BEING HUMAN

“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.” – John Stott.

In the shadow of John Stott’s stirring call for global Christianity lies an uncomfortable reality: while we proclaim a global God, our global vision often stops at the borders of war zones. Indigenous churches operating within the crucible of “armed conflicts” face a double marginalization – first by the violence that surrounds them, very often in the name of protecting Judeo-Christian traditional values, and second by the silence of their many global brothers and sisters in Christ who find it easier to look away for “the sake of the global Mission of God…”

Our carefully constructed theological frameworks, which have significant value in peaceful contexts, reveal their severe limitations when we try to apply them in the raw reality of local churches operating in active war zones. From the devastating impacts of Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, through the complex “armed conflicts” of the Middle East in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, to the prolonged struggles in Afghanistan, Congo, Myanmar, and Sudan – these aren’t distant “crises” but immediate contexts where churches struggle daily to maintain faithful witness amid violence.

When bullets pierce the walls of houses of prayer and seminary campuses, when pastors must navigate military checkpoints to reach their congregations, and when seminary classes continue in bomb shelters, our carefully constructed theological edifices don’t just show cracks – they reveal fundamental inadequacies. These aren’t isolated incidents but a pattern repeated across continents, where Indigenous churches face the daily challenge of living out their faith under fire.

Yes, each context presents its unique challenges, yet together, they expose a common truth: our dominating and comfortable theological frameworks, built on assumptions of peace and stability, fail to adequately address the realities of ministry where peace is not a given but a long-term distant hope. The difference between our ideas and the experience of churches in war zones isn’t just a problem for academics or researchers. It’s a crisis of faith that we need to deal with immediately.

The Global Church’s reluctance to fully engage with Indigenous churches in war zones manifests in several ways. We offer prayers for peace while avoiding deep engagement with the complex political and social realities that maintain “armed conflicts,” a form of selective solidarity. Our support is often sanitized, providing aid and resources but with strings attached that require Indigenous churches to frame their experiences in ways palatable to peaceful contexts. Furthermore, we propose “conflict resolution” models developed in peaceful contexts, failing to recognize that some conflicts resist simple resolution, offering only simplified solutions.

I define Global Church “peacetime theology” as a carefully constructed belief system built on stability, comfort, and institutional predictability assumptions. It is a theology that has rarely dealt with faith under attack or hope during times of occupation. It manifests in systematic theology texts that discuss evil in abstract terms while avoiding engagement with concrete military violence, ecclesiology that assumes functioning church buildings and uninterrupted Sunday services, and pastoral care frameworks that presuppose access to basic security and social services and retirement plans. This theology speaks eloquently of “spiritual warfare” while carefully avoiding questions of actual military aggression, theorizes about reconciliation without addressing systemic injustice, and discusses Christian ethics from a safe distance rather than the immediate reality of the ongoing war, military checkpoints, and missile strikes.

Think about the real lives of two people committed to their beliefs: Pastor Amjad, leading his small church community amid war and destruction in Syria, and Professor Petro, guiding a Bible college through war times in Ukraine. Their stories show the everyday bravery of churches in places where there are “armed conflicts.” Even as bombs reduce their buildings to rubble and scatter their communities, they persist in gathering – whether in basement shelters or damaged houses of prayer – to worship and study God’s Word. Their theological reflection emerges not from comfortable classrooms but from the crucible of war, where abstract concepts of suffering and hope transform into lived experiences.

These leaders develop profound insights about God’s presence in suffering, the church’s prophetic role amid military violence, and the radical meaning of Christ-like love under bombardment. Yet when invited to share at international Christian gatherings, they would encounter a troubling pattern: their raw, truthful testimonies about ministry in war zones would face subtle but persistent pressure to be reshaped into more palatable narratives within “15 minutes” as a part of a panel discussion among other voices from peacetime theological contexts. Conference organizers gently suggest publicly focusing on “uplifting stories” of reconciliation rather than the complex realities of faithful witness amid military violence. Their deep theological reflections – forged through the experience of leading worship while air raid sirens wail, teaching seminary classes in bomb shelters (I have this experience myself), and pastoring displaced congregations – are often politely sidelined in favor of simpler, less challenging accounts that won’t disturb the comfort of listeners from peaceful contexts.

