Kazakhstan Mission, with its headquarters in the city of Astana, encompasses the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan and is part of the Southern Union Mission in the Euro-Asia Division of Seventh-day Adventists. Organized as far back as 1979 as the Kazakhstan District, and renamed in 1990 as the Kazakhstan Conference, this church entity went through a number of reorganizations leading to the establishment of the Kazakhstan Mission in 2022, which is now responsible for the work of local Adventist churches throughout the country.1
Statistics (December 2023): Churches, 30; companies, 24; membership, 2,103; population, 20,014,575.2
Religious Situation and Spreading of Adventism in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, located in the center of Eurasia, is the ninth largest country in the world by land area. The diverse population is represented by more than 130 ethnic groups. Kazakhs make up the bulk of the population, but the country is also home to Russians, Uzbeks, Uighurs, and many other peoples.
The religious situation in Kazakhstan is featured by diversity as well. Islam is the dominant religion and the majority of Muslims practice Sunnism. The country is also home to followers of many other religions. However, the number of Christians of all denominations in Kazakhstan is rapidly declining every year. According to the statistics of the national census in 2021, only 17.2 percent of the population declared their affiliation with Christianity, while in 2009 this figure was 26.2 percent.3
The history of Kazakhstan is associated with various periods of political and social change, which entailed significant changes in the ethnic and religious composition of the population. There have been multiple migrations of people from Russia, Ukraine and other places. These migrants became the source of spreading the Adventist message in Kazakhstan. As early as the second half of the XIX century, as well as during the Stolypin agrarian reform, German settlers arrived in Kazakhstan from the European part of Russia, and many of them brought Adventist tracts and began to celebrate the Sabbath in the new place. Gradually, the first Adventist congregations were organized.
In 1907, Pastor Heinrich Konrad Lӧbsack traveled from Siberia through Semipalatinsk and Aulie-Ata (now Taraz) to Central Asia. In Semipalatinsk he organized a church with 18 members that included 10 Germans and 8 Russians. Pastor Tittel from Rudnya (Saratov Governorate) was invited to serve in Semipalatinsk as a local elder.4
In 1908, Pastor K.A. Reifschneider came to the city of Akmolinsk. Adventists had already been living in two large villages, Romanovka and Rozhdestvenka, located near that city. K.A. Reifschneider held an evangelistic program in each of the villages, and baptized four persons and admitted twelve former Baptists to Adventist membership by profession of faith. He planted a new Adventist church consisting of 23 members.5
In the mid-1920s, Pastor F. M. Ostapenko baptized 6 people and started the Adventist ministry in the city of Alma-Ata (Verny).
The first official data about Adventists in Kazakhstan appeared in the published reports of the Russian Union for the second quarter of 1908: Auliye-Ata (now Taraz) – 24 believers and 36 Sabbath School members; Semipalatinsk–25 believers and 25 Sabbath School members.
The second wave of immigration to Kazakhstan was caused by deporting people arrested during Stalin’s repressions in 1930’s. Among exiles, kulaks, and “sectarians” there were many Adventists.
Another significant population movement was the deportation of Germans from the European part of the USSR and the organization of their special settlements, mainly in Northern Kazakhstan, during World War II.
Organizational History
The participants of the Spring Meeting of the Russian Union committee held on January 28, 1907, decided to organize the East Russian Missionary Field that also united Seventh-day Adventist congregations in Central Asia. Heinrich Konrad Lӧbsack was elected president of this new field.
At the beginning of the XX century, the territories of Kazakhstan were served by the ministers of the Siberian Field. From 1900s to the middle of the 1930s, Adventist churches and smaller groups of believers were formed in the cities of Akmola, Karaganda, and Kostanay, as well as in other regions of Northern Kazakhstan. The Adventist work in the territories of Kazakhstan was officially organized into a church administrative unit in 1979, when the Kazakhstan District was established. Kazakhstan District became the Kazakhstan Conference in 1990. The Kazakhstan Conference experienced various administrative reorganizations, resulting in the formation of the Northern Kazakhstan Mission and the Southern Kazakhstan Mission in 2010.
For the next 12 years, the situation with church growth in Kazakhstan did not improve, which led to the decision to merge Northern Kazakhstan Mission and Southern Kazakhstan Mission, and in March 2022 the Kazakhstan Mission was organized, which is now responsible for the work of Seventh-day Adventist churches throughout Kazakhstan.
Administration (2022- )
President: О. А. Bondarenko
Secretary: M. N. Azhgulov
Treasurer: О. А. Shepelev
Sources
Bureau of National Statistics. Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Accessed December 30, 2023. https://stat.gov.kz.
Ethnic Composition, Religion and Languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Bureau of National Statistics. Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Astana, 2023.
Ising, V. “Iz Sibiri.” [From Siberia] Maslina, no. 11 (1907).
Janzen, I. А. “Nekotorye soobshcheniya so vsekh kontsov SSSR.” [Some messages from all parts of the USSR] Blagovestnik, no. 5 (1927).
Löbsack, H. J. Velikoye adventistskoe dvizhenie i adventisty sed’mogo dnia v Rossii [The Great Adventist Movement and the Seventh-day Adventists in Russia]. Rostov-on-Don: Altair, 2006.
Maslina Supplement, no. 6 (1908).
Smailov, А. А., ed. Results of the National Population Census of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2009. Analytical Report. Astana, 2011.
Yunak, D. O. Podvig stradaniy. Istoriya Tserkvi ASD v Sredney Azii [Martyrdom. The history of Seventh-day Adventist Church in Central Asia]. Tula, 2007. Personal archives of D. O. Yunak.
Notes
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This article was translated from Russian by Vladimir Ievenko.↩
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Bureau of National Statistics. Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan, accessed December 30, 2023, https://stat.gov.kz↩
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Ethnic Composition, Religion and Languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Bureau of National Statistics. Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Astana, 2023), 510.↩
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V. Ising, “Iz Sibiri,” Maslina, no. 11 (1907): 167.↩
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Maslina Supplement, no. 6 (1908): 94.↩