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- Life according to the "Covenant": the former adept of the Neo-Pentecostals accused the church of suicide
Life according to the "Covenant": the former adept of the Neo-Pentecostals accused the church of suicide
The neo-Pentecostal religious movement is gaining momentum in Russia, whose leaders use the work of their adherents for personal enrichment, its former participants told Izvestia. The Russian Church of Evangelical Christians "New Testament" (RCCE) has repeatedly attracted attention, in particular, by scandals with real estate. But things went too far in February of this year, when one of the adherents of the Perm branch of the movement committed suicide. Before his death, he blamed the leaders of the "church" for his death, saying that they had committed "the most cruel deception and divorce" in his life, a law enforcement source said. How the largest pseudo—religious movement in the Russian Federation is organized, and who is behind it - in the material of Izvestia.
"The cruelest deception and divorce in my life..."
The leaders of the neo-Pentecostal religious movement, under the pretext of imaginary spirituality and service to God, incline people to slave labor and complete financial dependence, after which they send them "to the trash." These are the words in which Nikolai Shavrin, a resident of the Perm Region, described what was happening inside the community. One of the followers of the Russian Church of Evangelical Christians "New Testament" (RCCE).
As a law enforcement source told Izvestia, on February 26, 2025, a 35-year-old man voluntarily passed away, blaming the leaders of the RCCE for his death and describing the details of his life in the community.
In particular, he said that the leaders of the community "ruined" his life, "committed the most cruel deception and divorce in my life." This deception, to summarize what the source tells us, is that "pastors" and "bishops" use people who come to them with sincere spiritual search as cheap labor for personal enrichment.
According to Nikolai, initially his "desire for spirituality was completely sincere" — he devoted about 12 years to "service". Of these, he was in "full service" for four and a half years, which, according to other adherents, means giving the "church" all his money, labor, effort and time.
During these years, Nikolai Shavrin "many times showed humility and commitment in practice and took on work that others did not want to do." But in the end, "it was all for nothing, no one needed me," he said.
Disappointment set in when Nikolai realized that life in the community was built on advancing the inner-church career ladder of a narrow circle of people. As a rule, these are the sons and other relatives of pastors, while "they don't care about ordinary adherents." As a result, the bishop fathers "drive expensive cars and cannot fend off their fans," they have "big bellies, cars and the arrogance of their sons." While Nikolai himself was forced to take out a bank loan in order to "pay for his teeth and take an IT course."
According to the source, Nikolai complained of depression and asked them to "take away the building of the local Palace of Culture," the main office of the community, "so that they would not profit from trust and spoil the lives of those who are spiritually seeking." He also called serving the "church" his life's work and noted that it was "very difficult" for him to be disappointed in it.
"I told him not to go there, but he ran..."
Nikolai's mother, Svetlana Shavrina, still can't come to terms with what happened. According to her, her son has always been a very sociable, gentle and kind person, but in the last year of his life he seemed to have been replaced.
— I've never heard a rude word from him before, but now it's rude and abusive. Outbursts of aggression, insults. It seems like it was another person," she told Izvestia.
Nikolai's mother, Svetlana Shavrina
According to Svetlana, her son joined the "church" in high school, at the invitation of Daniil Grabovenko, the son of the main "guru" of the Perm New Testament, the "bishop in charge" Eduard Grabovenko.
"Daniel studied with him in a parallel class and somehow invited him to a meeting," the woman said. — I told him not to go there, but he flew and ran. He liked talking to a lot of people, playing guitar there, filming their meetings on camera. They constantly traveled around the Perm Region, distributing Bibles.
After the army and the pedagogical institute, Nikolai continued to go to the "church." According to his mother, he took on any job there, from cleaning the roof to building a road. I tried to escape from the house as quickly as possible.
"I think he was happy there, and when it ended, something in him broke," Svetlana said. — He got into loans and started betting.
Svetlana showed Izvestia more than a dozen credit cards and a letter that came from the bank after Nikolai's death.
Another former member of the Perm branch, Semyon, told Izvestia that life in the community is built on complete control.
"The mentor keeps track of everything—where you live, where you go, who your family is, what's going on with your finances, where you rest," the man said. — You are told that the people in the "church" are closer to you than your own family, because they have repented and have already been saved, but your relatives have not yet done so.
"He loves the Lord so much, and the Lord loves him..."
The main core of the "spiritual" life in the community is tithing, that is, 10% of any earnings that each adept is required to pay, Semyon said. In addition to this "mandatory payment," he explained, people are also being persuaded to make much larger donations.
