I’ve traveled to scores of countries, working among Evangelicals and other Christian communities, but I’ve not often seen anything parallel to this. When they are a minority, Evangelicals tend to keep an arm’s length from other Christian communities and other religions, due to concerns over dilution of theology and waning of witness. While biblical orthodoxy is central to Evangelical church life here, they also understand the importance of working with other Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders, wrestling with national issues and concerns.
I’m writing this because it is a reminder of what spiritual resilience can accomplish. I observed two dynamics at work: they are driven by a desire to celebrate their faith together with gusto, and their leaders with foresight, have constructed a national means of working with others. Though distressed by their recent past and though living today under a notoriously corrupt government and in a country made nervous by geopolitical rumblings, Ukrainian Evangelicals are more than surviving. Their fervent faith, evangelistic outreach and energetic worship could offer a positive example as new mutations of the coronavirus wind their way from region to region.
This, of course, is but one example. I do not wish to overlook the great damage that COVID-19 has caused to the church globally. In many cases, it is hard to obtain good statistics because the medical community has been unable to maintain accurate records and some governments have done their best to hide the numbers. Indeed, when I met with the leaders from 22 Latin American National Evangelical Alliances, they estimated that in their region, among Evangelical churches alone, some 6,000 pastors have died from COVID-19.
When we finally reach a point when new variants don’t shut down the world and this pandemic becomes endemic, and as life assumes some kind of a relative normalcy, the example of Christians in Ukraine is a worthy model for all of us.
This article originally appeared here.
