Dan Burks knew for some time that he wanted to be a missionary.
Not just any missionary, bringing the world of Christianity to the unchurched.
Burks wanted to spread the gospel to Muslims…in the former Soviet Union.
It took his wife, Julie, a while to catch the fire her husband carried but recently, the couple and their two children left Oregon for a three year adventure in the Crimea. There new home in the Ukraine, the former Soviet Union, will be home base as they and others help native Tatars, establish a home church.
Their work is in conjunction with the Crimean Tatar Ministry program based in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Tatars are an ethnic Muslim group that has been repressed by the Soviet government.
The Burks have spent several years preparing for their quest.
“Under the Soviet form of government, all religions were held down,” Dan said. “We want to start a home church. On a scale of 1-5, I speak at a three level.”
Burks graduated in 1984 from SHHS. He is the son of Garry and Cathy Burks. He met his wife, Julie, in Scotts Bluff, Neb. where he attended the Scotts Bluff School of Evangelism. They married in 1986. In 1990 the couple moved back to Sweet Home while Dan preached at a church in Salem.
In 1992 he became an associate pastor at the Highway 20 Church of Christ, then took a pastor ship at a church in Garibaldi until 1996.
The couple and their two children, McKenzie, 12, and Kyle, 10, moved to the Chicago, Ill. area where Dan completed a degree program in Muslim studies.
During that time, he worked at the infamous Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago.
“I was scared at times,” Dan admits. “I met a lot of good people, though. The first seven or eight months, the people were very skeptical of me. I saw drug deals doing on right outside our door. I felt threatened a times.”
Dan worked with the Center for Whole Life, a Christian based organization that focuses on not only the spiritual fulfillment of persons but their all-around needs as well.
“We were concerned about their education, their spirituality and their physical well-being,” Dan said. “I made contact with a lot of people. We got people connected to church.”
The Burks have committed to a three year stay in the Crimea. They won’t be able to return to the United States for two years.
“There is a big team already there,” Dan said.
The Burks will live in a city of about 400,000 persons. They will be within one hour by air of Istanbul. Their journey to the Crimea included a 10 hour flight from New York City, then an 18 hour train ride from Khiev.
“The countryside reminds me a little of Nebraska,” Julie Burks said.
The majority of the area’s residents subsist by raising gardens. There is a 60% unemployment rate among the Tatars.
“We are concerned about the kids,” Julie said. “The first year, we plan to home school them. We’ll put them into Russian schools the second year.”
The Burks say the average Russian is disillusioned with their government since it is so corrupt.
“We will work with three other missionary couples,” Dan said. “Our goal is to let the Muslims know that Christianity is a religion of grace. Islam is a religion based totally on laws.”
Julie hopes to work with children in the city.
The Burks children are justifiably skeptical about their big move since they will come into their teenage years in an evolving country.
About the Tatars
The Crimean Tatars are a Muslim people whose historic homeland is the Crimean peninsula, located on the Black Sea in the south of the Ukraine.
A Tatar Khanate was established in the fifteenth century and thrived, in part, due to a flourishing slave trade. Raids were made northward in which Slavic peoples were captured and sold on the Crimean market.
This lasted until the 17th century, by which time the Khanate was declining and Muscovite power was on the rise.
The 18th century saw the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula and its Tatar inhabitants, thus bringing about the end of the Tatar Khanate as a political and cultural entity.
In May 1944, Joseph Stalin deported the Tatars from the Crimean peninsula. They were loaded into cattle cars and taken to Soviet Central Asia, where they lived under protest.
With the fall of the Soviet Union they began to return home, only to find their land occupied by Russians and Ukrainians. They have been building villages outside the cities but have been the object of discrimination which continues to this day.
Tatars and Slavic peoples don’t get along well. It is difficult for missionaries to reach to Slavic peoples and the Tatars simultaneously.