A church in Ukraine has given away 10,000 gospels to its country’s troops – and has a further 40,000 to distribute.
Hope Lebedyn is a church founded by Sergey Ovcharenko which aims for community regeneration, aid provision and, most importantly, spreading the gospel. Lebedyn is about 80 miles north west of Kharkiv and close to the border with Belarus.
Even before the war Lebedyn had huge social problems, with the unemployment rate at a staggering 85%. When the war started, many from Lebedyn fled the area to go to other countries and the church dropped to just 20 people. But now numbers have risen back to 250–350 coming each week. Partly this is due to the great hunger for seeking God that is so apparent – especially among young people. And Hope Lebedyn is always very intentional in its evangelism. So whenever food parcels are given out, for example, they always come with a New Testament or children’s Christian literature. The strategy seems to be working, with four baptisms of 16–23-year-olds taking place in July and eight more attending a baptism preparation class.
Another exciting area of ministry is among the troops stationed in the town. The church’s work has just been recognised in an award from Ukraine’s Military Union (representing all its armed services) ‘for the special help given to the families of soldiers’. The church prays regularly for the wounded. Furthermore, the church took delivery of 50,000 copies of John’s Gospel, in Ukrainian, supplied by the Pocket Testament League, two weeks before the invasion. With different battalions of soldiers rotated through the town every few weeks, the church has so far been able to give away 10,000 gospels to those troops and responses are generally positive. One was accepted by a 16-year-old Russian PoW, who had been conscripted into Putin’s army at a youth camp. Hope Lebedyn helped him phone home to his mother to tell her he was safe.
