John White
As one travels around Yakutia, the largest region of Siberian Russia and about six times the size of Ukraine, one can hear the following joke: “Where do Ukrainians live?” The answer is: “Around Yakutia and a few near Kyiv.” In fact, many Ukrainians do live in Siberia thanks to a remarkable surge in evangelical missionary activity out of Ukraine in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Ukrainians on the Move
Between 1989 and 2001 more than 900 evangelical cross-cultural workers from Ukraine served outside their homeland. Their destinations included Central Asia, Yugoslavia, Germany, and China, but the largest number of these missionaries served in Russia. In the last decade of the 20th century, only South Korea, Brazil, and Nigeria surpassed Ukraine among newly emerging missionary-sending nations. The three ministries in Ukraine responsible for the largest missionary contingents serving in the former Soviet Union were Good Samaritan (Pentecostal), Light of the Gospel (Baptist), and Voice of Hope (Pentecostal).
Inadvertent Soviet Factors
The political, economic, and cultural context of the late Soviet period prepared the ground for this Ukrainian missionary surge. The Soviet government unknowingly played its part in paving the way for Christian mission by standardizing the Russian language and requiring it in schools, massively improving literacy, establishing peace in conflicted areas like the Caucasus, reducing the power of the Orthodox Church, and drastically improving the means of transportation around the country. Nearly all Ukrainians could speak Russian fluently (about onethird spoke Russian as their first language), allowing them to travel easily across the former Soviet Union. The generally young Ukrainians who left home were able to adapt easily to small differences in dialect and culture. People’s mentalities were similar, even after the Soviet Union officially ended.
When the Soviet Union was still one country, it was fairly easy for Ukrainians to find a new job in another part of the country. Single young men could easily move to the Far North or to the Far East for work to make good money. Ukrainians could easily travel throughout the Soviet Union, not needing to deal with any borders, visas, or citizenship issues, with cheap flights to just about anywhere. During Soviet times, finances were often not an issue since work was guaranteed, salaries were standardized, and costs were stable and low. A flight to the Russian Far East cost about 35 rubles (or about 60 dollars), and a flight to Alma-Ata (present-day Almaty), Kazakhstan, cost only about five dollars. During this period it was not difficult for missionaries to find a job in a new location – perhaps not as good as back in Ukraine, but a job by which one could support oneself. Also, some minority groups, like the Nenets, felt a connection with the Soviet evangelical movement, since both were repressed by the government. When Communism ended, these groups’ shared experiences helped form a bridge for the Gospel, bringing many of the Nenets to Christianity.
Ukrainian Evangelical Strength
The strength of Evangelical Christianity in Ukraine also played a role in the missionary surge. Ukraine is known as the Bible Belt of the former Soviet Union. Although its population was three times smaller than that of Russia when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, it still had significantly more evangelicals. Ukraine had the largest numbers of Baptists and Pentecostals, both registered and unregistered. In addition, Ukraine became a center for theological education, evangelical publishing, and Sunday schools– three factors that helped increase the number of potential missionaries. Evangelicals in Ukraine also had more independent-minded churches and leaders in the form of the autonomous church movement, from which most of the leaders of the mission Light of the Gospel came. Many Ukrainians had a tendency to be entrepreneurial, being willing to take independent initiative. Ukrainian pastors and missionaries were also willing to stand up against authorities, a very important question in the late1980s.
Energetic Youth
Another factor contributing to the Ukrainian missionary surge was the eagerness of evangelical youth to participate and their lack of opportunities for service at home. Both the pull factor (attractive new opportunities for ministry on the mission field) and the push factor (limited ministry opportunities at home) played a role. Many Ukrainians went into missions because they could not get involved in the kind of ministry that they wanted to in their home churches. For example, young people often were not allowed to lead ministries because leadership positions were reserved for those with more experience. Single women were also limited in ministry opportunities in their home churches. Yet, on the mission field, new opportunities were available to all, including single women and young men. The number of young people, especially young men, in churches grew significantly during the final years of communism, particularly in cities, leading them to look for ways to minister beyond church walls. While older church leaders were used to being underground and preaching within the church, younger church leaders were ready to preach beyond the walls of church to non-Christians and to try something new. In addition, young people had less holding them back. They had fewer family responsibilities and often did not own their own homes in Ukraine. Thus it comes as no surprise that Ukrainian missionaries were typically 20 to 35 years of age, with most under 30.
