Ukraine
Why Ukraine still matters
ZOSIN, POLAND — “Can I ask you a stupid question?”…
Where is God in a war zone?
In besieged Ukraine, ministry leaders seek rest and inspiration amid ongoing grief and loss.
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IRPIN, UKRAINE — More than two years after Russia began a full-scale invasion of his homeland, Alexander Kolosha is tired.
Not tired from the war or burnout, the Ukrainian minister insists.
Instead, Kolosha explains, “Being tired means not having enough resources in the moment … and having too many moments.”
Alexander and Olha Kolosha speak with The Christian Chronicle during a retreat in Irpin, Ukraine.
He spoke to The Christian Chronicle during a rare moment of tranquility, sitting at a picnic bench in a forested retreat center as his wife, Olha, translated his words from Ukrainian to English.
They joined more than 100 ministry leaders from Churches of Christ and their families in the northwestern suburb of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. For the second time in the past year, the Ukrainian Bible Institute sponsored a retreat to serve those who serve, providing three days of worship, meditation, resource sharing and rest.
The theme, “I Am With You,” came from Isaiah 43:2.
Brandon Price welcomes guests to the retreat and Ukrainian Bible Institute graduation as UBI administrator Natalia Maliuga translates his words into Ukrainian.
“How much joy, how much peace do we miss out on when we forget about the presence of God?” asked Brandon Price, director of the Bible institute, standing before a wooden, wall-mounted cross in the retreat center’s classroom. “If, for some reason, you can’t calm your heart and your mind, take comfort in the fact that he is here.”
God is here, even in the midst of war.
Related: Why Ukraine still matters
Reminders of the conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than 10,500 Ukrainian civilians, abounded in Irpin. Russian forces leveled buildings, torched cars and tortured residents here — and in the neighboring city of Bucha — before Ukrainians fought the invaders back across the border into Belarus in the war’s early days.
The pavilion where church members once practiced and performed Ukrainian-language hymns, left, now houses boxes of humanitarian aid. Across from the pavilion are tents bearing the logo of relief ministry Samaritan’s Purse.
The retreat center — used by Churches of Christ for singing schools in happier times — bore scars from the fighting. Boxes of humanitarian aid filled the pavilion where church members once joined their voices in Ukrainian-language a cappella hymns. White tents with the logo of Samaritan’s Purse and a massive bank of humming generators stood nearby.
“It’s our war, even though we don’t have bullets here,” said Alexander Kolosha, a graduate of Ukrainian Bible Institute. He and his wife oversee Slavic World for Christ, a ministry founded by Ukrainian evangelist Epi Stephan Bilak and based in Ternopil, a city on the Seret River, far from the current front lines. Initially, the ministry focused on Ukrainian-language speakers in the country’s west.
The Ternopil Church of Christ once numbered 60 members, but now is down to about 10, Olha Kolosha said. The church building, however, overflows with refugees from the predominantly Russian-speaking east. They come for food, provided by Ukrainian Bible Institute through its partnership with Texas-based Sunset International Bible Institute, and stay for worship. Some Sundays, the Ternopil church struggles to find enough chairs and communion cups for everyone.
Related: ‘Oldest Christian in Ukraine’ dies at 100
Often, they find themselves low on relief to distribute, energy to distribute it and fortitude to help others cope with daily traumas, Alexander Kolosha said.
“But every time, somehow, we find ourselves full of resources,” he said. “Or we become resourceful.”
As the fighting drags on and the casualties rise, he added, “I accept that it will be like this. I understand that I will be tired, but I really believe that the Lord will prevent me from stopping.”
‘We don’t stop for sirens or explosions’
The attendees represented 25 Churches of Christ spread across Ukraine. The churches are part of a network that feeds, counsels and occasionally evacuates those in need. The Ukrainian Bible Institute coordinates and distributes the aid with funding from Sunset, which also covered transportation fees for the retreat.
Participants in a three-day conference and retreat in Irpin, Ukraine, visit as they wait for the retreat center’s breakfast room to open.
Some attendees made dangerous journeys from eastern Ukraine to attend.
The encouragement he received made the trip worthwhile, said Olexiy Ladyka, a musician, songwriter and preacher for the Kramatorsk Church of Christ. His congregation meets in Donetsk oblast (a state-like division) about 30 miles northwest of the battered city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russia last year.
Olexiy Ladyka, left, speaks with Inna Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian Christian and translator, during the retreat in Irpin.
“It’s normal, like birds singing,” Ladyka said of the air-raid sirens that blare constantly in Kramatorsk. The church didn’t meet for about a year after the war started, but eventually, about 20 members returned and began distributing food to their community.
Initially, people came for the food.
“Now, they just come,” Ladyka said. “The people who receive, they love to be in the church.”
In recent months, members have hosted Bible studies and celebrated a baptism.
As the church serves, Russian troops inch closer and closer to Kramatorsk.
Christians worship during a late-June Sunday service in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. “I was expecting six for worship in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, and God brought 60!” said Jeff Abrams, minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ in Alabama, who made a 20-hour train trip from western Ukraine to visit the congregation. At far left is a young man who rode his bike from Slavyansk, about 10 miles away, to worship with the church. Abrams works with the nonprofit Rescue Ukraine, which provides food, Bibles and support for Ukrainian Christians.
“The front line is coming,” Ladyka said.
But the church members have a plan. If the Russians reach the town of Chasiv Yar, he said, “We go together” to western Ukraine, most likely Lviv.
Vera Olefira came to the retreat with her husband, Igor. They live to the north, in Kharkiv.
