Heedless of the slippery ice under their feet and the below-freezing temperatures, the Yakutian (Sakha) believers sang joyfully in call-and-response style as they grasped hands, stepping rhythmically together – left foot forward, right foot back.  Nearby, my partner captured the moment for an HSI video documentary. As the circle turned slowly, I joined them in celebration as they sang an “Ohuokai of Gratefulness” –   

Hey there, let’s join together,
Brothers and sisters in faith,
Let’s dance a round dance,
A true Yakutian ohuokai…

This traditional song / dance genre perfectly expressed their feelings of gratefulness to the Christians world-wide who had prayed for this historic event:

Words of gratefulness and greeting
We address to the saved ones of all the nations
Who prayed unceasingly for us.
…We express our gratefulness.

No one would have guessed by their radiant faces that the New Song Festival had experienced tremendous trials before it at last reached a successful conclusion on March 18, 2007.

Although it was originally scheduled to take place in a modern 700-seat University Cultural Center, the Russian federal security services interfered at the last minute by closing the hall.  The Sakha believers regrouped by moving the festival to their own church building, which normally seats just over 100 people – far too small to accommodate the crowds who had been invited.

As recently as 15 years ago, the thought of a New Song Festival put on entirely through the efforts of Sahka Christians was so preposterous it wasn’t even a dream in the minds of local Christians.

At that time, the first few Sakha Christians were only beginning to come to the Lord, and there was no thought of using music and art genres from their own culture to worship the Lord and to spread the gospel to their own people.

This first New Song Festival was a testimony to the Lord’s work over the last 15 years and to the maturity and mission-mindedness of the Christians throughout Yakutia.

The Sakha of Siberia have for centuries considered their traditional religion (shamanism) to be the only true Sakha religion.  But since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the arrival of increased freedom of religion, things are changing….

The seeds for change go back to those decades when Russian Christians were exiled for their faith to prisons in this frozen corner of Siberia.  In the 1970s and 1980s, those believers spent countless hours on their knees praying that there would one day be a church in Yakutia.

Less than 10 years later (in the early 1990s), the first Sakha evangelical believers came to the Lord; the current number of Sakha believers is estimated at about 400 and has been growing slowly.  The slow growth is quite possibly due to the unfortunate reality that up until now, Christianity has been perceived to be a foreign religion because of its non-Sakha worship forms.

Up until the New Song Festival, the vast majority of published Sakha-language songs were ones that had been translated from the Russian hymnbook.  To their dismay, many Sakha Christian poets and song-writers had not been able to see their works recorded and published.

A decade of ministry in Russia had given us a vision for using indigenous Sakha music in worship.  In the latter part of 2006, we returned for a month to Yakutia.  Our goal was to learn what was hindering Sakha believers from expressing their faith through culturally-appropriate use of the arts.

Our research on that trip showed us that there was a crying need for collaboration.  We became convinced that if Sakha believers would partner together and support each another in prayer, they would be successful in seeing culturally-appropriate music and arts used in the growth of the churches in Yakutia.

Toward the end of the trip, we invited a number of gifted Sakha people to a meeting and encouraged them to share their vision and their concerns with one another.  Out of that meeting, an arts fellowship was formed named Algys (all-GISS), which means “blessing” in Sakha.

The founders of Algys represent a broad variety of musical, artistic, and literary gifts.  These include poets, visual artists, song-writers, newspaper editors, singers, and Sakha pastors – each with a vision for contextualizing their faith within Sakha culture.

One of their first project ideas was to plan a Sakha New Song Festival.  They hoped that this would encourage Christian Sakha song-writers/musicians to create and perform new works of culturally-appropriate Christian music.  In addition, it would show non-believers that Christianity was not just a Russian or “foreign” religion.

At the invitation of Algys, we recently returned to Yakutia to document this first New Song Festival.  We found when we arrived that there was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air; God was working!

Several local churches, in partnership with Algys, had collaborated together for this event, passing out close to 2000 printed invitations, printing huge vinyl banners and a festival logo for the front of the stage, and accepting over twenty song applications, representing close to forty participants from several different regions of Yakutia.

When the New Song Festival was forced into the drastically smaller church building, the believers in the participating churches gave up their seats, forgoing the Festival so that there would be room for the non-believing friends they had invited.

For this reason, a recent letter from Algys relayed that the believers are eagerly waiting for the DVD that will be produced.  It will contain the entire recording of the New Song Festival as well as a documentary about the birth of Algys and the difficulties they encountered.  For most believers, this will be their only chance to experience the New Song Festival for themselves.

Coinciding with the New Song Festival, a new song book was published, featuring the works of prolific Sakha poetess and member of Algys, Maria Kononova.  It contains genres used for the first time in Christian contexts: toyuk - a key praise genre in Sakha culture, olonkho – an epic poem genre considered to be a “treasure of Sakha cultural heritage” and chabyrgakh - humorous and witty tongue-twisters beloved by the Sakha. 

The first New Song Festival has opened the floodgates for creative cultural expressions of worship and sharing of the gospel among the Sakha. As a result, the churches are now clamoring for this Festival to become an annual tradition!

To the Great One, Jesus Christ,
Praise, praise the Lord!...
Praise to the Holy Spirit!
Honor and glory forever! Amen.