Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

overhead expensive. Underground Evangelism, for example, spent 18.5 percent of its $8.1 million received in 1977 on administration and 15 percent on fund-raising.** During the same year Wurmbrand received $5.9 million, of which 21 percent was spent on administration, 21 percent on postage, freight, and publicity.3 Other administrators of church agencies consider an overhead of more than 30 percent too high. Underground Evangelism officials claim to be introducing more efficiency, but the affluent style of its leadership remains a point of incongruity. Evaluation of East European Missions Soviet authorities do not like the East European missions. That probably indicates that they have had considerable success in attaining their goals, East European missions are an obvious factor in helping account for present growth, especially among evangelicals. (I have focused in this chapter on the evangelically oriented missions which dominate the field in any case.) Flattering as the Soviet attack may seem, it cannot be dismissed with equal equanimity by all missions. General criticism of the specific missions included above is no secret to the Soviets; Izvestiia recently drew attention to the financial scandal involving Wurmbrand and Underground Evangelism.™ Instead of rating each mission separately, | propose to discuss a number of issues from the perspective of modern missiology.® 1. A Smuggling Ethic. In the spring of 1973 the United Bible Society’s European Regional Committee made the following resolution: Assessment of East European Mission Societies 401 The committee emphasizes that all support given to the work by UBS member Bible societies is provided through legal channels. The commit- tee wishes to place on record its dissociation from Bible work done by illegal means, Furthermore, the committee dissociates itself from any Scripture distribution linked with political propaganda. This statement was subsequently quoted with commendation by AUCECB general secretary Alexei Bychkov.*7 He was able to report in 1978 that the United Bible Societies now had a working relationship with them; two representatives attended an EBF seminar in Moscow in March 1979, The first pay-off for this announced policy of importing Bibles by strictly legal means was the 25,000 Bibles that were imported in December 1978. East European mission leaders understand the UBS declaration as a re- jection of their own work and expressed their resentment in public. Under- ground Evangelism, for example, responded to claims of a Bible breakthrough in 1978 in the Soviet Union by quoting CCECB sources that the latter were unaware of any Bibles brought into the country officially. Underground Evangelism discussed the subject at length and concluded by dismissing the claims about official permission, regular supplies of Bibles, as “religious fairy tales,’’38 Following the importation of 25,000 Bibles in December 1978, the first