This way of presenting war zone testimonies that ignores any inconvenient negative aspects and focuses more on the positive reveals more than just the preference of the institutions involved. It also exposes an unwillingness to consider the theological aspects within the Global Church structures. When we silence or reshape these voices, we don’t just lose powerful stories; we lose essential theological insights about God’s presence and the church’s role in our broken world. The Global Church’s peacetime theology’s hermeneutics privilege peaceful interpretations of Scripture, often spiritualizing texts about war, occupation, and resistance while ignoring their concrete political implications. When this peacetime theology encounters war zone realities, it often responds with platitudes about “praying for peace” while avoiding questions about Christian responses to military aggression or offers templates for reconciliation without addressing just peace and the ongoing violence that makes genuine reconciliation impossible.

Perhaps most tellingly, it treats the modern peaceful context of Western Christianity as the theological norm, viewing war zone experiences more as marginal aberrations requiring “special” interpretative frameworks rather than essential perspectives for understanding God’s work in a broken world. This theology comfortably discusses martyrs of the past while struggling to engage with churches facing martyrdom today, theorizes about suffering while maintaining a safe distance from those suffering under occupation, and speaks of God’s sovereignty without wrestling with its meaning for churches whose houses of prayer lie in rubble.

Living and serving in Ukraine throughout Russia’s hybrid (from 2014) and full-scale (from 2022) aggression has stripped away my illusions about the Global Church’s response to war. As I witness the consequences of the ongoing full-scale Russian war against Ukraine, I’m confronted daily with the stark inadequacy of what we’ve come to call “peacetime theology” – that comfortable framework of the Global Church built on assumptions of stable societies and functioning institutions.

The Global Evangelical Church, which I’ve come to understand as a transnational and international network of Christian ecclesiastical, educational, and mission communities and movements united by commitments to Biblical authority, personal conversion, and global evangelization, reveals its most profound contradictions in its response to war zones.

What bothers me the most is how Global Church structures avoid using strong moral language. They often don’t call things by their real names. Instead, they would use softer, more polite words like “conflict,” “situation,” “crisis,” “unrest,” or “complex emergency.” They don’t want to recognize and talk about war. As for me, this isn’t innocent linguistic preference – it’s a profound missiological and ethical failure. The term “war” demands immediate action, moral clarity, and substantial resource mobilization; it compels us to take sides, address issues of just war theory, and confront questions about the role of local churches and theological schools in war zones. Instead, we opt for terms that suggest temporary disruptions manageable through standard humanitarian responses and conventional peace-building approaches.

This pattern is most evident in what I call “news cycle Christianity.” The Global Church’s work with churches in war zones often looks like short news updates instead of an ongoing commitment to their mission. Their essential work seems to be only responding to crises and sharing reports. The deeper issue, in my subjective view, lies in the donor-dependent nature of many Global Church structures, where funding flows with strings attached – explicit or implicit expectations that shape narrative and response, typically preferring “neutral” humanitarian frameworks over direct engagement with war’s complex theological and missional realities, creating a self-perpetuating cycle. Indigenous churches must then frame their experiences and needs in ways palatable to distant donors, while Global Church institutions maintain a safe distance from “politically sensitive” issues to preserve their more-or-less stable funding streams.

When Indigenous churches speak profound theological truth from their experience of proxy wars and military occupation, why do we rush to label their insights as “political activism” rather than recognizing them as legitimate theological reflections forged in war’s crucible? Perhaps most troubling is our selective hearing when it comes to churches under occupation. Their sophisticated theological wrestling with questions of justice, resistance, and survival often gets dismissed as “contextual theology” or reduced to simplified narratives of personal forgiveness. But who gave us the authority to delegitimize their contributions to Christian thought? When did “peacetime theology” become the universal standard against which all other theological reflection must be measured?

The pattern becomes painfully clear in how we manage post-war narratives when we carefully curate which stories to amplify and which to forget, which testimonies fit our institutional comfort and “donor intent,” and which must be sanitized or silenced. Churches emerging from authoritarian regimes and military violence offer complex theological insights about faith, compromise, and survival – yet we edit these stories into palatable narratives that won’t disturb our donors or disrupt our “peacetime theology” frameworks. What does this managed remembering and institutional amnesia cost us? How many profound theological and missional insights have we lost because they emerged from the “wrong” context – from bomb shelters rather than from warm offices, from military checkpoints rather than comfortable pulpits, from occupied territories instead of the free democratic world? When will we recognize that our preference for “peacetime theology” narratives isn’t just an institutional choice but a form of theological violence and colonialism against churches whose faith has been tested by fire?

