Hundreds of men and women from churches across Ukraine have gathered in Kyiv for a church-planting summit, where they heard about an exciting vision to plant 1,000 new churches in the country within the next 12 years.
The conference, run by the All Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptists, was held in the Baptist house of prayer ‘Temple of Peace’. Those gathered considered the theme ‘Invincible Church’ through times of congregational worship and teaching, breakout seminars, testimonies, and presentations from various organisations.
The summit, organised by head of the Ukrainian Baptist’s church-planting committee, Ruslan Shiringa, is the first stage in a new church-planting initiative. Hundreds of churches have closed as a result of Russia’s invasion, which brought with it the targeted persecution of evangelical Christians. Additionally, many throughout the nation have long been without local gospel church access – there is substantial need for new churches to be planted across Ukraine.
The vision presented at the conference was to reach at least 100,000 people with the good news of Jesus through cooperatively planting 1,000 new churches by 2036. To do this, Ukrainian Baptists hope to ultimately identify and equip 7,000 people who would be willing to be church planters or form church planting teams to go into ministry, but the initial search is for 500 men from the churches. The summit is only step one: through it they hope to encourage people to move to step two, which is training at one of ten regional missionary schools being established across Ukraine, to help equip those who have been identified and need to be prepared for sending out by their local churches.
Among those asked to help with the summit and the ongoing initiative is Ryan King, pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Wood Green in London. Ryan, who has been involved for many years in church-planting work in the UK with Grace Baptist Partnership, has encouraged similar work in Ukraine since 2015.
‘The mentality of these men,’ he says, ‘is not “Let’s wait for better times”, but “We know God, so let’s stand firm and take action”. They should not be left to go it alone.’
With the nights between sessions punctuated by air-raid sirens and deadly missile blasts, the Scriptural inspiration behind the conference was all the more striking – Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18: ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’.
