“The church is not tired”

In early 2022, Evgenii Skantsev was working as the associate pastor of a 120-member congregation in Ukraine’s south. Jesus Christ Baptist Church met regularly for worship at its location in Kherson, a bustling Black Sea port city on the banks of the Dnieper River.

Then Russian forces invaded. The Russians destroyed a bridge over the Dnieper, stranding Skantsev’s senior pastor in occupied territory, where he began leading a new church. On the Ukrainian-controlled side, Skantsev led several dozen remaining church members in serving their suffering neighbors. The ministry work peaked in June 2023, when the Kakhovka dam collapsed by suspected Russian sabotage and flooded local residents’ homes.

“We helped the people—mostly feeding them, giving them clothes, and giving them the opportunity to wash their clothes because a lot of people lost their appliances,” Skantsev said. “By following with actions what we’re saying, they see that we are serious about our words.”

Attendance at Skantsev’s church has now more than doubled to about 300, he said. He showed a photo of his former senior pastor at his new church with several people wearing white—the traditional Ukrainian dress for baptisms.

“I feel it is very good ground for bringing people into the church,” Skantsev said.

In Ukraine, an evangelical minority living in the shadow of the Orthodox Church is now blooming in the fog of war. After 2½ years the conflict grinds on, with more than 90,000 Ukrainian troops and civilians killed so far, hundreds of thousands wounded, and millions internally displaced. But interviews with local pastors suggest the good deeds of believers amid the evils of war have softened many Ukrainians to the evangelical message.

“God is seeking humble people, and when the war came, people were very disappointed, disoriented,” said Sergey Solohub, a pastor at Irpin Bible Church in Ukraine’s north. “This is the point when you have no hope. This is the best point to meet Jesus.”

Irpin, a Kyiv suburb, was 70 percent destroyed by Russian troops, but the city became a national symbol for resilience and recovery. At Solohub’s church, about one-third of the congregation’s 600 members evacuated in spring 2022. Now the church is nearly back to its pre-war membership and has nearly 700 additional visitors, according to Solohub, who attributes the growth to members showing the love of Christ.

“We opened five volunteer centers where people can get physical and spiritual help. We also started regular meetings for refugees where they can get food, clothes, and also a Bible teaching on the main question of faith,” Solohub said. Another priority: providing counseling and material support—including legal advice—for war widows and families.

According to the pastor, city officials began telling returning evacuees, “Go to Irpin Bible Church, they can help you.”

Local residents gather outside First Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyy Church to receive aid following the Russian invasion in 2022. Photo courtesy of Pastor Valentyn Lupashko

In a country of some 38 million, Orthodox and Greek Catholic practitioners make up about 61 percent and 11 percent of Ukraine’s population, respectively, with self-identifying Protestants constituting less than 2 percent, according to a 2023 U.S. State Department report. The country’s evangelical minority—estimated at over 800,000 in recent years—has traditionally been persecuted or ostracized as a cult. Yet pastors like Solohub are hopeful that public perceptions of evangelicals are changing thanks to the churches’ response to the war.

“People say, ‘We love your church because you were with us in the darkest parts of our life. So that’s why we respect you. We want to hear from you. We want to believe what you believe,” he said.

West of Odesa, members of First Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyy Church dedicated a new facility four days before Russia’s 2022 invasion, then quickly repurposed it: A youth room became a clothes closet, the nursery a food pantry.

Partnering with outside Christian groups, the church provided food and medical care before large-scale international aid efforts fully mobilized. Now attendance is 300—an increase of 100 since before the war, according to Pastor Valentyn Lupashko.

“Yes, the war is not over yet and right now the people of Ukraine are very tired of living in such conditions. But the church is not tired,” he said.

Despite power and water outages and a series of missile strikes nearby, Lupashko’s church hosted 250 mostly Baptist leaders from across Ukraine at a conference in June. They praised God for the growth and planned for more: Ruslan Shyringa, director of evangelism and church planting for the Baptist Union of Ukraine, said the organization seeks 100,000 new believers and 1,000 new churches in the next 12 years.

Some of the recent growth is from believers moving from other parts of Ukraine. For example, Lupashko said his church lost approximately 100 members to evacuation, baptized nearly 100 new believers, and had about 50 people join from existing churches.

Serious challenges remain, primarily loss of experienced leaders. “Some churches who were active like us have grown in number because of new people coming. But they still have lack of strong believers,” Lupashko said.

The Ukrainian Pentecostal Church is also experiencing war-time growth, said Anatoliy Kozachok, senior bishop of the denomination, which has around 100,000 adult members in the unoccupied territory. Pentecostals established 75 new churches in 2023, including 21 in the Kharkiv region, he said. New congregations sprang up when crowds outgrew existing ones in Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin, and elsewhere. Churches have offered food, water, clothing, medical care, transportation, and counseling.

“As the church overflowed, we expanded our services to an opposite part of the town,” Kozachok said of relief efforts in the hard-hit city of Bucha.

Viktor Kurzhel, an Irpin Bible Church member who attended the leadership conference, proudly wore a T-shirt with an image of his city’s bombed-out bridge. He recalled learning while out of town during an evacuation that his home was on fire. He lost everything in the house, he said. But the experience helped him relate to the suffering people in his community.

“Obviously, we can help them with relief and some food,” he said. “But that is just for today. The only way to find inner peace is through Jesus Christ.”

He added: “That is my example—everything that is bad in my life, God makes it bloom.”