Roots & Faith
Empowering Slavic churches for nearly a century through training, Scripture, and outreach.
Our Roots
Slavic Gospel Association was founded in 1934 by Rev. Peter Deyneka, who in 1914 at the age of 15 had immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet republic of Belarus. A few years later, Rev. Deyneka repented of his sins and trusted in Christ as Saviour during a worship service at Chicago’s renowned Moody Memorial Church, which was pastored at the time by Dr. Paul Rader. Our Canadian office was officially opened in 1947.
After his salvation and graduation from St. Paul Bible School in Minnesota, Peter eventually returned to Chicago with an overwhelming burden to see his people won to Christ. In 1925, he went back to his homeland and travelled extensively, sharing the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. While there, he established a strong, enduring relationship with the faithful churches of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UECB), one of the largest and oldest Protestant denominations. But in the early 1930s, Stalin intensified persecution of the churches, and it became no longer possible for Peter to travel to his homeland. Convinced that there were ways to help the churches from here, he and a small group of Chicago-area businessmen founded what later came to be known as the Slavic Gospel Association in the back room of Hedstrom’s Shoe Store.
For many decades, SGA covertly distributed millions of Bibles and Christian books under the Iron Curtain into the hands of believers throughout the Soviet Union, while producing and broadcasting thousands of Christian radio programs over the Iron Curtain. The first Russian language Bible institutes in the world were established to train the Russian immigrants in Toronto, Canada; Temperley, Argentina; and other parts of the world. The mission also had an extensive ministry to Russian-speaking refugees and immigrants living in various countries throughout the world.
Throughout the Cold War era, SGA founder Peter Deyneka, Sr. travelled the globe holding prayer meetings, often all-night prayer meetings, encouraging the Lord’s people to pray for the opening of the Soviet Union for the preaching of the Gospel. His motto became “Much prayer, much power. Little prayer, little power. No prayer, no power!”
His powerful preaching gave him the nickname “Peter Dynamite.” Having poured out his life in service to the Lord, the Lord called him to his heavenly reward in 1987. Then, in 1989, the Lord answered Peter’s prayers of a lifetime, dramatically surprised the entire world, and brought the Iron Curtain crashing down. SGA leaders and missionaries immediately began to seize the unprecedented new opportunities for reaching the 300 million people of the former USSR for the glory of Christ.
Over the fifteen years that have passed, SGA partners have enabled the training of several thousand pastors, church planters, and church workers, as well as the planting of several thousand new churches in what is now known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Our main purpose is to help Bible-preaching churches in these lands of Russia make disciples for our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We serve in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. We serve the churches in these nations primarily through the provision of Russian-language Bibles and Christian literature, through solid Bible training for pastors, church planters, and church workers, through the sponsorship of church-planting missionaries, and through the provision of humanitarian aid.
Our mission has grown to become an international ministry with autonomous offices in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and England. We operate three regional ministry centres in the CIS, which are entirely staffed by nationals, as well as an office staffed by nationals at the headquarters of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Russia in Moscow. Since 1997, SGA has been privileged to serve as the official representative of the Russian UECB in North America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Our Faith
We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings, and that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life.
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.
We believe that man was created in the image of God; that he sinned, and thereby incurred not only physical death, but also spiritual death which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature and, in the case of those who reach moral responsibility, become sinners in thought, word and deed.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice; and that all who believe in Him are justified on the grounds of His shed blood.
We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into Heaven, and His present life there for us as High Priest and Advocate.
We believe in that blessed hope, the personal, premillennial and imminent return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We believe that all who receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ are born again of the Holy Spirit, thereby receiving eternal life and thus becoming children of God.
We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved, and the everlasting, conscious punishment of the lost.
We believe in the spreading of the gospel as Jesus said … “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”