interested in such preparation, but many other Christian workers as well. To meet this need the M.B. Conference accepted the Bible School as a conference institution in the fall of 1918 and appointed Heinrich Braun, the secretary-treasurer of the conference, as a second teacher. Tschongraw, a village in the Crimea where missionary Wiens had taken up residence, was chosen as the location for the new school. Because of the great differences in the educational background of the thirty students that had enrolled for such training, Wiens divided the group into two classes — those with more advanced training taking upper level courses. The curriculum was patterned somewhat after that of the German Baptist 114 HISTORY OK THE MENNONITE BRETHRKN CHURCH Seminary in Hamburg, which Wiens had attended. From Tschongraw this pattern was transplanted to Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, where it became one of the "models" for Bible school curricula. A. H. Unruh joined the teaching staff in Tschongraw in 1920. For six years (1918-1924) the school operated under the evident blessing of God, although not without opposition. When the Bolsheviks regained control of the Crimea in the fall of 1920, all teachers and students were arrested and committed for trial. At the hearing it was established that the charges brought against the school were false and so teachers and students were released. In March, 1924. however, the local authorities decreed that the school had to be closed." Petitions to the central government in Moscow as well as to the government of the Crimea for permission to reopen the school were unsuccessful. In God's providence three of its teachers — Unruh, Wiens, and Reimer — were able to emigrate to Canada where they founded the Winkler Bible School a year later, in 1925, under the leadership of A. H. Unruh. Another Bible school was organized in 1925 in Orenburg by Peter Koehn, a minister of the Mennonite Brethren Church who had studied theology at St. Crischona (near Basel) in Switzerland for two years. 2 ' After the school was closed by the government, Koehn and others organized a Wandernde Bihelschule (a "traveling" Bible school) which offered short-term courses for ministers and Christian workers, shifting its base