3 Years of Resilience
Today marks the third anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. I stood on the yellow line running down the middle of E97 in 2018. Swimming in the incredibly saline waters of Lake Lemuria, I watched the dust kicked up by Russian military maneuvers just over the border in Crimea. Outside Oleshky, I delivered watermelon and insulation to an ad hoc military post set up to cover the approaches to Kherson. Lastly, I visited a vanguard base where we met with a Ukrainian artillery crew on R&R. They had been fighting since 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts. Everyone we met was holding their breath and pointed to the road I had stood on. They all said the same thing: “One day, Russia will drive up that road and attack.” Four years later, I sat riveted to the TV as I watched Russian tanks rumble across the Antonovsky Bridge and shell a gas station I had been to. In real time, we saw the resolve of a small contingent of Ukrainian forces harass, stall, but ultimately fail to stop the invasion of Kherson.
This is where the war became personal. Friends and pastors in Ukraine began using social media to raise the alarm. Churches had been targeted, pastors abducted. Local councils and village governments collapsed. Churches became de facto centers of city and village life. “We can get potatoes; we just need money.” So, I figured out a way, using an app, to get money to these churches, and in the first 30 days of the war, raised and transferred $30,000. I was told at one point that I had become the biggest cabbage buyer in southern Ukraine. Thousands were fed and loved in a world now marked by Russian deprivation and hate. Christ was glorified, the church was dignified, and hope was ministered to the hopeless. Of course, I didn’t do any of the real work. Ukrainian pastors and chaplains dodged Russian troop movements to buy vanloads of bread, evacuate internally displaced people, and bring comfort to the front lines. Despite being the first city to fall to the Russians, Khersonians remained defiant and steadfast. From March 2, 2022, to November 11 of the same year—9 months—the Russians shot civilians, deported children, and destroyed critical infrastructure. Nevertheless, Kherson is Ukrainian again, though still harassed daily by Russian forces entrenched just across the mile-wide Dnipro River.
Pastor Scott with 155mm artillery crew in Southern Ukraine in 2018 with team members from the Central Valley Baptist Association and a chaplain for the Armed forces of Ukraine
My interest in Ukraine is multifaceted. It’s one of the world’s newest democracies, having gone through an internal revolution that saw the last Kremlin-installed “president” ousted for the first democratically elected president. The nation underwent radical westernization, hoping to fulfill its dream of joining Europe through membership in the EU and possibly even NATO. After all, Ukraine was promised these guarantees when the United States convinced them to give up its formidable nuclear arsenal. One could imagine a world where no Russian invasion ever took place because of the nuclear deterrence possessed by Ukraine. My interest here is moral. We, the West, owe Ukraine our support and protection. Promises were made, equivocated, and then vacated. In the vacuum, Russian forces swept in.
The Maidan Revolution was a nationwide grassroots protest to overthrow the last vestiges of Russian interference in Ukrainian culture and politics. Russian backed Viktor Yanukovych fled into exile after he was convicted by the Ukrainian court of being responsible for the death of over 100 protesters and acting against the interest of Ukraine by failing to sign an agreement that would have strengthened cooperation between Ukraine and Europe.
My second interest—and far more important—is my love for the Ukrainian Christian church. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, small bands of Bible-believing Christians met in secretive conclaves. It was illegal to be an evangelical Christian. They met with the fervency of believing their current meeting could always be their last. “Disappearances” were not uncommon. The pressure fostered a purity in the church: loving God and people was not optional. Survival depended on it. The fall of the Iron Curtain ushered in opportunities for churches in America to pour into Ukraine. John MacArthur, Billy Graham, and others held large rallies attended by thousands. Baptist churches and associations struck up partnerships, building schools, churches, and homes. Denied an opportunity for education and Christian academics, Bible schools were launched. In a relatively short time, the Ukrainian church went from receiving missionaries to sending their own into the world. Caution causes me to say only that Ukrainians were able to establish fruitful partnerships in parts of the world where no American can legally travel. Churches were planted, schools were started, and vocations were created to fund pastors and their ministries. Out of darkness, light: this was the work of Ukrainian Christians.
So, on this third anniversary, I write with trepidation because my own country has been taken over by an administration of lies and chaos. My own president has painted the imperfect yet heroic President of Ukraine as a dictator, blaming Ukraine for the invasion of their own land. I talk with people regularly who consider the war a false flag orchestrated by Democrats to distribute American largesse to a country supposedly laundering American money. For what purposes? Conspiracy theorists cannot answer. Support for the democratic aspirations of the world’s newest democracy is now viewed as supporting Democrats and Joe Biden. To be an evangelical who supports Ukraine and her churches is now a cause to be questioned, suspected… at least by those who subscribe to the law that Donald Trump is right, because, well, after all, might makes right.
American President has cozied up to to Vladimir Putin
Donald Trumps talking points come straight out of the Kremlin playbook on Ukraine.
My prayer—and the one I invite you to join me in—is first and foremost for the people of God in Ukraine to be preserved and protected for another day of ministry. I pray that the murder of civilians and the needless death of members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine would end. I pray that instead of mud and ash, rapeseed fields and blue skies would once again dominate the countryside. I pray that my own country would come to its senses and that our leaders, if not Russian agents themselves, would stop acting like one. I pray the North American Evangelical community would stop taking its cues from a leader who mocks their faith and instead see that they are citizens of a kingdom, living life under the sovereign King Jesus, and now inextricably knit together with every other believer—such that if one hurts, all hurt. I pray that this hurting heals calloused hearts enthralled with political fecklessness. In healing, I pray that Christians would unite around the banner of Christ and Him glorified, in America, Ukraine, and lands beyond.
Ukrainian brothers and ministers who remained in occupied Kherson to minister to churches, pastors, and believers. Though they would deny the title, these are truly heros of the faith.