— As a result, people have a question: why do I work like a slave, and Grabovenko drives a car for 20 million rubles? — he told me. — The simple answer to everything is that he loves the Lord so much, and the Lord loves him. He gave a lot in his life, and that's why he got so much.
A person's lack of wealth becomes another reason for manipulation: if everything in your life is not the same as Grabovenko's, it means that you did not obey God well and bring little tithes, says the former adept.
"And here you can roll a person into the asphalt until he goes crazy or commits suicide," he said. — Such thoughts come to many people in the community.
The so-called prosperity theology that Pentecostals preach is that a true Christian must be rich, healthy, and happy. This is the "needle" on which leaders keep their adherents, explained Alexander Dvorkin, a professor at St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities and a sectologist, to Izvestia.
"And if a person doesn't have all this, they instill in him a sense of inferiority and offer a way out — they talk about the need to 'sacrifice,'" the expert noted. — The more you donate, the more "interest" you will receive.
The Neo—Pentecostals are the most numerous, widespread and influential sectarian movement in Russia, and the New Testament Church is its Perm branch, said Alexander Dvorkin. In Russia, the neo-Pentecostals have at least 350,000 active members, of which about ten thousand are members of the New Testament.
Former participant of the movement Elizaveta Uvarova
According to former members, the RCCE recruits newcomers through social service — it creates rehabilitation centers for drug and alcohol addicts and private nursing homes. There are also many young people in the organization who are attracted through youth "missions".
They force you to serve in the "church," Elizaveta Uvarova, a former member of the movement from Abakan, told Izvestia.
"So it's totalitarian, total submission," she says. — There were such slogans that you should not work. It all started to confuse me, I realized that every Sunday sermon was about tithing. Then land purchases began.
According to her, people were selling cars, apartments, and taking out loans. If you don't have the money, if you don't tithe, you're considered a cursed person, Elizabeth explained.
— The tithe was signed by name, for each month, — she noted. — The pastor's wife does all the accounting. She has a notebook where everyone is accounted for. There was a story: a woman received child benefits, then a survivor's pension, and gave a large tithe to the pastor. A month passed, and he called her asking why there were so few this time.
According to the woman, it was necessary to pay tithes even from the sale of some things or from gifts.
— There was such a story: a mother with many children, she has a mortgage and three children, — she said. — She divorced her husband, and her husband gave her money to pay off the loan. She took the money and gave a tenth of it, because that's what the pastor taught her.
"Saddled" with endorphins
At their meetings, non-Pentecostals put people in a trance state and develop an endorphin addiction, said Alexander Dvorkin.
— With the help of certain techniques, they ensure that a powerful release of endorphin occurs in the human body — the "hormone of happiness", which is produced by the pituitary gland, — said the expert. — A person falls into a euphoric state.
In everyday life, the brain stops working in an enhanced mode, there is a decline and a "withdrawal syndrome," explained the sectologist. A person wants to get a new dose of endorphins, for which he goes back to the sect.
"People are told that if they don't survive this state of ecstasy, they won't be cured of their illness, they won't have money, and so on," the expert said. — This is how people gradually become endorphin addicts and an obedient tool in the hands of leaders.
Izvestia visited the "international" conference of the community in Spain and saw that people in the hall really periodically fall into a kind of trance. They enthusiastically listen to Eduard Grabovenko and other "gurus" performing on stage in a costume, sing along to ensembles singing about Jesus, dance and wave their hands, as if at a concert.
"Become a part of the team, pray with us, sacrifice with us, walk with us," read the video shown at the conference. It also dealt with humanitarian aid, the distribution of the Gospels, and even the healing of the repentant sick. At the same time, judging by the social networks hosted by Eduard Grabovenko, logic in his statements can not always be found.
"My wish for myself and for each of us is that we experience God in our lives. To enter this state of God-seeking, when there is uncertainty inside, when there are many voices, when the world attracts, when, you know, there is some kind of religiosity around," the bishop wrote in his Telegram channel.
Now the senior pastor is 55 years old, and he lives in constant travel — Moscow, Rome, Frankfurt am Main.
Who is Eduard Grabovenko?
Eduard Grabovenko was born in the city of Krivoy Rog in Dnepropetrovsk. In December 1990, he entered the Bible school in Jelgava, Latvia. And then, together with three friends, he came to Russia at the age of 20-22 and founded the New Testament. He later graduated from the Bible Institute in Canada.
Grabovenko is now listed as the head of three organizations with similar names. Two of them were registered back in 1998, and one more two years later. During all this time, the organizations have accumulated 51 arbitration cases worth 35 million rubles.