The Sense of Divine Calling
The sense of a divine calling, no matter what the obstacles, also clearly motivated evangelicals in Ukraine. As one participant explained in an interview, “Missionary work in the first years was very primitive—as primitive as you can imagine. The one thing that was true for everyone who went into missions, practically speaking, was that they had a deep personal relationship with God. And for them, to hear God’s voice, to discern that God is sending you, for them, that was practically clear. Therefore, if God told you to go, you went, not knowing where and not knowing what you would do.” In Acts 1:8, Jesus said that his disciples would be his witnesses “to the end of the earth” (ESV). For many Ukrainian evangelicals, the end of the earth was Siberia and the Far North of Russia, rather than the more populated, nearer places, such as Central Russia. There was a general understanding that Ukraine, especially Western Ukraine, was blessed with far more churches than Russia, especially far more than Siberia. Thus, when the idea of missions was embraced, many missionaries wanted to go plant a church specifically where no church existed.
The “more difficult” places and the places “farther out” also were the places that presented the most risks. The people involved believed in the basic idea or cause of missions, and they were persuaded that its importance far outweighed the dangers involved and the fact that most had no training and no experience. Participants mentioned this reason for becoming missionaries a significant number of times, and multiple times it was listed specifically as an important reason behind the missionary surge. Ukrainian evangelicals believed that their doing missions was God’s plan for the world. The fact that Ukrainian evangelicals were willing to sacrifice so much in order to become missionaries shows how important they believed doing missionary work was. They were willing to take big risks because they saw great need to spread the Gospel among people who had never heard it. One interviewee recalled new missionaries coming to replace a pastor who had just been killed. Ukrainian missionaries understood the dangers and went anyway.
Personal Connections
Personal connections played another significant part in the Ukrainian missionary surge. In a snowball effect, Ukrainians in many cases went to the mission field because they knew someone who was already there or was going there—family members or good friends. The fact that many were going to the mission field and reported success there swayed more Ukrainians to go. Inspiration from missionaries, whether through direct recruitment or merely by example, helped the missionary surge gather momentum as chains of missionaries were formed, with one friend telling another and one relative inviting another relative, etc. The power of example allowed the cause of missions and the stories of missionaries to spread in natural and attractive ways, leading more and more young Ukrainians to the mission field. In other cases, there were requests for help from people in Russia. For example, one man who came to Christ in Yakutia asked Light of the Gospel for help—to send people who could minister, since he was limited in ministry. In response, two young women answered this need, moving to Yakutia as missionaries and helping to establish a new community of believers there.
The Prison Connection
Many Ukrainian evangelicals went to serve as missionaries in places where their relatives had served time, and in some cases, had died in prison. These prisoners of faith, in effect “unofficial missionaries,” broke the ground for future missionary work. They shared their faith and planted God’s seeds before the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge of the 1990s even started. During Soviet times a whole network connected prisoners in Russia with their relatives in Ukraine. The Bulletin of Prisoners’ Relatives was giving information about many places where isolated congregations existed and where people had been in prison. So going back to these places of imprisonment to share the Gospel motivated some former prisoners. Those places of suffering seemed to attract missionaries. As one interviewee shared, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the saints,” in other words, the places where our brothers’ and fathers’ blood was shed. Where did they suffer? They were sent to the Far East; they were sent to Yakutia; they were sent to Komi; they were sent beyond the Urals. Go there, where our fathers suffered. And where blood was shed, there will be an awakening.
