Taras Dyatlik: Leading in the In-Between

Taras Dyatlik: Leading in the In-Between

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.