Kiev, Ukraine

Kiev, Ukraine

Watkins family

Church Planting in Kiev

by Mike Watkins

Even while we were laboring to plant a church in Lviv, Ukraine from 1993-2004, we felt that the capital, Kiev, would be our next church plant. On one hand, it made little sense because some of the largest churches in all of Europe are in Kiev. However, several scouting trips there proved what we suspected: very little work was being done to reach and disciple the youth and the enormous student population.

Kiev is a sprawling city with nearly 3 million people and it is the center of government, education and international trade in Ukraine. It has over 200,000 university students studying in scores of institutions. There are also many international students and some of whom are from restricted access nations in both Asia and the Middle East.

In 2004, when our time of leading the church in Lviv had come to an end as Ukrainian leaders were raised up, we embarked on a three-year journey that led us to New York, Manila and finally back to Kiev. While in Manila, we saw a kind of growth that forever impacted our lives. Simple people leading and discipling others in creative small groups! We knew that this was a great approach for Kiev, so we began our plans.

Outreach in Kiev

Small Groups and English Clubs

My wife, Myra, began looking for a good starting place and she found one university on the internet. (Can we mention the name of the university?) I did not pay much attention but when we arrived in Kiev it seemed that God was going to lead us to this place no matter what I planned. We drove by it, and while not recognizing it, Myra said that the building looked like a university and that we should start there. It also turned out that a driver who took our kids to school knew someone who worked there -- his wife Nadia. So we invited Alex & Nadia, who are both strong believers, over for dinner. They asked us about our vision and when we talked about reaching out to students, Nadia lit up. Within minutes she laid out a strategy for us to reach her university.

We began to teach special seminars in her English classes – all classes in the university are in English – and before long she had us teaching in similar classes of two of her colleagues. Through these classes we were able to establish our own English clubs that met every week and we made many new friends through these interactions.

 

Major Outreach and Changed Lives

The next phase was to plan a major outreach in March 2008. We asked our new students if they wanted to meet some American students and they were very ecstatic about this. We had a group of 11 Americans and the day they arrived a group of 11 Ukrainian students met them at the hotel.

Even though this was new territory for our team, they adapted quite well. Over the next several days our team taught about US culture in several English classes, and we conducted our own seminar on “Purpose in Life”. Our main contact, Dima, had even planned excursions for the whole week and thanks to him, on the second day of the trip, the number of Ukrainians accompanying our group grew from 11 to nearly 50.

The end result of the trip was that many long-term relationships were made. Six students prayed to come to Jesus and at least 20 wanted to be in small groups. One student, whom we met on the last day, said he quit taking drugs immediately. He also prayed for a new job and got it the same day. Another student, Oleg, told a guy on the team that when he shared his testimony he felt hope.  I meet with Oleg every week now to fellowship and help him grow.

First Church Meeting

During the fall of 2008, we are planning to restart the same outreach with an emphasis on building small groups and making disciples and we plan to start out first church meetings around November. There are also open doors in other universities through those who got saved last spring. With all these open doors our greatest need right now is for more team members.

Ukraine is a very fruitful place, but it is not an easy place to share the gospel. Young men are not that open to small group outreach and we are constantly exploring different ways to engage them. Young people have few moral boundaries, so discipleship will be a lot of work. Nonetheless, it is an adventure being here and all who have a call to the nations should prayerfully consider this part of the world. The harvest is ready, it is plentiful, but the laborers are few.