Ukrainian believers take Gospel to Kazakhstan

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A teacher goes through the books of the Bible in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

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PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan (BP)—Roman Gopanchuk gestures with his left hand and leans forward to explain a Scripture passage to his home Bible study group in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan.

Just outside the living room door, Gopanchuk's 8-year-old son, Timofey, plays with Russian-speaking children. After a year of repeated asthma attacks, Timofey can finally breathe freely. And with their son's health restored, so can Roman and his wife, Viktoria.

The Gopanchuks first considered leaving their home in Lutsk, Ukraine, to serve as missionaries in Kazakhstan after reading an article about Pavlo­dar in a quarterly magazine published by the Ukrainian Baptist Union. As they learned about the need for missionaries in Pavlodar, Viktoria says her son's asthma played a significant role in their decision to serve abroad.

"We were thinking and praying a lot about what to do because treating him and the medicine, they didn't help," Roman says. "Some people advised us to move from where we had lived."

Roman and Viktoria contacted Franz Tissen, president of the Baptist Union of Kazakhstan, who invited the Gopan­chuks to serve in Pavlodar.

"Living in the Ukraine, we were absolutely sure God wanted us in Kazakhstan," Roman says. "And when we arrived here, one of the brightest examples is that our son has not had an asthma attack since we came here."

Because of Ukraine's wealth of reli­gious freedom and its strategic geographic location connecting Russia to the West, Ukraine is commonly considered the "bread basket" of Chris­tianity in the former Soviet Union.

In fact, since the collapse of communism 15 years ago, the Ukrainian Bap­tist Union has planted 1,900 church­­­es. But despite the growing num­ber of church plants, Bible in­stitutes and the­ological education programs in Ukraine, fewer than two percent of Ukrai­ni­ans profess to be evangelical believers.

"We still have a lot to do here," says Mick Stockwell, International Mission Board strategy associate for Belarus, Ukraine and satellite coun­tries. Until now, he explains, Ukraine has been a receiving culture. "Everything's been about what people bring to them; what people do for them. They are just now working on what it means to go on mission trips, to be called, to search and know God's will."

Since July 2005, IMB missionary Joe Ragan has partnered with both Ukraine and Kazakhstan Baptist leaders to recruit Ukrainian believers like the Gopanchuks to serve as missionaries to Kazakhstan.

Because of the country's diverse population, Ragan explains, mission­aries to Kazakhstan have a unique opportunity to reach a wide range of people groups with the Gospel. Just over half of the Central Asian nation's population is ethnically Kazakh, while the remaining inhabitants are comprised of Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Germans and various other ethnic groups.

"For me, the important thing is for Ukrainians to discover there's a world outside of Ukraine, and that they can be a part of that work," Ragan says. "Many of them have probably seen American missionaries come to their country and do mission work. And so they never thought that they, themselves, could be a part of something like that and go to another country."

The Gopanchuks are only one of several Ukrainian families who have spoken with Ragan about the possibility of relocating to Kazakhstan to serve as long-term missionaries. As Ukrainian believers begin to leave their homeland to share Christ in other parts of the former Soviet Union, Stockwell and Ragan agree Ukrainians have access to places where Americans might have difficulty serving.

"An American passport is not always welcome in every country simply because they know we're a Christian nation," Ragan says. "But Ukrainians don't have that history. So they have more opportunities to go all around this world, especially in countries closed to the Gospel."

Although the Kazakh government has placed some restrictions on missionary work in the country, Ragan says believers can work within the context of those restrictions and still complete their missionary task of planting churches.

For the Gopanchuks, the primary goal is to plant churches in a city of 350,000 people, where only one Baptist church exists.

"If God wants us to create another church here in Pavlodar," Roman says, "I don't know how much time it will take, but I know it's all in God's hands, and He can do everything."