JIM BAKER
While a case could be made that the Christian Church has a mission unchanged since its inception, the pursuit of that mission has been anything but static over time. There are seasons where a notable response—both personal and institutional—to the “missionary call” rises to a level of historical significance. John Edward White has compiled a comprehensive overview of the “missionary surge” that took place from Ukraine in the last years of the 20th century. The very sound of the word “Ukraine” now brings an entirely different range of deep responses that were not present when White published this study, or even when I picked it up several months ago. Aside from Ukraine’s current role in world affairs, this study reminds us that Ukraine, in our lifetime, has been the fount of just such a “missionary surge.” That the chief antagonist in the current conflict is Russia— the area to which many of these missionaries were sent—makes appreciating this history particularly important and poignant. Many Westerners, upon hearing “Ukraine” and “missionary surge,” are likely to recall the robust response of Western Evangelicals to the “fall of the Iron Curtain.” At the same time, however, Ukrainian Baptists and Pentecostals gave rise to an “indigenous movement [that] arguably made more of an impact on Russian society than the massive and expensive western push” (x).
What was behind this surge of missionaries to Russia and beyond? Was it merely that more Evangelicals lived in Ukraine than elsewhere? White sets out a matrix of factors behind such historical movements before detailing the Ukraine story in their light: the human factor (who and from where); the vision that influenced the movement, the means that enabled it, and external factors (“opportunities”). The reward of this work is the comprehensive detail of the narrative, highlighting the human dimension so critical to missionary mobilization. There is also great opportunity for reflection, as White employs some key works on the psychology of social movements as a lens for appreciating why and how this particular movement took root. For comparison, this is complemented by an engaging and wide-ranging survey of “missionary surges” throughout Christian history, viewed through those same lenses.
For most of the Soviet Union’s history, Evangelicals were marginalized at best. They were painted as disturbed and deviant, as parasites on society. That began to change in 1988, with the celebration of a millennium since the Christian baptism of ancient Rus’. In that time of glasnost’, it became permissible for Christians to create “charitable organizations” to serve the needy, abused, and addicted. Bibles were published; masses of people were baptized. The stigma seemed to be disappearing. Yet many from both Baptist and Pentecostal churches who reported a “call” to mission— particularly in formerly “underground” churches—also experienced more resistance than support from their home congregations. Truth be told, many Ukrainians (young people to whom leadership roles were inaccessible, or single women with few opportunities to minister in their local churches) became missionaries because they could not find avenues for Christian service or development locally. Thus, “evangelical Christianity and the desire for missions were able to grow more on the periphery, away from the center of control” (89).
Strikingly, many church leaders remained fearful of losing parishioners to mission work as the surge progressed. Some more “traditional” churches—which survived Communism by going underground and in many ways developing a parallel culture that remained insular after the fall of the USSR—even criticized missionaries from their own denominations for creating a different church culture, with scandalous innovations like new songs sung in an unfamiliar style, or women wearing earrings. In such an environment, how did this combination of inspired, untrained enthusiasm and controlling, restrictive leadership give rise to anything sustainable? It was not due to being well resourced— unlike many Western mission efforts, few missionaries in White’s research cite tools for ministry and finances as playing a significant role.
Indeed, while Ukrainians were taking advantage of new-found freedom to travel and a common language to go en masse to other parts of the former USSR, hundreds of foreign missionaries (this reviewer included) were moving in to “fill the vacuum” presumed to be left by the departure of the reigning ideology of Communism. We personally observed many people of the post-Soviet world of perestroika turning to Evangelical Christianity, perhaps in part because of its novelty. Significantly, however, it was also out of a sense that the Russian Orthodox Church had compromised itself with the Communist government. Many people—including Evangelical converts—remained culturally “Orthodox,” ready to return if the prodigal church could somehow regain its integrity. In many ways, Western Evangelicals arrived as “cultural others.” White reports that many failed to establish healthy partnerships with national churches, some deliberately choosing not to work with them at all. In all this missionary traffic into and out of Ukraine, there was thus very little synergy between Western and Ukrainian efforts.
In Russia, meanwhile, Orthodoxy was declared a privileged religion in September 1997. New legislation made religious activity by non-privileged groups (like Evangelicals) more difficult. Over time, a resurgent Russian nationalism— combined with a recovering Orthodox Church—provided a distinct barrier to the ongoing flourishing of Evangelical churches. We personally encountered many people who had been Ukrainian missionaries in Russia for years before expulsion in the early 2000s. They remained optimistic and enthusiastic about the Gospel, but not so about Russia’s future.
All in all, it seems that this Evangelical missionary surge had as many things going against it as it did for it. Leadership was fraught with turnover as many ministers emigrated to the West. There was also basic indifference due to an inwardly focused church subculture. What made the difference was a growing population of Evangelical youth who insisted upon following what they perceived as the Gospel call to seek and find outlets for ministry. One of the critical elements of the success of the surge is therefore found in the emergence of centers for missionary training and development. These sprang up in both Baptist and Pentecostal spheres—some with foreign connections, but many without—to develop and pass on the knowledge, skills, and practices that would help missionaries stay in the field and remain effective. Since this support structure emerged after the surge, White’s most direct practical recommendation for facilitating a similar phenomenon is the creation of more of these types of “centers for missionary development” (189).
Unfortunately, recent events have made such an enterprise practically inconceivable. Some of the most significant centers of this surge and the location of many of the original mission development facilities are now war zones: in particular, the city of Donetsk. Yet whether or not tangible results remain from the surge (particularly in Russia), it is clear that Ukrainian participation, on both individual and collective levels, deeply affected all those who responded and went forth. As I write, the very people who are described in this study are among the millions of Ukrainians who have been violently and involuntarily displaced and are residing throughout Europe and beyond. Here, the factor of the “providence of God” in people movement raises itself. We cannot discern God’s plans, but we know the missional character of many who once bore the label “missionary” and are now being tagged as “refugees.” While the establishment of “Ukrainian mission centers” may not be a realistic possibility, the prospective of God moving from the margins—as God has in the past—continues to keep hope alive.
Jim Baker serves as Team Leader of the Marginal Mission Network in the Europe Division of ReachGlobal, a missionary outreach of the Evangelical Free Church of America. His ministry has included 12 years in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Editor’s note: Dr. John Edward White has twice been displaced from his ministry in Ukraine due to Russian military offensives: at Donetsk Christian University, whose campus was seized by forces of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014, and from the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, bombed (but not destroyed) in 2022. Parts of his doctoral dissertation, which forms the basis of the monograph under review, featured in the East-West Church and Ministry Report, vol. 25 (2017), no. 3, 3-8.
