The war in Ukraine has displaced people on a staggering scale, since more than 11 million Ukrainians, close to a third of the country’s pre-war population, have been forced from their homes since the full-scale russian invasion began in February 2022. As theological educators forming future Christian leaders and church ministers, we chose to work through what it means, theologically and practically, to minister to people carrying grief and hardship while the turmoil continues.
How can we ignore them, and their needs, and what has happened to them, and instead focus on our primary calling on the ground that Christ said, “For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always” (Mark 14:7, NKJV)?
How can we ignore that so many of our brothers and sisters, cousins, relatives, friends, colleagues, students and faculty serve at the front every day, risking and laying down their lives for us? When they ask for help in so many areas, day after day, are we to say, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled” (James 2:16, NKJV)?
Every single day our cities and towns hold one to three funerals. The number of widows and orphans grows daily, and most of them can barely survive. When they knock at our door, are we to answer, “Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you” (Luke 11:7, NKJV)?
More than 6.2 million refugees from Ukraine have gone abroad, to the European Union and elsewhere, while another 4.8 million are displaced inside their own country. Behind those figures stand individuals and families whose lives were overturned by violence and loss and fear. Funerals cover our towns for soldiers killed at the front and for civilians killed by bombardment. The ranks of widows and orphans and traumatised survivors multiply without a pause. Over a quarter of the population of Ukraine is now displaced, looking for shelter, for food, and for some meaning after everything they knew was turned upside down.
So how do we hold our theological educational mission together with what Ukrainian society urgently needs today? As theological educators, how do we justify a narrow focus on training Christian leaders and church ministers while doing nothing directly about the suffering around us? With so much anguish demanding an answer now, what exactly is the value of theological and spiritual teaching kept separate from tangible action?
As in the book of Nehemiah, this moment asks those carrying the bricks of progress to keep a sword at their side as well, binding faith to work in the service of communities under attack: “Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built” (Nehemiah 4:17–18, NKJV).
We carry a trowel in the left hand, to restore theological education and to form Christian leaders and church ministers, rebuilding temples of the Holy Spirit inside souls whose windows and walls are broken. And we carry in the right hand the sword of ministry, to serve suffering people in our country, sharing hope with them through works and not only through words, even holy ones, and getting dirty in every literal and figurative sense that such involvement requires.
“Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17, NKJV). I firmly believe the same holds for the formation of Christian leaders and church ministers: theological education that has mostly words and few works is dead, being alone. The point here reaches past current and future outcomes and outputs, essential as those are, to the missional presence of theological educators among refugees and displaced people, widows and orphans, the broken and the lost, here and now, inside their actual lives.
Our mission in theological education cannot stay passive or detached from conditions on the ground in Ukraine during this war. Christian leadership and church ministry ring hollow unless they are rooted in empathy, in mercy, and in sacrifice shared with those going through the crucible. Theological education needs works to animate and apply what it teaches, turning creed into concrete consolation and hope for displaced people in their hour of need. We have to model what being present with the hurting looks like, and give our students the training and the opportunities to offer practical spiritual support while their pastoral and ministerial capacities are still forming.
Finally, across two years of war I have heard one refrain repeatedly from many who left Ukraine: only the Lord protects me and my family, so I do not need to thank soldiers and volunteers. Yet practically everyone who says this has fled Ukraine for the relative security of Western nations with strong armies and strong economies, often choosing countries with a nuclear deterrent. I do not condemn anyone for leaving, since we all differ in what we can bear of pain and fear. I remain frustrated, though, by that attitude toward the people who lay down their lives for theirs.
The contradiction reveals a real theological tension. On one side, faith gives many people a deep conviction that God alone shields them from harm. On the other, their migration exposes a hedge against relying on divine protection alone, since otherwise they would have stayed and put that trust into practice. By seeking refuge in stable and militarily robust countries, they vote with their feet to supplement heavenly guardianship with earthly security guarantees.
Rather than simple pronouncements about the supremacy of divine deliverance, this war calls for more careful theological reflection. If a person genuinely believes God alone protects them in the fires of war, then seeking asylum abroad already reveals that the trust is less than absolute. At the very minimum, gratitude is owed to the soldiers and volunteers risking their lives and to the countries pledging military support for Ukraine’s cause. A whole theology of protection would hold human effort together with God’s grace and mercy rather than setting them against each other.
As Christian leaders and theological educators we have to work through the hard spiritual questions this war has laid bare in people’s lives and assumptions. Neat declarations will never resolve the tension between proclaiming unassailable faith in divine control and quietly relying on human instruments of Providence. By examining our own behaviour and our own calculations about risk and refuge, we can learn something about how spiritual belief and mortal doubt live together in every soul this war has touched, and through that understanding we may be able to guide those who feel abandoned by God back toward trust in a time of unprecedented trial.
During Ukraine’s long trial by fire, our mission as theological educators reaches past graduation to the real-time work of guiding communities, together with local churches, through overwhelming loss. Only then can we fulfil our duty of forming Christian leaders and church ministers equipped to bring the light of meaning into the darkness this war leaves behind it. Our calling requires more of us than focusing only on our classes, since it asks us to affirm in word and deed the power of faith to heal and sustain the displaced and the anguished among us.
Peace be with you, and we wish you a blessed Sunday.
Taras M. Dyatlik, Ukraine (Kyiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia)
690th day of the ongoing full-scale russian war against Ukraine
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