Legend has it that the apostle Andrew preached along the southern Black Sea coast and then followed the Dnipro River to the current site of Kiev, Ukraine, where he erected a cross. Today the Church of St. Andrew stands on the site.
Whether the story of Andrew is true, historians have ample evidence that Christianity came to Ukraine early and has managed to remain strong through decades of opposition.
One of the first to be converted was the Grand Duchess Olga in the mid-10th century.
Her grandson, Vladimir I, became a Christian in 988 and made Eastern Orthodoxy the state religion. Mass baptisms followed as Christianity spread through the region.
After flourishing for many years, Christianity was forbidden and forced underground for most of the 20th century by communist rule.
Since the fall of communism, Ukraine has experienced a religious revival of sorts.
According to the U.S. State Department, a nationwide survey in Ukraine in 2003 found that 75.2 percent of the respondents considered themselves believers, although only 37.4 percent said they attended church.
Almost 22 percent said they did not believe in God.
More than 97 percent of the religious community is Christian, with a small number of Jews and even fewer Muslims and Buddhists.
The Religious Information Service of Ukraine reports that about half of the Christians in the nation are Orthodox, while the other half are split between Catholic and Protestant. Although the first Baptists did not appear in Ukraine until the 1800s, membership in Baptist churches is growing rapidly.
According to the State Department, The Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine (Baptist Union of Ukraine) is the country’s largest Baptist group with more than 500,000 members in approximately 2,552 organizations.
Those numbers may seem large, but when viewed against the backdrop of Ukraine’s population — currently at more than 44 million — the urgency to spread the gospel felt by Baptist nationals is understandable.
The Baptist Union of Ukraine, — which is changing its name to The Union of Churches, Evangelical Baptists of Ukraine effective May 10 — is aggressively engaged in church planting, according to General Secretary Victor Kulbich.
On an International Mission Board (IMB) Web site, he cited President Gregory Komendant’s leadership as “progressive and innovative.”
“He is open to any kind of church that will bring people to Christ and has brought the tradition-loving Baptists to a new level of church planting,” Kulbich said. “The potential in Ukraine is amazing and difficult to keep abreast of.”
Slavic Svyrydenko is pastor of Light to the World Baptist Church, a new church plant just outside Kiev.
After coming to Christ in 1993, Svyrydenko and his wife, Natasha, led occasional outreach events in Petro-Pavlovskaya, where there was no evangelical work.
Over time, they became convicted that more was needed than occasional events, so they began to pray for a meeting place.
IMB missionary Sam Taylor shared their story. In December 2005, the Svyrydenkos discovered empty rooms for rent in the basement of an apartment building in the area.
The new church began meeting in January and now hosts children’s clubs, adult Bible studies, a youth club, an English club and weekly table tennis. The church has also set up space for an art studio.
According to Taylor, the Svyrydenkos are seeking a partner church in the United States to help them evangelize this community of 6,500.
Sasha Pyrig serves as pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lviv, a church that has been established for three years. One of the church’s members has announced that he feels a call to establish a new church.
IMB missionary Shannon Ford in Lviv pointed out that church planting has been slowing down in recent years, but volunteer teams can assist a struggling new work.
“A volunteer team is somewhat like having the circus come to town,” he noted. “Being foreign is often all the reason people need to be curious.”
Pyrig noted, “It helps in many ways to have partnership with missionaries and volunteers.
“Starting and growing a church is never easy,” he continued. “We have been blessed to have both missionaries and volunteer teams assist us from the beginning.”
“Volunteers do something very special,” Ford said. “They are like a multiplier of missionaries. When a team comes to work with a missionary, suddenly there are not two hands but 20.”
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