Church History
All Nations Christian Center is actually a marriage of two different churches, which came together in May of 2005, All Nations Bible Church and International Christian Center. While both groups had different origins and experienced various challenges through their growth and evelopment, these same struggles served to develop maturity and determination in these bodies of believers.
All Nations Bible Church was born in the year of 1994, when a man named Stephen Shelton came from Manchester, UK, answering the call of God to pioneer a church in Russia. He was sent by New Harvest Fellowship Church based in Norwalk, California, USA. After 3 years, he met a group of African students who where on fire for the Lord and who had been looking for a church to be a part of here in Russia. They joined the church and together with Pastor Stephen, started praying and ministering on the streets and in different student hostels. As God caused the church to grow from 15 persons to around 70 individuals, the church was filled with people from more than 20 different nations: missionaries, students and Russian people who all came together to worship God.
In December of 2000, Pastor Stephen left St. Petersburg, and the assistant pastor, Edward Dzhus, took over the leadership of the approximately 200+ member church. Pastor Edward led the church until 2002 when he left to pioneer a Russian speaking church and Kakule L. Bonane was subsequently ordained as pastor. Throughout the years, God continued to show His faithfulness to His church.
International Christian Center started as fellowship group out of Pastor Jim & Sherry Oxendine’s home in 2001. God gave Pastor Jim a vision for reaching out to the more than 50,000 English-speaking people of St. Petersburg (including the many English-speaking Russians). Shortly thereafter, Mike Anticoli came to work along side Pastor Jim as an elder in the church. That next spring they began services at the Heart Cry Children’s Mission. On the first of September 2002, International Christian Center moved their services to the Prolitarsky Cultural House. During that same time, Carrie Pickett (who also served as a church elder) opened the Charis Bible Training Center at the same location, serving as director, and began training up future leaders through their comprehensive Bible training school.
In April of 2005, after series of meetings and discussions both churches decided to come together. Both churches had the same vision for impacting the city of St. Petersburg and beyond; therefore it seemed to be a “God” idea. Since the joining in June 2005, we have seen growth in numbers as well as in the maturity of our members. We continue to press on, pursuing the goal of raising up strong Christians who will go to the four corners of the world and be ambassadors of Christ.