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Viktor Hamm, former associate evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has accepted the invitation of the board of MBMS International to join its leadership team as program director, effective April 1.
Hamm comes to MBMSI with a rich international and administrative background. His undergraduate and graduate studies in theology, religion and communications were completed in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
For 13 years, he produced and directed the Russian language radio ministry with Family Life Network and MBMS International. The last 14 years, Hamm has ministered with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, both as evangelist and as regional director for the Commonwealth of Independent States/Baltic States. His evangelistic ministry took him around the world, though his primary focus remained the former Soviet Union. He founded an Institute for Emerging Evangelists and served as editor-in-chief of the Russian language edition of Decision magazine, the most widely circulated Christian periodical in the country. He also directed nation-wide projects that resulted in the start of numerous local congregations.
He was born in Vorkuta, northern Russia, where his father was serving a long-term labour sentence under the Gulag system. Moving first to Latvia, and then to Germany and Canada, the Hamms settled in Winnipeg where they attended Central MB Church and later Eastview Community Church. Viktor and his wife Margarete have three grown children. They will be moving to MBMSI’s headquarters in Abbotsford.
Hamm sees his role as program director with MBMSI as that of releasing more fully the God-given potential of MB churches for international evangelism and missions. This includes a dynamic emphasis on indigenous and self-sustained church planting. He says, “With globalization on the one hand, and a need to preserve an identity by individual countries and cultures on another, those ministering internationally are forced to pay ever-growing attention to those dynamics.”
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