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While some foreign missionaries have left for neighboring countries, many are standing alongside national church leaders to minister amid uncertainty.
Missionaries serving in Ukraine have sent out urgent prayer requests and asked the Lord for his protection and wisdom as they consider what’s ahead for them and their ministries as the threat of invasion looms.
Some missionaries have already left to wait out the situation in neighboring nations or even back in the US, while others remain even as the Russian military presence continues to build near the border.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has urged citizens to remain calm, as invasion isn’t certain. However, the escalating crisis is impacting ministry at a time when evangelicals say a new generation of Ukrainian church leaders is gaining momentum.
At Kyiv Theological Seminary, American Rick Perhai—who has served in the country more than two decades—is taking his cues from his students.
“They want to be here to study, and that gives me great hope,” said Perhai, the school’s director of higher education development and a missionary with SEND International.
“Even in the midst of this kind of uncertainty, this kind of ominous threats, they’re trying to keep their focus on Jesus. That encourages me to keep my focus on Jesus. They really are a living cloud of witnesses.”
The current tensions and pressures are being exerted on a Protestant church that has grown substantially in the past few decades. The choice for missionaries to stay or go is complicated for both the missionaries themselves and for the organizations that send them.
SEND International has been sending missionaries to Ukraine since the 1990s. As of the beginning of February, most of its missionaries were still in the country. The organization trains missionaries to handle crisis situations and ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry
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