April 21, 2024, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

Amarillo sent mission groups to Belarus during open period

By Mike Haynes

                Long before Russia invaded Ukraine and years before Vladimir Putin established his iron hold on the Russian Federation, scores of Christians from the Texas Panhandle made multiple trips to that part of the world to help people who had little access to the word of God.

                From 1992 to 2008, teams of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, pastors, lawyers, business people and others traveled to Belarus, which is surrounded by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, to provide medical and other aid and to preach about Jesus Christ.

Col. Bill Duncan

                Director of the nonprofit group formed to facilitate the efforts was Bill Duncan, then of Amarillo, whose new book, “A Warrior’s Walk,” describes the birth, precarious life and eventual forced end of the remarkable ministry. Duncan now lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

                The memoir, subtitled, “The Life and Journey of Colonel Billy R. Duncan,” and edited by Amarillo minister and writer Gene Shelburne, also recounts the distinguished Marine Corps career of a man who served in Korea and Vietnam as well as representing his country in the Soviet Union before that Communist state collapsed. His experience with eastern bloc officials, including some in the KGB spy organization, helped pave the way for the success of the CIS Church Development Foundation.

                The immediate successor to the Soviet Union in 1991 was the Commonwealth of Independent States. Duncan, Stan Coffey, then pastor of Amarillo’s San Jacinto Baptist Church (now the Church at Quail Creek), Roy Wheeler, then senior minister of Paramount Terrace Christian Church (now Hillside Christian Church), Jim Smith, then pastor of St. Stephen Methodist Church, and others formed the CIS Church Development Foundation in 1992 after Coffey had been invited to lead a Christian crusade in Minsk, Belarus.

                With the monumental change in governance in Russia and the other eastern European nations, the local ministers saw an opening for Christianity that had been closed by the Soviets since 1917. “Nowhere on earth is there a greater open door to preach the Gospel,” Coffey told potential volunteers. “Following the death of Marxist ideology and atheism, we see a new opportunity to spread the word of Jesus Christ.”

 

                About 90 people from several denominations participated in the first crusade. Upon their return, Duncan and other leaders created “The Vision for Belarus” and evaluated the needs of “churches, medical and educational facilities, hospitals, orphanages, pension or retirement homes, children’s training camps, local media, existing trade unions, and other areas of the social fabric of the new republic.”

                The plan was to start in the million-population Minsk and grow into other cities. Because of Duncan’s experience as a Marine and as a civilian government contractor, he believed God put on his heart to use his contacts and take a top-down approach. With “CIS” in the foundation’s title, the group was able to get bureaucratic approval for events and visits that would have been impossible under the Soviets.

                The Amarillo-based group delivered Bibles and prescription medicines and preached on the streets and in churches. But with some local officials still holding long-held restrictive attitudes, not everything was smooth. In fact, Duncan, his Russian interpreter and a pastor from Trinity Church in Amarillo spent a night in a Russian prison.

                After the three took a side trip to deliver Bibles and antibiotics to Ukraine in September 1992, they were stopped at their Moscow hotel because their passports didn’t show a visit to Ukraine. The Russian officials suspected the lack of a Ukraine stamp meant they had been conducting treasonous activities.

                 Because Duncan and the prison warden both held the rank of colonel, Duncan decided to take a bold approach and demand their release as American citizens. After a tense discussion, the warden relented and fined them $38. Duncan had $30 in his pocket, and the pastor had $8.

                “God showed himself as our Provider and our Protector that day,” Duncan wrote.

                For more than 15 years, the mission trips continued with activities that included visits to churches, prisons and hospitals. Duncan estimated that a million people were reached, 2.4 million Bibles were distributed and 139 churches, including home churches, were started.

                Roy Wheeler, along with his interpreter, Luda, was one of those who preached in churches and theaters. Some services lasted for hours with eager audiences standing the entire time. Duncan recalled a frigid rally in 1993 in an unheated theater. Wheeler’s luggage had been lost, and in freezing temperatures, he preached while wearing a donated jacket and mittens. The group took advantage of his misfortune and posted billboards that said, “Come see the American speak. He is unequipped for our winter and unseasonably cold!”

                Duncan said the persuasiveness of Wheeler and Luda created a big response to the message, and Wheeler made 10 trips to Belarus in the following years.

                It all ground to a stop as a result of the “2002 Religion Law” that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko – still in power in 2024 – put into effect requiring state approval for churches or religious organizations to meet. The Amarillo group managed to continue but with more caution. In 2008, however, the U.S. State Department instructed Duncan not to continue taking groups to Belarus on tourist visas as had been the practice. Duncan realized that the new restrictions could be dangerous, and the CIS Church Development Foundation was dissolved.

                In his book, the veteran Marine and Christian missionary asks, “Will the seeds that we planted continue to grow?” His answer: “…Yes! … We still hear comments from a pastor or a fellow-believer over there. God is still alive and moving inside Belarus.”