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Про екзистенційну ніч і три хліби, яких у мене немає…
16–24 minutes3,803 words[українською мовою] #БутиЛюдиною. Моя сьогоднішня проповідь на Лк 11:5-8 в церкві «Скеля»… Я так довго не був у нашій церкві через багато поїздок, що вже думав, чи мене часом не виключили. Я це називаю «самовільним залишенням церкви» на певний час. Ну і, відповідно, «самовільним» поверненням… Хочу продовжити з вами вивчення притч Ісуса Христа в Євангелії від Луки. Цього разу – притча про товариша, який спить. Точніше, про того, хто вже…
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Silence Is Enough…
5–8 minutes1,298 words[in English] #BeingHuman. Morning existential reflection and confession… My daughter Tetyana came from Washington, D.C., to visit our family in Ukraine, and brought our first grandson, Wesley. This morning the two of them walked the Alley of Heroes in the center of our city, past so many hundreds of portraits of fallen defenders, all of them killed by ruzzians. Wesley was looking at the portrait of Andriy, my younger brother,…
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Love Your Enemies? – Part 1
10–15 minutes2,440 words#BeingHuman. “Love Your Enemies”? No verse of Scripture is quoted to Ukrainian Christians more often, by well-meaning believers abroad and by the russian-speaking “Slavic” communities, than the command of Jesus in Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It arrives in our inboxes and messaging apps, in Facebook comments and in conversations, as though it were self-evidently an argument for laying down the arms with…
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Sunday Sermon on Luke 16:19-31
18–27 minutes4,206 words[My sermon today at the “Skelya” (Rock) Church, Rivne; if you are interested in what we preach about during the ongoing full-scale russian war against Ukraine… People sometimes ask what is left to preach when the sirens and explosions do not stop. We do not preach a softer Gospel here, nor a louder one. We open the same Scriptures we always have, and we find that the russian war has…
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A New Lesson, a Little Inconvenient, On Christian Leadership and the Shape of Partnership in Wartime…
9–14 minutes2,160 words#BeingHuman. A New Lesson, a Little Inconvenient, On Christian Leadership and the Shape of Partnership in Wartime… When we speak about seminaries, local churches, and church unions in Ukraine today, we reach almost by reflex for the language of structural change. It is a large part of what we do through the Vital Sustainability Initiative, and the word at the heart of that name, sustainability, is the quiet pressure behind…
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On the Great Benefits Of Ukrainian Christians Being Silent…
4–6 minutes946 wordsIf only Ukrainians were silent, what a joy the ministry of reconciliation would be. The Russian seminary professor could lecture on it in a Ukrainian theological seminary, untroubled by a victim in the room, and publish his paper on forgiveness in “Theological Reflections.” Because no one would interrupt, he would never once be asked by a Ukrainian student the single question the whole subject turns on: who, exactly, is to…
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Seventy a day… A Place Where Someone Stays
3–5 minutes778 words#BeingHuman. Dear friends, greetings from Lviv. Roman, Oleksandr, and I are deep in the work now, going through the chapters with the authors. It is humbling to edit a book on pastoral ministry during war, while the war is still being fought around the very people writing it. Some of our authors serve in the Ukrainian army; a few are writing from the front line itself, sending paragraphs between “duties,”…
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Vulnerability: leadership that does not hide its wounds, and restoration that does not pretend at healing
16–24 minutes3,858 wordsAddress at the conference of Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, “Wounded Leadership: Challenges and Paths of Restoration.” 22–23 May 2026, Pushcha-Vodytsia, Ukraine. Let me begin not with a thesis, but with a question that, I suspect, has long lived in each of us. When the risen Christ passed through the locked doors to His disciples in the room and said, “Peace to you,” why – and to what end – did…
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Вразливість: лідерство, яке не приховує ран, і відновлення, яке не вдає зцілення
13–19 minutes3,005 wordsВиступ на конференції Української євангельської теологічної семінарії «Зранене лідерство: виклики та шляхи відновлення»22-23 травня 2026 р., Пуща Водиця, Україна. Дозвольте почати не з тези, а з запитання, яке, підозрюю, вже давно живе в кожному з нас. Коли воскреслий Христос пройшов через зачинені двері до учнів у кімнату і сказав: «Мир вам», чому і навіщо Він показав їм Свої руки й бік? Чому і навіщо тіло, яке перемогло смерть, зберегло на…
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Four months, 780 dead, 4,352 injured, 1,532 days, and the messengers are still arriving…
3–4 minutes684 wordsBeingHuman? As I am writing this on Blablacar (car sharing service) on the road from Kyiv, I got the news that the death toll of the Russian peaceful strike on Zaporizhzhia today took the lives of another 12… In the first four months of 2026, Russians killed at least 780 Ukrainian civilians and injured at least 4,352. It means one civilian is killed every 3 hours and 41 minutes, and…
BEING HUMAN
Contemplating the Divine and Earthly through Human Eyes • Споглядання Божественного і земного очима людини
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