Sending the light, even when it’s dark
IRPIN, UKRAINE — The graduates sat expectantly, their diplomas in…
Sunday in Ukraine
Worshipers in the battle-damaged city of Irpin share faith and sorrow as they celebrate new life.
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IRPIN, UKRAINE — Walls of pure white, adorned with a single, thin wooden cross, surround a group of 35 worshipers on Sunday morning.
The immaculate simplicity of the Irpin Church of Christ feels like a warm embrace, an answer to the chaos outside these walls — two years of tanks and bombs, bombs and guns.
The Irpin Church of Christ near Kyiv worships on a Sunday morning.
Most of the congregants are older women. Standing behind them, a young woman leads singing, waving her arms as she follows the lyrics projected on one of the bright, white walls. It’s a Ukrainian-language translation of “10,000 Reasons,” a song that challenges us to bless the Lord, even when our strength is failing.
“For all Your goodness I will keep on singing; 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.”
“You are mighty, God,” prays Ruslan Adamenko. Two days earlier I watched him graduate from the Ukrainian Bible Institute. “Unify us as one body of Christ. May we hear your Word and apply it to our lives.”
Related: Sending the light, even when it’s dark
Moments later, my friend Dennis Zolotaryov asks the Lord to “strengthen the families that are separated right now.”
Soon, it’s time for me to offer prayers for the Lord’s Supper. I’ve been struggling to find the words to say since the church’s minister, Sergey Shupishov, asked me to speak. I tell my fellow Christians how proud I am of what God has done through them. When the bombs drop, when the lights go out, they keep finding reasons to bless the Lord.
“Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.”
Then Richard Baggett, who I’ve accompanied to Ukraine multiple times in the past 20 years, delivers the sermon. He shares a bit about post-traumatic stress disorder and the impact it’s had on his family. He reads from the Old Testament book of Job, a man who endured unimaginable suffering but held fast to his faith.
Richard Baggett preaches while Inna Kuzmenko translates during the Irpin Church of Christ’s Sunday worship.
“I’m going to live like God is good because I believe he is good, even when I can’t see it,” he says, summarizing Job’s belief. “God is just, and there will be justice. He will not allow any evil to go unpunished.”
One woman in the audience responds, in Ukrainian. “Hope it’s gonna happen soon!”
That’s what most of the psalmists in the Bible said, Richard replies. “God, please come soon!”
After the sermon, we celebrate with Tamara Petrina, who was baptized just a few days ago. She and her daughter were in the capital, Kyiv, when the war started. Her husband and her mother hid in a basement here as Russian troops invaded. Petrina worried that her mom, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, would scream. Her husband did his best to keep his mother-in-law calm.
Richard Baggett and I ask Petrina how she learned about the Church of Christ. They gave her bread, she explains. In the days after Ukrainian forces repelled the invaders from Irpin, the Church of Christ distributed aid to people as they returned home.
“I had never been to church in my lifetime,” Petrina says, but she had to know more about these people. Now, they’re family.
Another woman, Rimma Bukova, pulls Richard aside to tell him how much she appreciated his sermon. Her son is serving in the military. Weeks pass between messages from him.
Richard Baggett, left, speaks with Rimma Bukova after Sunday worship in Irpin, Ukraine.
There’s a brace on her right arm. Recently, she got a call that her son was missing, she explains. She got so distraught that she fell and fractured it.
Eventually, she heard from her son. He’s OK, but he’s changed. He told her, “I pray every day for forgiveness from God for the things I’m doing.”
Related: War in Ukraine: Links to The Christian Chronicle’s coverage
Sergey Shupishov, the Irpin church’s minister, also got a call from the Ukrainian government. The squad his brother, Dima, was serving in is missing in action.
That call came more than four months ago.
As we wait for lunch at a Georgian shish kebab restaurant, I ask Sergey to tell me about his brother. He pulls me aside to a corner booth and shows me photos on his phone of the two of them, together. They had a rough life, growing up in eastern Ukraine. While Sergey got baptized, married and studied at Ukrainian Bible institute, Dima got caught up in crime and went to prison in the city of Zaporizhzhia for stealing.
Dima Shupishov teaches Bible to a Church of Christ in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
God didn’t give up on Dima. He got involved in prison ministry and got baptized, eventually joining his brother in Irpin. Then he joined a team of evangelists in Chernihiv, just south of the Belarus border. Dima was making a big impact in the small city, his brother says. Then Dima was called into military service.
“He is a person who loves people very much. … And you’ll notice that I’m speaking about him in the present tense because I don’t want to believe that he’s not here.”
Since his brother went missing, it’s been hard to preach, Sergey says. But he’s had little choice. There are so few men left in our congregations. Ukraine is short on soldiers and has intensified its draft. Sergey is exempt from that draft now because of his brother’s sacrifice, he says — a kind of “Saving Private Ryan” rule.
He doesn’t know if he’ll see his brother again on this earth, Sergey says. But he will see him again.
Sergey Shupishov, left, with his mother and his brother, Dima.
We return to the table with the rest of our small fellowship. I sit next to Oleksandr Sikorskii, one of the Irpin church’s elders. He fought with the Soviet army in Afghanistan. I ask him if he knew Dima.
“Yes, I know him,” he replies. “He is a person who loves people very much.”
Dima answered the call to serve in Chernihiv without hesitation — without even visiting the city first, Sikorskii says.
“He’s a kind person, a worthy example,” the elder adds, “and you’ll notice that I’m speaking about him in the present tense, because I don’t want to believe that he’s not here.”
And on that day when my strength is failing, the end draws near and my time has come, still my soul will sing your praise unending, 10,000 years and then forevermore.
Dennis Zolotaryov, left, and Sergey Shupishov speak after the Irpin Church of Christ’s Sunday worship. The congregation meets in a building near the city’s downtown square.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected], and follow him on X at @eriktryggestad.