In the past, the community leader was also a founder of the Russian Association for the Protection of Religious Freedom (RARS) and the NPSI Social Alliance, the latter engaged in residential care activities. In 2018, the organization was liquidated.
Only one "Centralized" organization has information about profits, but only for 2021. At that time, the company's revenue amounted to 4.1 million rubles, and its profit was 3.8 million rubles.
In 2016, according to Izvestia's source in law enforcement agencies, Eduard Grabovenko had problems with the law — he was put on a special account marked "criminal".
The bishop has an apartment in Moscow on Bolshaya Ordynka in a house built in 1890, real estate in this area costs from 30 million rubles and much higher. In addition, according to the Izvestia source, the family of the senior pastor owns a large number of land plots, apartments and private houses.
— This is probably one of the richest families in the Perm Region, — suggests the interlocutor of Izvestia.
Grobovenko's sons, David and Ilya, studied in America. The younger one, Vitaly, is still the pastor of an evangelical church in London.
In 2005, the New Testament attracted attention with the acquisition of the Palace of Culture. Lenin in Perm. A three-storey building with an area of 5,000 m2. with an assembly hall for 900 people, it was bought from Motovilikha factories for 50 million rubles. Divine services began to be held there. The deal caused discontent among the Permian public and the Russian Orthodox Church, and the provincial authorities prevented the registration of ownership rights.
In 2006, the court recognized the transaction as legitimate. In 2012, Viktor Basargin, the ex-governor of the Perm Territory, announced plans to return the building to the city. The next time the mayor's office returned to negotiations on the return of the recreation center was in April 2021, but the New Testament requested a price ten times higher than the cost of its acquisition, and negotiations were stopped.
The second real estate scandal occurred in Moscow. On March 1, 2018, the Pentecostals received six non-residential buildings on Orenburgskaya Street from the authorities for free use to house the theological institute and religious buildings. After the transfer, the community was supposed to conclude a land lease agreement with the Moscow City Hall, but for three years it ignored this requirement.
As a result, the Moscow Property Department filed a lawsuit against the community to force the conclusion of the contract. In 2022, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District sided with the authorities and forced the community to conclude a contract.
The third scandal occurred with Eduard Grabovenko in 2020. He was accused of violating the law on freedom of conscience, religion and religious associations.
The reason for the accusation was a video clip of the Sunday school of the New Testament Church, released by the community before Easter. In it, the teacher, telling about the sufferings of Christ, pricked the Seryozha doll with an iron nail to demonstrate how painful it was for the Savior. The video caused outrage among users of social networks.
The police filed a lawsuit not against a religious organization, but personally against Grabovenko, who was not involved in the creation of the video or its publication.
On August 28, 2020, the Perm Magistrate court found no evidence of wrongdoing and closed the case.
Izvestia sent a request to Eduard Grabovenko with a request to comment on the stories of former adherents of the organization he heads. No response has been received at the time of publication.
Between rights and freedom
The New Testament has branches in almost all Russian cities. The "Church" is not banned in Russia and has the status of a local religious organization. These branches were repeatedly closed, but this did not affect the fate of the movement — the absence of a single administrative center and the presence of many legal entities gives the movement greater flexibility and stability, said Alexander Dvorkin.
— Even if one such legal entity is closed, it does not concern others, because they are legally separate organizations, — he said.
The active public position of the neo-Pentecostal leaders also serves to preserve stability.
"They are trying in every possible way to establish contacts with local authorities, to show up in photos with governors, members of the government, the Duma, to attend various official receptions," said Alexander Dvorkin. — Because of this publicity from the sect's representatives, provincial officials are already a little afraid to touch her.
The term "sect" does not have a clear definition in the legislation, and potentially dangerous groups are willing to use it, Egor Panin, a lawyer at the Avex Yust law firm, explained to Izvestia. One of the main problems in identifying them is that many of them operate covertly, disguising themselves as religious associations, having passed state registration.
"Unlike traditional religious organizations, "sects" use psychological manipulation to control participants, such as isolation, coercion to donate, and a sense of apocalyptic threat," the lawyer said. — This is exactly what creates difficulties for law enforcement agencies, since the members of such groups do not realize the illegality of the actions of their religious leaders and in fact consciously and voluntarily go to limit their rights.
This creates difficulties in balancing their protection and religious freedom, the lawyer concluded. As a rule, law enforcement agencies resort to radical methods of struggle only if such associations become more widespread and their illegal activities are publicized in the media.
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