Standing with the Faithful Leaders of Ukraine
Practical and Theological Response in Ukraine
Within days of Russia’s invasion, seminaries responded to the crisis with immediate action. They evacuated people fleeing violence, offered shelter to refugees as they moved toward safety, provided food, medicine, and humanitarian aid to those who came to their campuses. By the end of March, ten seminary hubs, supported by the Ukrainian Relief Fund administered by Scholar Leaders and Overseas Council, provided coordinated care and shared the resources to ensure each center received the kind of support to best support their work. By the end of 2022, the coordinated work of the seminary hubs had provided care for nearly half a million people.
However, even in the first days of uncertainty in the war, the schools knew that the war would have a deep impact on the church and began to make plans to meet the changing needs of the church as it ministers to a society impacted by war. To that end, SL joined with this group of seminary leaders with a three-pronged approach in response to the atrocity of the invasion.
- Work with individual schools, using a modified approach from the Vital Sustainability Initiative to help them reset their immediate missional priorities while keeping long term viability in mind.
- Help establish a new alliance of schools in Ukraine and surrounding nations to provide support, encouragement, accreditation, and a voice after the previous association had to be dissolved because of the war.
- Work with three research teams to provide insight for the church as it ministers in a time of war.
Stand With the Christian Leaders of Ukraine
The generosity of donors like you enables us to continue assisting our sisters and brothers in Ukraine. We are deeply grateful for your support.
Recent Stories from Ukraine
For over three-and-a-half years now, we have asked, “What does faithfulness look like when bombs are dropping from the sky and screaming sirens tear apart the night?”
For Ukrainian theological leader Taras Dyatlik, the answer isn’t theoretical. In the spring of 2022, as Russian forces advanced into Ukraine, he started calling his colleagues, seminary presidents across the country. Within weeks, they had organized ten relief hubs – each led by a theological school, each a lifeline for thousands fleeing violence. By April 26, 2022, just two months into the war, these relief hubs had helped evacuate 9,500 people from active fighting, sheltered 16,219 refugees shorter-term with meals and pastoral care, hosted 1,420 internally displaced people longer-term, and distributed over 56 tons of food.
As a conduit for funding for this work, Scholar Leaders (SL) was with Taras from the beginning – and not just as a funder but as a friend. The day the invasion began, SL’s Executive Vice President, Evan Hunter, was with Taras in Moldova to meet with Christian leaders from across the region. They parted ways at the Ukrainian border, as Taras reentered his homeland at war, and Evan flew to the U.S. Since that parting, Evan has returned over ten times to Ukraine to maintain the “ministry of presence” with Taras under fire.
This is the face of faithful Christian leadership: not from a distance but from inside the crisis itself, cultivating life in the face of death.
Taras was born in Rivne, western Ukraine, one of eleven children in an Evangelical family. He earned theology degrees from Donetsk Christian University and in Belgium. For over twenty years, he taught theology across Eastern Europe and directed Educational Development at the Euro-Asian Accrediting Association (EAAA), where he cemented relationships among theological institutions from Ukraine to Moldova to Kyrgyzstan to Russia – a beautiful demonstration of Christian love. (EAAA fell apart when Russia drove its tanks into Ukraine – yet one more of the war’s grievous consequences for the Church.)
When the bombs began falling in 2022, Taras didn’t hesitate. With Scholar Leaders and his far-flung regional network, he outlined and executed a three-phase response: immediate relief for the displaced, stabilization of theological schools, and long-term re-imagining of Ukrainian theological education in response to the war’s effects. Under Taras’ leadership, not only as relief hubs but also as trainers of new pastors, chaplains, and Christian leaders, Ukrainian seminaries have become expressions of the Church’s refusal to abandon its calling.
And then, in 2024, the war touched Taras’ own family. His younger brother, Andriy, who served as an army medic , was killed by a Russian drone. Writing about his grief, Taras paralleled his family’s experience – and that of Ukraine – to the experience of the disciples on Holy Saturday – that tense time between crucifixion and resurrection, between burial and impossibly distant dawn.
It is in that in-between that Taras continues to live and serve. He doesn’t wait for the war to end. Even as drones still attack, he rebuilds; even as death and hope coexist, he imagines a new future for the Ukrainian Church. As part of that new future, in early November this year, we celebrated the launch of a new consortium for theological education for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the International Evangelical Theological Association (IETA).
In his closing remarks at IETA’s launch ceremony, Taras shared a photo of flowers growing in the rubble of the city of Borodyanka. He said, “That flower did not choose where to grow. It simply grew, where it was. But in that ‘simply’ lies the entire mystery of our divine calling. We too did not choose this time, this war, these circumstances – neither in Ukraine nor in the surrounding region. But we do choose – daily, hourly – how to respond faithfully to what has been given to us.”
Scholar Leaders doesn’t just fund degrees or programs. We walk with leaders like Taras as they serve the Church in some of the world’s hardest places. We gather resources, give guidance, and maintain deep friendship so that they know that they are not alone in their darkness. Taras’s leadership reminds us why we do this: Because when the Church’s leaders flourish – even during their Holy Saturdays – the global Church flourishes too.
You can be part of this mission. You can walk with gifted leaders like Taras and help to sustain theological education in Ukraine and beyond – not someday, but right now, in the in-between.
“Just checking in on everyone in Kyiv… y’all OK?”
“We are – had a pretty loud night. But we are okay,” replied Evan Hunter, our Executive Vice President. Then he added, almost as an afterthought: “Tonight may be another loud night.”
This is the rhythm of life in Ukraine right now. Nights fractured by explosions. Days carried forward by courage and faith.
When Russian tanks crossed Ukraine’s eastern border in 2022, a seminary happened to be in their path. The invading army seized it and turned its library into a waste dump. Thankfully, Tavriski Christian Institute’s staff had already managed to flee westward. While still refugees themselves, they turned to help others. Recognizing what faithfulness requires, they risked their lives to evacuate the elderly, to bring medicines to the wounded, and to provide food and shelter.
“Our mission has not changed,” says Taras Dyatlik, our Engagement Director in Ukraine. Even while evacuating refugees, these leaders were planning the next phase of their mission: educating Ukrainian pastors and chaplains to do theology in a war zone.
Since February 2022, Scholar Leaders has leaned into our partnerships to support our Ukrainian friends. We invited several seminaries into our Vital Sustainability Initiativeto establish strategies for their long-term health despite the uncertainties of war. Now, in Kyiv, the rebuilding is underway – and that is why our team is here this week. Together, we celebrate not only the rebirth of a library, stocked with more than 20,000 books sent through the Theological Book Network program, but also the witness of leaders whose faith holds grief and hope together. These are leaders who embody God’s heart for truth, just peace, and healing even in the ruins of ongoing war.
Ukraine’s story is not isolated. From Palestine to Myanmar, Ethiopia to Colombia, and beyond, theological leaders are serving faithfully under the weight of conflict and hardship. Scholar Leaders is privileged to walk with them.
And we invite you to walk with us.
Pray with us. Learn more about our programs. Give, so that leaders like these can continue to bring healing, truth, and the hope of God’s kingdom where it is needed most.
Tonight may be another loud night in Kyiv. But even there, amid the sounds of war, the sound of hope is heard – carried in the faith, courage, and love of leaders who refuse to let destruction have the last word.