M o s c o w – The Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists has a new President: Alexei Smirnov. Its Moscow congress elected the 54 year old pastor to succeed Yuri Sipko (57), who did not candidate again. Smirnov received 75% of 432 votes cast. Smirnov is reputed to be a bridge builder, someone who can reconcile the Union’s various theological currents.

Smirnov planted a church in the suburbs of Moscow and helped organise an evangelistic bicycle tour. Since November 2006, Smirnov has been Director of the newly formed Pastoral Department in Moscow Baptist headquarters. He has until now headed an independent Baptist movement. He was also Coordinator for the 2006 founded Public Council, an umbrella organisation of 10 Baptist-style church unions. Smirnov, who speaks only Russian, began his career as an auto mechanic; his theological studies consist essentially of courses by extension. He sees bringing Baptist churches into the public limelight as being one of his biggest challenges. “Our stress must be on the creation of healthy, Evangelical-Baptist churches,” he stated in an interview. Such congregations need to understand themselves as God’s blessing to society. It is unclear what role Smirnov’s predecessor, Yuri Sipko, will be playing. He spent 16 years in the Union leadership: eight years as its President and eight more as a Vice-President.

The new First Vice-President will be Evgeny Yurevich Bakhmutsky, until now head of the Union’s Youth Department. He will replace Peter Mitskevich, Rector of the Baptist Moscow Theological Seminary. But Mitskevich will remain a Vice-President along with Ruvim Voloshin, the Union’s Mission Director. As in the case of Smirnov, these elections were held without a choice of candidates.

International guests at the event included David Coffey (Didcot), President of the Baptist World Alliance, Tony Peck (Prague), General Secretary of the European Baptist Federation (EBF), and Hartmut Riemenschneider (Marl), President of the German Federation of Evangelical-Free Churches. Riemenschneider had come to Moscow as part of a six-person delegation from the German Federation. Peck thanked Sipko for his 16 year long service. He had been an inspiring leader with a generous spirit and warm personality. Peck also praised the congress’ vocal and instrumental music as being “of a very high standard”.

The RUECB represents 78.000 adult members in 1.750 congregations and groups.