Coming back from two weeks in Ukraine is hard to capture! There were so many experiences and connections that I could write a book, but that would be too much for most of you! So, I will share a recap of what we did and try to capture the theme that we come home with.
This trip was a time of meeting old friends and making new ones. We started with a retreat for pastors and wives in the Kyiv region. We met some pastors who had been in our previous retreats and met many new friends. The retreat was focused on strengthening marriages and we had an opportunity to share a devotional on peace and a talk about dreams.
Next, we spent time at the Baptist Union offices and had time to meet with leaders of committees (church planting, women’s, youth and children’s) as well as regional senior pastors from across the country as they came for their quarterly council meeting.
That week we also attended the first church planter’s academy hosted by Synergy Ukraine. This is a church planting ministry of the Baptist Union, We had the opportunity to observe some of the sessions as well as lead one session on the leadership lessons of Jesus.
Friday and Saturday we attended a Leadership Conference hosted by the Baptist Union. The theme was Healthy Leader, Healthy Church, Healthy Community. Over 400 leaders from across Ukraine attended. We saw many familiar faces that had been at past retreats that we had led. I had the privilege of leading a workshop with about 100 leaders attending. I taught on Healthy Leader – lessons from the life of Jesus.
We ended our time with one more retreat for pastors and wives from the Cherkasy region and spent two days teaching and challenging them to multiply their impact in their churches.
Besides retreats and conferences, we also had the opportunity to speak at two churches for their Sunday services. We spoke at Resurrection church with Pastor Igor Fedorovych in Kyiv and at Open Heart Church in Zolotonosha with Pastor Yura Fedoriuk. I spoke on Finding Hope in Jesus at each church. We also had a fun evening with the leaders of Open Heart church talking about dreams and being a “Come and See” church.
We had amazing times talking with pastors and leaders and hearing their dreams and hopes for the future. We came away from this trip with “Hope for the future” as our phrase to describe this trip. Even though the war continues, we had daily air raids with drones and missiles and had our car stopped by police several times checking on papers, we came away from this trip with a real sense of hope! We heard it in the leaders we met with. We heard about it in their plans for the future. We heard it in their dreams.
One example of this was our meeting with Nastia. She is the new committee head overseeing women’s ministries. She shared with us four dreams for the future: Development of Women’s Teams across Ukraine with a shift to younger women leaders; to unite pastor’s wives to support each other; to help churches to be able to better communicate with families of military heroes, especially those killed in the war; and to become a place of safety for abused women.
Another example was Pastor Zhenia from House of Peace. Their church is in the middle of an apartment complex with over 5000 people living there. He has a dream to reach 10% of their community for Jesus through their church.
Our meetings included hearing the vision of Roman from the Youth Committee, Mischa who is the pastor of a new church in Kyiv called Urban Church and the leaders of the Kyiv Region who talked about the need to open new churches to reach all the people who live in Kyiv. Today there are 37 churches in the city of Kyiv for over 3.1 million people.
Each of these meetings we talked about God-sized dreams for their church or ministry with a hope that this will happen. We talked with many younger leaders who are stepping up and leading in a big way.
The last thing we want to call out was the way that our book, Building Blocks for Raising Children is being used across Ukraine. We had many people come up to us to tell us about how they have been using our book in their church and plans they have this fall for more groups to study. We were asked to do some zoom meetings to share with their group and encourage them. We are seeing progress of our dream to see this book being used by every church across Ukraine.
This gives you a taste of what we experienced on this trip. We come home with many requests for assistance and opportunities to partner in ministry.
If you would like to talk about how you or your church could get involved in supporting the ministries of Ukraine and partnering with them in their hope for the future, please feel free to contact us. We want to share about how God is working in Ukraine and how you could be involved.
Thank you for your prayers and support for us through this trip. We felt the prayers and knew God was with us each step of the journey.