Short-Term Missions
In a few cases, Ukrainians who served in the Soviet Army somewhere, after finishing their service, decided to stay and do mission work. Numerous participants cited the importance of short-term missions in their decision to become long-term missionaries. Even those who did not become long-term missionaries were at least exposed to the missionary surge and could help support it better. In fact, the most commonly mentioned connection that influenced Ukrainian evangelicals to go to a particular mission field was having been there on a short-term mission trip. Very often, just going to a place and seeing the needs and opportunities connected Ukrainians to this place in such a way they felt that they just had to go back. As one Ukrainian missionary shared Each time after we showed the [Campus Crusade Jesus] film, we gave a call to repentance. A huge number of people came forward to repent. This was a witness to the fact that this was really God’s calling. I planned to be there for only two months, but that thirst that people had for God’s Word, it changed my intentions. I decided, okay, I’ll go for two years. I returned home, I spoke with my wife. She said, “Yes, I agree.” Our fourth child had just been born. And we, in 1991, with our four children, moved to the city. Since that time, two years have already been stretched into 24.
Thus, seeing what was happening on the mission field was enough for many Ukrainians to want to be a part of it. One interviewee referred to the “thirst” in people, that in three to five minutes, you could gather a crowd of people to hear the Gospel. After seeing that, “We understood that we needed to organize something in order to preach the Gospel.” That understanding helped start the mission organization Voice of Hope. One participant spoke of what he saw on a short-term mission trip to Yakutsk: “A new movement, new churches. I encountered something that I had never seen before.” And he, and many others, wanted to be a part of it. In a number of cases, missionary families did the inviting, often initially for a short period of time or for a short-term mission trip. Another Ukrainian missionary shared how he first went to the mission field: My cousin left for the Ural Mountains in Russia in 1990. He had been gone for a month when he returned and told me that there were many people there who had never heard the Gospel. I was the leader of a youth group, and we decided to go. There were about half Slavic people and half Muslim peoples—Bashkirs, Tatars, and others. We went there, a group of eight people—three sisters and five brothers. I organized the group and we went to preach the Gospel there. We went for three weeks. It was amazing how God worked in the hearts of people. And people turned to Jesus Christ. After these people repented, a question touched my heart: Who will stay with these people and go further with them? Who will help them get established in their faith?
New Freedom
As freedom came to evangelical churches in the Soviet Union during perestroika, especially during the 1988 celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus’, evangelicals gained access to preach in public places. As the government failed and as social systems began to break down, evangelicals also had more opportunities to play a role in society, replacing much of the social safety net. The charitable ministry of evangelicals was encouraged and even began to be depended upon to care for the needy in society, and especially for alcoholics and drug addicts who needed rehabilitation. Thus, evangelicals gained access to an “institutional niche” that helped give them a platform for increased missionary work. As one Ukrainian missionary put it in an interview, “We can do things now that we could never do before.” Ukrainian evangelicals simply took advantage of the new door that had opened before them. In short, again to quote a Ukrainian missionary, “Clearly, the chief catalyst for mission efforts at that time was the sudden burst of freedom.”
Spontaneous Beginnings
The political and economic upheavals in Ukraine throughout the years in question, 1989- 1999, dramatically affected the missionary surge at every turn. In sum, it developed from spontaneous to structured and from independent to increasingly tied to Western support. Especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s Ukrainian missionaries set out with enthusiasm and zeal, but with little or no training or planning. They would often go to the mission field without any support—just by faith and with perhaps enough money to reach their destination. They realized that they were not necessarily prepared, but they wanted to go anyway. They did not know very much about the mission field—which was probably good for the missionary surge, since too many details and knowledge of problems might have dissuaded some Ukrainians from going. The Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge of the 1990s was basically a movement of amateurs. Many of those who went had gifts and some experience in ministry, and those in the first generation of missionaries who had grown up in Soviet times were often spiritually mature and dedicated. Still, even they did not understand much about the mission nor have any experience or training. Very little training had been available in Soviet times and mission was not even a familiar word to most people.
