A meeting April 8 between Vyacheslav Nesteruk, president of the Baptist Union of Ukraine, and Aleksey Smirnov, president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, marked the first time the heads of the two Baptist unions have met since a political crisis began November 2013 putting the two nations on the brink of war.
The Baptist leaders issued a joint statement, calling on churches “to pray continually for peace between our peoples as well as for those who have suffered during the course of the recent political stand-off.”
They also pledged their “sincere willingness to pray and support deeds of fraternal dialogue and the promotion of peace in the Russian and Ukrainian societies.” They appealed “to all who are responsible for the future of our countries to hold firmly to the principles of freedom of conscience and confession as well as the non-interference of the state and political forces in the internal life of religious organizations.”
The Ukrainian crisis has kindled an interdenominational prayer movement in the nation, said a Southern Baptist evangelist who ministers there and has accepted an invitation from Ukrainian Baptists to preach on a national day of mourning in Kiev.
Ukrainian Christians believe only God can protect the nation from Russian control in the midst of upheaval that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February, said Michael Gott, who has been ministering in Ukraine nearly 40 years.
“The churches, the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, the evangelicals, the Baptists and the Pentecostals are now having prayer meetings together, asking God to intervene in their nation’s history — and it is an atmosphere of holy desperation,” Gott said.
“They are saying, ‘God if You don’t help us, we’re down the tubes. We’re facing a collapse of our whole nation.’
“What [the revolution] has caused is an amazing thing,” said Gott, a Texas-based evangelist who spends up to six months a year in Eastern Europe.
Gott is scheduled to preach an April 27 sermon commemorating the estimated 100 people killed when Yanukovych was ousted from power. Details are still being finalized for the event expected to draw up to 50,000 Ukrainians and to be televised nationally, the result of the new government declaring the service an official religious and cultural event, Gott said.
“They want me to preach a message on this special day,” Gott said. “It is a national day of mourning for all of the people that were killed by the snipers during the Ukrainian revolution when President Yanukovych was removed from office and he ordered snipers to come out and shoot people. Roughly 100 people were shot and they’re going to have a time when the nation comes together to mourn the horror of all of this.
“Because I’m going to be there preaching a rather large evangelistic event, I was invited to speak,” Gott said.
“The Ukrainian people not only want to do this memorial for these people who died, but we’re going during their Easter celebration, which adds a dimension to this, and it’s one of the reasons they expect the crowds to be so large.”
Nesteruk and several other Baptist leaders invited Gott to preach after he was already scheduled to tour western Ukraine with the Arkansas Master’Singers April 21–May 2.
Gott will arrive in Kiev ahead of the choir to meet with Baptist leaders and celebrate Easter with his membership church there, Dom Evangeliya (House of the Gospel) Baptist Church.
“This invitation came to us from the Ukrainian Baptists themselves,” Gott said. “We’ve [Michael Gott International] been going there for many, many years and they asked us to come.” The trip could still be cancelled if the political climate changes in Kiev and western Ukraine.
“The fact is the western part of Ukraine is pro-American, it’s pro-European, it’s pro-Western, and so we have had to, almost within 72 hours, reschedule our whole itinerary,” Gott said. “And yet this could be cancelled if there was a military invasion of Ukraine.”
(BP, ABP, TAB)
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