Editor’s note: This article is story 4 of a multi-part story that will give you a look into New Life Church in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its network of churches, that God had already been preparing for this turbulent time of war in Ukraine. Watch for more stories to come in the next months.
In an update to earlier BILD stories about the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the development of the team in Kyiv around New Life Church and its national network of independent churches has been highlighted as the beginnings of BILD’s partnership in this country which boasts the largest number of evangelical believers and churches in Europe. The war has done much to reshape that situation by scattering them among the countries of Europe and around the world.
Even so, with the war situation and the degrading of the institutional structures of the churches, the number of believers increases, and so does the need for new competent leaders to emerge, envision, and give shape to the rebuilding; what one leader has called the “third phase” of revival which approaches with the post war period that is desperately hoped for right now.
The work which BILD has been doing with New Life in Kyiv has gotten the attention of other leaders who find themselves amid unexpected challenges as the war drags on. Sergiy Dzyba found himself leading a small church at the onset of the war in 2022 that within 18 months or so had grown exponentially from 21 to nearly 400 people seeking hope and direction in the gospel and this community rooted in it in a Northwest suburb of Kyiv. There are many leaders like him shepherding growing churches across the country.
His son-in-law, Maks, has been deeply engaged in a learning cohort of next generation leaders with New Life and its leader, Anton Kaluzhny with the coaching of one of BILD’s Global Team workers for the European network. Maks shared his experience in learning and the eye-opening way in which BILD’s training was causing him to think flexibly and missionally in a principled way and to have a growing sense of confidence in what to do and how to do it as a young leader. This caught Sergiy’s attention given the need to raise up many leaders as a team to move his church and its believers toward maturity, needed now and for the years of mission ahead.
Like the apostolic teams of the New Testament, the ideas and principles they stewarded continue to move leaders in Ukraine to share what they have come to know with a goal of creating strong expanding networks of churches that can thrive in and meet any challenge and uncertainty within the pattern of Acts and the plan of Christ revealed there. Greater partnership is developing among Ukrainian leaders around more than pragmatic matters as they invite and encourage others to come and see how the Way of Christ and His Apostles is stabilizing the churches now and setting an agenda for opportunities ahead.
(Photo of Sergiy with his team in July with Steve Galegor.)
More stories on our church partners in Ukraine:
Click here for part 1 of this series: A network unexpectedly being prepared
Click here for part 2 of this series: A network now fully engaged in war
Click here for part 3 of this series: Risks worth taking for the plan of Christ