The Development of Organized Planning
In many cases, Ukrainian evangelical missionaries went to the mission field independently—with little or no mission structure behind them—especially in the early years of the missionary surge. Thus, missionaries actually preceded missionary structures, but once developed, they proved useful in supporting and continuing the Ukrainian missionary surge. To that end, from 1989 to 1993, hundreds of mission organizations were founded in Ukraine. Some were quite small while others became large, successful entities, engaging in evangelistic and cross-cultural ministries. Particularly in the area of cross-cultural missions, Ukrainians were much more active than their neighbors in Russia, having more than twice the number of evangelical missionaries.
Soviet Collapse, Hyperinflation, and Increased Western Support
A major turning point in the Ukrainian missionary surge came in December 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resulted in different currencies in different countries of the former Soviet Union, hyperinflation, and general economic chaos. When this happened, the ability of national believers to support missionaries or even for missionaries to support themselves became much more difficult, and in many cases, the West stepped in to help. Missionary support moved from 100 percent local to more and more Western over the course of the 1990s. Yet, even with these economic difficulties, financial support was not often considered to be an important factor, positive or negative, in the missionary surge, perhaps because evangelicals were used to being poor under communism. After 1991, as finances became more of a problem, more systematic support helped to sustain the missionary surge. Note the experience of Americans helping a Ukrainian missionary family find a place to live in Kazan: We met a really lovely Ukrainian couple and their two kids—just drove from Ukraine, want to plant a church among the Tatar people. I said, “Well, where are you living?” And they said, “In our car.” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Well we’ve been living for six months in our car.” And I said, “Well winter’s coming! It’s going to be cold! Do you have a church?” They said, “Oh yeah, we’ve already planted a church, but we don’t have a place to live. Maybe we can live in the church, you know, rent out a room somewhere.” These Americans actually helped them get an apartment. From a Western perspective, the needs were not that large, so it was easy to help. As one Ukrainian shared, “If you were given 100 to 150 dollars, that was great. For the West, it wasn’t that hard to give— to support someone for 100 dollars [per month]. For us that was a good salary.” Many dozens of mostly small U.S. and European missions had been involved in outreach in the Soviet Union prior to its breakup in 1991, primarily through shortwave radio broadcasting and the printing and clandestine distribution of Bibles and other Christian literature. Especially prominent in this regard were a number of ministries with Slavic émigré leadership and staff: the German Light in the East, Slavic Gospel Association (Peter Deyneka, Sr., and Jr.), Russian Christian Radio (Earl Poysti), The Bible League (Waldemar Kurtz), and Sweden’s Slaviska Missionen.
Poysti, Lehtinen, and Reimer
Regarding early support for mission from abroad those interviewed often mentioned émigré radio broadcaster Earl Poysti. His sermons pushed listeners to think about missions, and when freedom came, he did a preaching tour to help promote the work of Light of the Gospel mission. Finnish evangelist Kalevi Lehtinen, who like Poysti could speak in Russian, was constantly doing ministry in the Soviet Union. Russian German Johannes Reimer also helped motivate Ukrainians to become missionaries.
The Lausanne Movement
Another source of vision for Ukrainian missions came from the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, promoted by Billy Graham from the U.S. and John Stott from Great Britain. Lausanne conferences held in Manila in 1989 and in Moscow in 1990 made a significant impact. Participants in Lausanne’s Moscow Congress on Evangelization included 900 Soviet citizens and 100 Westerners from various mission organizations. Here representatives from a broad spectrum of evangelical movements were able to learn from one another. Exposure to the outside world, and especially to foreign churches and mission organizations, provided a new vision for the possibility of mission work. This time was both motivating and enabling for indigenous missionaries, many of whom came from Ukraine. The Lausanne conferences especially emboldened Ukrainian Baptists to think about missions, encouraging them through God’s Word and the example of missionaries from around the world. Baptist leaders made key contacts, both within the Soviet Union and with foreign mission organizations and missionaries, and were given evangelistic tools for doing missions, including projectors and the Jesus Film.