Igor Olefira and his wife, Vera, right, visit with Inna Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian translator who worshiped with the Olefira’s congregation in Kharkiv before she moved to the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk.
“We hear explosions before we hear the sirens,” she said. Kharkiv, once Ukraine’s second-largest city, is less than 20 miles from the Russian border, the launch point for missile attacks.
Igor Olefira preaches for a Church of Christ with about 35 members, though guests and aid recipients can swell Sunday worship past 150.
“We don’t stop for sirens or explosions,” Vera Olefira said.
The couple remembered a visit by Nazar Semikoz, a young minister who lives in Kyiv and was a guest speaker for the Kharkiv Church of Christ. When explosions interrupted his sermon, Semikoz “was amazed that all the people didn’t blink,” Igor Olefira said with a chuckle. “He said, ‘The people of Kharkiv are made of steel and concrete!’”
@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — Nazar Semikoz, 21, of the Brovary Church of Christ, talks about the congregation’s decline and regrowth since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022. Then Erik Tryggestad gives a quick look at the campus hosting the Ukrainian Bible Institute graduation. #ukraine🇺🇦 #ukrainevsrussia #russiainvasion #irpin #ukrainianbibleinstitute #churchofchrist #brovaryukraine #brovary_city ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle
To the south, Pavel Glinskiy worships with a Church of Christ in a small town near the city of Donetsk. About 10 to 12 Christians, plus guests, worship on Sundays, he said. Sometimes they hear explosions.
Pavel Glinskiy
When the war started, he took one of his daughters west to Ternopil, but he went back. Another daughter lives in Donetsk, which fell to pro-Russian separatists in 2014, the same year Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In late 2022, Russia announced that it had annexed Donetsk.
Glinskiy gave a slight smile as he showed a picture on his phone of his 3-year-old granddaughter, Polina, in Donetsk. He’s never seen her in person.
“I stay because I rely on God,” Glinskiy said. Just as the Lord protected David from Goliath, he said, “God says that, even if an entire regiment is against me, do not be afraid.”
‘This can break you’
During the retreat, participants broke into small groups of men and women, delving into Scripture and sharing stories of times when they felt most disconnected from God — and times when they felt closest to him.
They sang, using lyrics shared through the Telegram messaging app on their phones rather than relying on PowerPoint and a projector amid frequent power outages.
@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — Stas “Tea” Kuroplatnykov leads a hymn during a three-day retreat sponsored by the Ukrainian Bible Institute. #churchofchrist #ukraine🇺🇦 #godissogood #ukrainianhymn #acappella #ukrainewar ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle
Glinskiy said that he came to the retreat because his church’s preacher could not.
“His paperwork hasn’t come through,” the church member said, echoing a common refrain at the conference.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a controversial conscription law in an effort to procure desperately needed troops. Ministers with exemptions — three or more children, a family member killed in combat, medical issues — must have government documentation to avoid forcible recruitment at military checkpoints or by roving patrols.
Stas Kuropiatnykov, minister for a Church of Christ in Lviv, Ukraine, leads singing during the retreat in Irpin.
Stas Kuropiatnykov, a preacher in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, led worship during the retreat — 14 days after he was released from military service to care for his newborn third child. He served for two years, sometimes on the front lines and sometimes in Lviv, where he also ministered to hundreds of internally displaced refugees alongside his brothers and sisters in Christ.
He encouraged Ukrainians to serve in the military if they can, and he urged all Christians to support those serving in the field and those who have returned, often injured and traumatized.
“I can’t express completely what I faced and what our brothers and sisters are facing,” Kuropiatnykov said, adding that his time in the service reminded him of a motto used by U.S. Navy SEALs: “The only easy day was yesterday.”
He remembers watching a fellow soldier drive a van — one used for carrying dead bodies from the battlefield — into a self-service car wash. Dutifully, the soldier opened the back and sprayed out the viscera and blood that had collected on the floor.
Playground equipment stands in front of a battle-damaged apartment building in Irpin, Ukraine.
Facing such a scene, “you’re not going to grow up to your expectations,” Kuropiatnykov said, quoting an ancient Greek truism. Instead, “you’re going to fall down to the level of your readiness and preparation.”
Kuropiatnykov, who grew up in the church, said he’s thankful for his firm foundation of faith and the support of fellow Christians. They helped carry him “through the valley of the shadow of death,” he said, quoting Psalm 23.
“This can break you,” Kuropiatnykov said. “This can break you for sure.”
‘Every war is spiritual’
Despite his abiding faith, Kuropiatnykov sometimes finds himself asking God, “Why? Why did you let this happen to my church, to my country?”
Many times in the past two years, he hasn’t felt the Lord’s presence, he told his brothers during the small-group session.
At the Iprin retreat, Christian men discuss times when they’ve felt the presence of God in their lives.
“But I know that God is here,” he said, just as Job, in the midst of terrible suffering, said “I know that my redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).
The war has given Ukrainians a new sense of clarity as they approach Scripture, said Alexander Kolosha, the minister in Ternopil.
“Every story about war in the Bible … every story feels different,” he said. Through his studies, he’s come to realize that, despite the combatants, “every war is spiritual, between people and God.”
@christianchronicle Erik Tryggestad reports from Ukraine with translator Inna Kuzmenko in Episode 67 of the Christian Chronicle Podcast. #ccpodcast #churchofchrist #ukraine ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle
He’s found strength in an unlikely place — Lamentations. The Old Testament book is a collection of poems mourning the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the decades of exile that followed.
Amid its many laments are words of steadfast devotion to God: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
“Every morning, for me, is Sunday — and resurrection.” he said. “Because tomorrow … who knows?”
