Stay or go? Ukrainian Christians face an agonizing dilemma
For Ukrainian Christians, each day brings a terrible mix of hope, loss and uncertainty.
Last month, the Ukrainian army launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region — invading its invader for the first time in the 2½-year-old conflict. In surprise attacks, Ukraine seized some 500 square miles of Russian territory and more than 90 villages.
At the same time, Russian forces pushed farther into Ukraine, placing Churches of Christ in the country’s east closer and closer to the frontlines.
Playground equipment stands among the ruins of a school in Pokrovsk, Ukraine. “In my travels across Ukraine I have literally seen this heartbreaking scene repeated dozens of times,” said Jeff Abrams, a Church of Christ minister and founder of Rescue Ukraine, during a recent visit to the besieged Eastern European nation. “Today I saw at least six bombed-out schools.”
“Today, a missile landed in the center of Nikopol, killing three people who were just crossing the street,” minister Vyacheslav Kryshnevsky wrote in a Facebook message to The Christian Chronicle in late August. “Any of us could have been in that place.”
Years before the war started, Kryshnevsky overcame substance abuse and the multiple ailments that accompany it through his newfound faith in Christ. Now, in addition to his preaching duties for a Church of Christ in Nikopol and another in a nearby village, he leads a recovery center for Ukrainians battling addiction.
Vyacheslav Kryshnevsky, left, and his family visit with Olya and Zhenya Kapsha in 2020. The Kapshas spent 51 days trapped in the building of the Mariupol Church of Christ as Russian forces destroyed most of the town in 2022. They were among 33 people who sheltered in the building before escaping through Russia and into western Europe.
Neither locale is safe for the recovery center, said Kryshnevsky, who hopes to relocate the facility about 200 miles west in the Cherkasy region. Members of the churches he serves initially planned to move as well. Then, a few days after Kryshnevsky’s message, Ukrainian forces made gains in the region that had the church members second-guessing their plans.
Getting used to air-raid sirens
That sense of uncertainty is one of the few certainties for Ukrainians living near the frontlines, said Jeff Abrams, founder of the nonprofit Rescue Ukraine. Abrams traveled from his home in the U.S. to help church members in Nikopol and other cities as they evacuated or made plans to evacuate.
Jeff Abrams stands next to a blackboard in a classroom of the Church of Christ in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. “On my first visit there after the start of the war I wrote ‘GOD SAVE THIS PLACE.’ I’ve signed and dated it on each visit thereafter. Others who come there have embraced this tradition.”
“I’ve heard a lot of sirens today,” Abrams told the Chronicle from a hotel room in Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine less than 20 miles from the Russian border, “You don’t know when to take the sirens seriously. I try to judge what I should do by looking at what Ukrainians are doing. And that’s probably not the best idea.
“There’s a complacency that’s set in here — not a nonchalance, necessarily, but a fatalism. ‘If I’m going to … if it’s my time, it’s my time,’ so to speak.”
In Alabama, Jeff Abrams receives a gift after his final sermon as pulpit minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ — a sign from the church building. Hours later, he was on a plane headed for Europe and, eventually, a train for Ukraine.
On Sunday morning, Aug. 25, Abrams preached his final sermon as pulpit minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ in northwest Alabama, where he’s served for nearly 18 years. That afternoon, he boarded a plane for Europe. The next day, he began the long journey by train into Ukraine, a country he’s visited countless times in the past three decades.
Abrams plans to focus full time on the work of Rescue Ukraine. The nonprofit sponsors Camp Amerikraine, an annual gathering of Christians from across Ukraine. Since the war began, the camp has met near Lviv in western Ukraine, with an additional session for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Rescue Ukraine also provides Bibles, relief and relocation aid for those impacted by the war.
A makeshift memorial on a park bench in Kharkiv, Ukraine, commemorates the life of Sophia, age 14, who died while sitting on a park bench during a bomb attack.
“There are about three or four congregations and communities that are really up against it,” Abrams said, “and they need to be either relocating or getting real serious about having a relocation plan. So we’re trying to help out with some of that.”
Before visiting Christians in Kharkiv, Abrams traveled to the besieged city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
“Pokrovsk is constant ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ Just constant,” Abrams said. “The Russians are four miles away. It’s really intense out there.”
Evacuees from Pokrovsk, Ukraine.
The 20 or so church members in Pokrovsk were among the last holdouts in the city. But as the fighting intensified, they made the painful decision to move westward.
Abrams visited church members in their new home and asked them about the transition. “I said, “Your first night here, what was it like?’ And this old lady — she had not been a Christian very long — she said, ‘It’s paradise. It’s paradise.’”
But for how long? Other church members ask that question, Abrams said. One Christian, a recently widowed preacher’s wife named Olga, is in her third home since the war began.
Olga, a recently widowed preacher’s wife, “is now living in her third different flat (a very modest place) in her third different city,” said minister Jeff Abrams. “Have you ever seen a face so expressive— a face with so many layers of messages for us?”
“That’s why some of them don’t want to evacuate,” Abrams said. “They say, ‘Well, if we go to this town, we’ll just have to leave again later. We might as well make our stand here, you know? And if something happens, it happens.’”
‘They are able to find things to smile about’
During his journey through Ukraine, Abrams posted updates and photos from Churches of Christ near the frontlines, including Kramatorsk, Kharkiv and Dnipro. Despite a growing sense of fatalism and weariness of war in Ukraine, Abrams’ photos show Sunday services packed with worshipers.
“That’s despite the fact that a lot of Christians who would otherwise be there have relocated to other parts of Ukraine, other parts of Europe,” he said, “A lot of the people you see are fresh faces.”
A room full of worshipers meets for Sunday service in Dnipro, Ukraine.
For many Ukrainians, Churches of Christ have become a lifeline on the frontlines, supplying food and relief supplies. Those helped by the churches want to know more about the people who are so willing to give in a time of war.
“Even in the midst of all this evil and darkness, they are able to find things to smile about and things to celebrate. They’ve encouraged and blessed me a lot more than I’ll ever do for them.”
Vyacheslav Kryshnevsky, who continues to preach in Nikopol, sent photos of a full auditorium — plus videos of four baptisms — during the church’s Sept. 8 service.
Vyacheslav Kryshnevsky prepares to baptize one of four new Christians in Nikopol, Ukraine.
“Even in the midst of all this evil and darkness, they are able to find things to smile about and things to celebrate,” Abrams said. “They’ve encouraged and blessed me a lot more than I’ll ever do for them.
“We’ve got to find a way to get something good out of this horror. And they’re doing it. They’re shining bright.”
The post Stay or go? Ukrainian Christians face an agonizing dilemma appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.
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