Russia Comes to Partridge

Last Wednesday evening Harley Wagler spoke at our church.  He is the affable Mennonite bachelor from Partridge who has spent most of his career teaching in universities in the Slavic world, the majority of that time in Russia, but earlier also in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.  He comes home during the summer months.  He's in his upper 70s now, but I haven't heard any indications that retirement is on the agenda yet.  Several years ago I heard him explain why he thinks retirement would make no sense for him--at that time, at least. 

Many in the Beachy world knew Harley's uncle Willie Wagler.  He has cousins scattered elsewhere in the Mennonite world--among them Nathan and Harold Miller at Rosedale in the Plain City, OH area, Dr. Norman Miller in Northern Indiana and Dr. Leon Miller in Millersburg, OH.  His sister Ruth shows up regularly with her husband Roman Miller at the Hutchinson farmer's market .

This was the first time that I heard Harley tell the details of how his career path unfolded.  He traces its beginnings to several events in childhood when his family entertained overnight guests.  The first one was a cousin of his father's, John Overholt, who visited when Harley was eight years old.  He spoke of having stood in Red Square in Moscow and, Bible in hand and Lenin's body lying in state nearby, having prayed for the salvation of Russia's people.  The next year Harley gave up his bed so that Peter Deyneka, another visitor who came, could sleep in Harley's bed.  Harley went to the hay mow for the night.  Deyneka established the Slavic Gospel Association, and Harley later worked closely with his son.  I didn't get the name of the third person, but a third influential person spoke at the Free Methodist Church in Hutchinson, and about a dozen Amish buggies full of listeners showed up.  The speaker was a Russian seminary classmate of none other than Josef Stalin.  Obviously the paths of the two men had diverged after seminary.   Stalin eventually became very anti-religious.

Harley pursued Russian studies at the University of Kansas, after having spent several years in voluntary service in Costa Rica.  Then, in what turned out to be a pivotal event, by invitation he presented to the head of the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities a plan for reaching out to people in the Communist bloc countries (more on that later). Harley was asked afterward to lead out in implementing such an effort.  For the next 32 years he taught many American students who had traveled abroad to study Russian language, culture, etc.   They were Christian young people with a vision for serving the population of their host country.  One class day each week was spent in hands-on work, such as rehabilitating old Eastern Orthodox churches.  The first one they worked on  had been repurposed as a razor blade factory, and then was left in complete disrepair, lacking even a roof.  Loading up six dump trucks of rubble was the first task. 

Harley is still teaching in a Russian university, but he is no longer working for either the "Eastern" Board or for the Council of Christian Colleges, under whose auspices he taught during those years.  Lamentably, declining interest has shuttered these programs. 

The four principles that Harley proposed for the outreach to Eastern bloc countries:

1.  Workers would not go to start churches.  Instead, they would work with existing churches.
2.  Workers would be legitimate, as opposed to working surreptitiously underground.  They would do real work to benefit society.
3.  Workers would report honestly--never hiding their identity as Christians or capitalizing on the drama of their setting or circumstances.
4.  Workers would always identify with a local church community and commit to learning the local language and take instructions from the local church body. 

Harley's "home church" in Russia is a Baptist church.  Although having a far smaller presence than the Eastern Orthodox church in Russia, this group has always been respected for the integrity of its people.  This is the church that absorbed many of the Mennonites after their own church groups had fallen into disarray.  A Baptist seminary offered these displaced people assistance; thus the shift. 

There's more, which I may continue in a later post.