Ukrainian Baptists, like members of no other East European Baptist union, have made a successful leap into the limelight. That was apparent during the four-daylong celebration in the Ukrainian capital marking the 400th birthday of the global Baptist movement.
Beginning Aug. 27, a consultation involving 250 representatives from 26 countries took place in Kiev’s Central Baptist Church. The most memorable event was a moving three-hourlong celebration involving 5,000 participants in the state-owned national palace of Ukraine on Aug. 30. The choir consisted of 370 singers.
Eyes moistened as the hosts used multimedia to review the long years of tribulation under communist rule. (Ukraine is a former republic of the Soviet Union.)
“Who could have guessed,” exclaimed Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU), a Lviv-based news service. “The world did not reckon that after decades of persecution and repression, that after grave trauma and humiliation, Baptists would arise anew to speak calmly of their faith.”
The Kiev event celebrated both the continuity and resurgence of the Slavic Baptist movement.
As had been done at the large youth festival in Odessa a year earlier, the closing communion contained symbolic elements demonstrating the passing of the torch to the younger post-Soviet generation.
In an interview with RISU, Grigory Komendant, the retired president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, stressed continuity.
Methods can change, he said, but “the young must understand that they are no pioneers. Principles of faith exist which dare not be revised through a liberal or conservative approach.”
Victor Hamm, an evangelist for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, added, “We stand on the shoulders of our fathers in the faith, who were here before we were. My father, Gerhard Hamm, spent entire nights praying with leading nonregistered Baptists, requesting that the mighty Soviet Union might once again hear loudly and clearly the call of the gospel. That time has come. Let us use the time well to win others for Christ.”
Lubomyr Husar, major archbishop and cardinal of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, delivered his greeting in person. The closing event also included written greetings from President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Kiev’s mayor, Leonid Chernovetsky.
Baptist Alexander Turchinov, first deputy prime minister, gave a speech at the closing festivities. Yuri Reshetnikov, a Baptist and head of the once feared State Ministry for Religious Affairs, called his church Ukraine’s fourth-largest denomination.
Pavel Unguryan, Baptist national youth director and a member of the national parliament, was a primary organizer of the event.
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