Western Partnerships
Especially as the economy failed, mission organizations and missionaries looked to the West for support. If we take the years 1992-93, people were impoverished very quickly in the former Soviet Union. Hyperinflation had its effect. At that time, interest from Western organizations in the Soviet Union grew so that the directors of mission organizations and initiators of different kinds of ministries all looked to partner with the West, and they stopped paying as much attention to collecting the “kopecks” from local churches because foreign support was easier to obtain. American and German sponsors particularly gave toward church planting and Christian broadcasting in Ukraine. Numerous churches, missions, seminaries, and publishing houses were established in the 1990s as a result of foreign financial support.
The Provision of Christian Literature
The provision of Christian literature continued as a mainstay of Western assistance. The United Bible Societies, The Bible League, Slavic Gospel Association, Light in the East, Emmanuel Mission, and Open Doors were especially active in this work, among many dozens of additional Western missions. Undoubtedly, Christian literature helped facilitate the effectiveness of the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge of the 1990s. As an example, the German mission Light in the East sent large amounts of Christian literature to Light of the Gospel mission, which then sent it on to individuals, churches, and other ministries, in addition to using it for its own missionary ministry. Thousands of packages of literature were sent to far-away places like Kamchatka and Sakhalin, providing a very big impulse for the development of missions.
Baptist Centers for Missionary Development
One Baptist mission organization that underwent remarkable growth from small beginnings was Light of the Gospel, based in Rivne, western Ukraine. One Ukrainian interviewee explained how this indigenous ministry, which worked alone in 1989, connected in 1990 with Gospel for Asia, Interact, and then Light in the East. By 1993, a “line” of organizations and people was waiting to talk to representatives of Light of the Gospel. By that year Light of the Gospel had grown significantly, from 13 people in 1989 to 170 staff and missionaries who worked with another 300 volunteers. It had opened some 70 mission stations in Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, and had established four regional branches—in Yakutia (Siberia), Kazan (central Russia), Kharkiv (northeastern Ukraine) and Makiivka (southeastern Ukraine)—and soon would open a fifth in Moscow (Russia). At one point, Light in the East supported 70 to 80 missionaries with Light of the Gospel. The Russian Baptist Union also got involved supporting Ukrainian missionaries in the mid-1990s. It, too, largely depended on foreign support, “farming out funds from Western mission agencies to church planting missionaries.” A significant component of the Ukrainian missionary surge involved training. Light of the Gospel began to work together with radio broadcaster Earl Poysti and through Poysti, Sergei Tupchik was able to visit America. One of Tupchik’s stops was at Denver [Conservative Baptist] Seminary, where he shared the needs that Light of the Gospel had for training. Out of that meeting, Light of the Gospel invited Denver Seminary Professor Ray Prigodich to teach a basic course on missions at Vorzel, outside Kyiv, for its missionaries in August 1989, and again in July 1990. After reaching an agreement with Denver Seminary, Light of the Gospel was able to establish a Bible college in Eastern Ukraine in August 1991. Originally called Light of the Gospel Bible College and then Donetsk Bible College, it later took the name Donetsk Christian University (DCU). Hundreds received training in missiology, in addition to other important subjects, thanks to Ray Prigodich and other teachers from Denver Seminary. Thus, DCU was a strong source and conduit of missionaries in the early 1990s and remained so through the rest of the 1990s.
