Officials of the unrecognised Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in eastern Ukraine ordered Baptist Union churches to halt their public worship or risk punishment, it was reported in March.
Pastor Igor Bandura of the Ukrainian Baptist Union said: ‘All Baptist churches that have prayer houses will halt meetings in them, so Sunday worship and other services will not take place’. He said church members fear that if they do not halt their worship, officials could raid their worship meetings or arrest church leaders.
The LPR authorities have rejected all registration applications from Protestant communities.
Christians working on the Slavic Bible Commentary noted how the region’s conflicts brought up new questions and challenges to the churches there. After the ‘revolution of dignity’ of 2013 which ended with a killing spree, the annexation of Crimea followed and then the war in the Donbass region.
The time spent working on the Commentary was challenging, but in seeking the word of truth, those on opposite sides were able to find answers to questions they had – from the Bible. These included: how the church can respond to two million refugees, with many thousands wounded.
In the prophets, and in the Gospels, they saw how the grace and mercy of God can be found when everything is lost.
10,000 copies were sold in a few months. It helped strengthen relationships between evangelicals divided by such conflict.
