Early last June, Dean Ed Stetzer and I were able to pay a visit to Talbot’s sister institution, Kyiv Theological Seminary in Kyiv, Ukraine. For the last 18 years KTS has been the host site for Talbot’s Kyiv Extension program, where our Eurasian cohort of students gather for sessions with visiting Talbot professors. The trip was very strategic for a couple of reasons. First, it provided Dean Stetzer with a firsthand acquaintance with Talbot’s Kyiv program. And second, it allowed us to give and receive from our brothers and sisters in the Lord who have endured so much from Russian aggression in this horrible war.

For our part, Dean Stetzer, our onsite director, Dr. Eduard Borisov, and I offered a day-long live-streamed conference on “The Kingdom of God in a Time of War” to Talbot and KTS students, alumni and the public at large. Dean Stetzer also brought along means to conduct a live radio broadcast from KTS as well as to film and record interviews around the war-torn environs of Kyiv itself. The results of these interviews are still being used today to engage old and new supporters for the Extension program.

From our brothers and sisters, I know we received much more, however. For me, the trip was a complex of heartfelt joy and heavy burden. The conference brought out men and women I have known for 30 years. To see their faces and to hear their lives of faithfulness in the church, the academy and parachurch filled me with joy. They also told of the Lord’s faithfulness and presence during the extremes of ministry during wartime. They told of the advance of the gospel through the birth of new churches and new spiritual life from those turning to Christ’s people for aid. But they also told of great hardship and heartache as they minister in the destruction of war burying congregants and soldiers, caring for families whose men were either mobilized or killed, living with crippled infrastructure, food shortages and daily sirens and bombings.

Pray for these brothers and sisters. Pray for opportunity for the Gospel. Pray also for a just peace in Ukraine.