Pentecostal Centers for Missionary Development
Western Ukraine and the Donetsk Oblast were geographical centers for missionary development for Pentecostals as well as Baptists. Between 1993 and 2009, Good Samaritan mission, which had begun underground in 1972 in Rivne, western Ukraine, held 16 three-month missionary schools, each training about 25 missionaries for work within Ukraine and abroad. As of 2010, Good Samaritan had planted 110 new Pentecostal churches by means of its 450 missionaries who had worked or were working on its behalf. Voice of Hope, another indigenous Pentecostal mission founded in 1990 in Volyn Oblast, was a consolidation of various mission groups, plus some individual missionaries. By the middle of 1992, it had sent missionaries to seven regions of Russia: Karelia, the Komi Republic, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, the Caucasus, and Siberia, including Yakutia. As of 2009, Voice of Hope fielded 338 missionaries working in Ukraine, Russia, and Central Europe. Finally, Possibility mission, founded in Donetsk Oblast in 1989, planted over 60 churches in the Russian regions of Udmurtia, Siberia, Sakhalin, and Kalmykia over the course of its history. In addition to Good Samaritan’s missionary schools, Ukrainian Pentecostals founded the Odessa Missionary School in 1990, while U.S.-based Calvary International founded Jelgava Bible School, Jelgava, Latvia. Jelgava played a significant role in training and sending Pentecostal missionaries in the 1990s. Its graduates enjoyed great success as members of some 25 to 30 missionary teams, with Calvary International providing the support, in addition to short-term mission teams which assisted new longterm missionaries.
Additional Western Support
In addition to training, Western Pentecostals (in particular, Sweden’s Slaviska Missionen) assisted the Ukrainian missionary surge through casting a vision for work among unreached people groups in the 1980s. Other endeavors that supported the missionary surge were the Superbook television broadcasts and Christian literature follow-up of CBN’s Emmanuel Mission and the publishing and delivery of Bibles by the Assemblies of God, Emmanuel Mission, and many other groups. The German missionary organization Nehemiah helped Ukrainian Pentecostal missionaries in a number of ways. It provided the Jesus Film, sound equipment, and New Testaments for missionaries and evangelists. It also recruited and supported Ukrainians to go into missions. Waldemar Saradchuk, representing Nehemiah, traveled around Ukraine, recruiting missionaries to go to Russia. He gained the trust of many Pentecostal leaders, who helped assemble teams of Ukrainians that Nehemiah sent out and supported in Smolensk, Moscow, and all the way to Irkutsk in Siberia.
In Summary
The idea of missions was not, for the most part, understood or accepted prior to the missionary surge. So what changed that made it compelling to so many Ukrainians, particularly young Ukrainians? Based on participants’ observations, more Bibles and Christian literature became available for believers to read about missions. People received callings from God to go into missions. Freedom of speech and spiritual interest by masses of people encouraged Ukrainians to preach the Gospel openly. Centers for missionary development, primarily in Western Ukraine and the Donetsk Oblast, also influenced the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge of the 1990s. In addition, Ukrainian evangelicals were finally able to communicate freely with the global evangelical church, which had been doing missions for centuries. Furthermore, missionaries were influenced by communication agents who inspired them and invited them to go to the mission field, as well as by facilitation agents, that is, missionary structures that helped enable missionaries to go. Yet, the missionary surge developed largely at a grassroots level; Western and indigenous communicators and facilitators were helpful, but not decisive.
Judging the Role of Western Support
So, what kind of role did foreign mission organizations play in the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge of the 1990s? As it turns out, not a very big one. Despite the fact that thousands of foreign missionaries and hundreds of foreign mission organizations descended upon the former Soviet Union, it is remarkable how little the West was involved in the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge. One participant characterized the role of foreign missionaries in Russia this way: “They were never first; they always worked after the Russian missionary, helping support his [the Russian’s] work.” In many cases, foreign missions did not work with national believers in the former Soviet Union at all, and thus, were unrelated to the Ukrainian evangelical missionary surge.
Edited excerpts published with permission from John Edward White, “Factors behind the Ukrainian Evangelical Missionary Surge from 1989 to 1999,” Ph.D. dissertation, Biola University, 2016.
John White is a missionary with WorldVenture and teaches at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, Kyiv, Ukraine.