CEE Story From The Mission Field
Indigenous leadership training vital for mission work in Ukraine and Kazakhstan
January 9, 2007
A key strategy and necessity for planting churches in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is developing indigenous leadership. A missionary can start a church, but if that same missionary also trains national believers around him to start churches, then the work is maximized. That’s exactly what International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries in Ukraine are doing.
Mike Ray is the IMB strategy coordinator for East Central Ukraine – an area about the size of Indiana. As a strategy coordinator, he oversees all the IMB-related work going on in this area including evangelism projects, prayerwalking and recruiting volunteers to help in the work. But one of Mike’s main focuses is training local believers to plant churches – not local pastors, but local Baptist lay people. They not only are responding enthusiastically, some even become teachers in these seminars and pass on their knowledge by training others.
In April of this year, IMB strategy coordinators from across Ukraine came together at a church-planting conference, accompanied by people from their area of the country who are key church-planting partners. They had seminars and break-out sessions where participants could discuss what they’d heard, come up with their own ideas about how to reach their people and encourage one another in the work. Through these lay people, Mike and the other strategy coordinators are hoping to saturate all of Ukraine with the Gospel.
Besides this annual meeting, Mike also has monthly training sessions with local believers that include everything from casting the church-planting vision to evangelism training, forming small groups and leadership development. Mike has formed relationships with many men during these sessions and much of the more intensive training comes in a one-on-one format.
In the capital city of Kiev, another type of training is having a huge impact. While Mike is training people to reach their own in east central Ukraine, Joe Ragan is involved in training Ukrainian Baptist students to reach beyond their borders to Russian speakers in Kazakhstan. This is a joint effort in partnership with the local Kazakhstan Baptist Union.
In the past, Ukrainian citizens have had a much easier time accessing visas in former Soviet countries such as Kazakhstan. Joe decided to use that as an advantage and began recruiting students from the local university to become missionaries in Kazakhstan. The first Ukrainian Baptist missionary resulting from this effort was sent out in October 2005 through the support of Mississippi Southern Baptists. He plans to stay two to three years. Also, a second Ukrainian Baptist missionary and his family recently took up residence in Kazakhstan.
In addition to these long-term missionaries, more than a dozen Baptist students from Kiev accompanied Joe this past summer on short-term mission projects in Kazakhstan. They joined other CEE missionaries who are already living there and local pastors who have targeted 12 cities to saturate with the Gospel.
Ukrainians are not only turning to Christ, they are leading others to Christ. To find out how you can be involved through the IMB in the work God is doing in Ukraine, browse volunteer opportunities in Ukraine, view CEE's top personnel requests, or visit reachukraine.org or hope4bus.org.
Find more stories on the Main Stories Page
This article first appeared in the Central and Eastern Europe regional newsletter, Hope4CEE. If you would like to receive this newsletter by mail, please send your name, mailing address, and home church to hope4cee@pobox.com.