One month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Christians are delivering humanitarian aid and helping to evacuate endangered residents in eastern part of the nation that has been most hard-hit by shelling, the European Baptist Federation reported.
“Many believers are driving regularly to Kharkiv, taking aid and bringing back people fleeing the bombing,” the EBF stated in a March 24 situation report.
Hundreds of churches are serving as welcome centers for displaced people. In the Cherkasy region, more than 1,000 people are housed in church buildings every night.
Churches continue ministry in occupied regions
Even though much of the Kherson and Donetsk regions are under Russian occupation, churches continue to minister to their neighbors.
“Local churches continue to meet for worship and prayer, and to organize help for as many people as possible,” the EBF reported. In Kherson, Christians “are providing meals, distributing bread and finding homes for those injured.”
“Believers from one church are taking care of children from the regional orphanage,” the EBF report continued.
“The port city of Mariupol is under constant siege, and conditions are dire,” the report stated. “Baptist ministers in this region are delivering humanitarian aid and using any possible opportunity to help people escape. Believers in one city are baking and distributing bread, helping to save people from starvation. Christians report that ‘people are searching for God in times of trouble.’”
Meanwhile, churches seek ways to minister to people in the normal cycles of life, visiting the ill and the elderly between air raids and rejoicing with those who are expecting babies.
“In Lviv, one local church held a baby shower for three mothers-to-be who had fled the fighting, bringing hope in the midst of suffering,” EBF reported.
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Of the 3.6 million refugees who have fled Ukraine, more than 2.1 million entered Poland, where Texas Baptist Mencontinue to support the work of Polish Baptist churches who have opened their facilities as shelters.
BWA Executive Committee denounces violence
On March 25, the Baptist World Alliance Executive Committee issued a statement in response to the crisis in Eastern Europe—the first of its kind the committee has released in more than four decades.
Members of the BWA—a global fellowship of 176,000 churches and 51 million Baptists in 128 countries and territories—“stand together as a worldwide Baptist family that draws upon 400 years of shared history and denounce the violence in Ukraine and appeal for a just and peaceful solution,” the statement reads.
“We stand together to call to repentance all who have practiced unjust violence in this conflict and to uphold the promise to pray, support and work for peace across Ukraine and Eastern Europe,” the BWA Executive Committee statement continues.
The statement notes “expressions of solidarity” from throughout the BWA for “Ukrainian and Russian Baptist sisters and brothers and those in neighboring countries.”
“As brothers and sisters within a global Baptist family, we are called to be both peacemakers and people of prayer,” the statement continues.
The committee statement also expresses appreciation for the “outpouring of gifts from around the world to support the humanitarian response of Baptists in Ukraine and neighboring countries.”
To contribute to TBM relief for Ukrainian refugees and displaced people, click here. To donate directly to BWA, click here.
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