The Global Church’s insistence that Indigenous churches maintain “more neutrality” while they suffer in war zones represents not just a practical constraint but profound theological violence. When we demand that churches under bombardment frame their experience through “peacetime theology,” we effectively ask them to deny their reality – to speak of abstract peace while missiles fall on their houses of prayer, to theorize about reconciliation while navigating military checkpoints, to maintain institutional neutrality while their communities face active destruction.

This enforced “neutrality” creates a devastating double bind. Churches must either sanitize their testimony to access needed support and resources or maintain prophetic truthfulness at the cost of Global Church partnership. Their pastoral responses to immediate war-related needs – whether sheltering displaced families in church buildings, conducting funerals for civilian casualties, or providing spiritual care at military checkpoints – must be reframed through the lens of “non-political humanitarian assistance” rather than acknowledged as essential ministry in war zones.

The theological cost proves even more severe. When Indigenous churches are pressured to adopt “neutral” frameworks disconnected from biblical justice themes, they face an impossible choice between authentic witness and institutional survival. The rich biblical traditions of lament, prophetic resistance, and God’s action in the history of wars have become dangerous territories to avoid rather than essential resources for war zone ministry. Their profound theological insights – forged through experiencing God’s presence amid bombing raids and practicing resurrection hope in occupied territories – must be stripped of their prophetic edge to fit within acceptable “peacetime” parameters.

This distortion ultimately paralyzes both Indigenous churches and Global Church structures. Local churches struggle to maintain missional integrity while meeting donor expectations, while Global Church entities lose their capacity for prophetic engagement with war’s realities. The result is a theological framework that speaks elegantly about peace while remaining silent about bombs, theorizes about justice while avoiding questions of military aggression, and discusses God’s sovereignty without wrestling with its meaning for churches whose houses of prayer or seminary campuses lie in rubble.

In the end, the call to include the voices of Indigenous churches from war zones is not just about making institutional changes but also about spiritual renewal. It asks the Global Church to consider who it is and its mission. It does this based on the experiences of people who are often on the margins. It requires a profound change in how we think about God and spirituality. It means being open to letting go of what we have always believed, being willing to deal with and include things that make us uncomfortable, and listening to often radically different opinions. It also requires deep repentance for how we have been complicit in silencing and marginalizing those on the frontlines of faith. This commitment means a renewed dedication to the Gospel’s call to solidarity with the afflicted, prophetic testimony in the face of injustice, and hope in the face of mortality.

Given this, I would like to ask several challenging questions to attract the attention of leaders of various Global Church entities. Why do our missiological frameworks primarily assume contexts of peace and stability, and what does this reveal about Global Church structures’ underlying assumptions and privileges? How can theological education be relevant when its curriculum is designed in peaceful contexts for peaceful contexts, and are we indeed preparing church leaders for the realities they face daily? When Indigenous churches in war zones develop theological perspectives shaped by their experience of violence, why are these perspectives often treated as “contextual” while Western peaceful theology is treated as “universal”?

Moreover, has our emphasis on reconciliation ministry become a way to avoid engaging with the messy realities of ongoing wars, pushing for peace at the expense of justice not so much for the sake of Indigenous churches but for the sake of supporting the pacification narrative of the Global Church, which is often non-conscious?

If the Global Church’s structures systematically sanitize war into “situations” and “conflicts,” are we not participating in a form of theological violence against Indigenous churches whose bodies and buildings bear the actual scars of missiles and occupation? How do we justify this linguistic betrayal of our brothers and sisters who daily confront military violence with nothing but their faith and courage? Why does the Global Church’s “missional focus” conveniently shift away from war zones when Indigenous churches need the most substantial and sustained support, and is our “strategic planning” merely a sophisticated term for institutional self-preservation that sacrifices Indigenous churches on the altar of donor relationships and comfortable neutrality?

The time has come for a fundamental reimagining of how the Global Church engages with Indigenous churches in war zones, a radical reformation that must begin with several uncomfortable acknowledgments. Firstly, we must recognize that any theology that cannot speak to the experience of churches in war zones is incomplete and inadequate for a truly Global Church. Secondly, we must acknowledge that theological education that does not prepare leaders for ministry in war zones fails to serve a significant portion of the Global Church, rendering our spiritual education insufficient. Thirdly, we have to understand that prayer without action, aid without understanding, and peace without justice are not really missional because such response is limited just to the humanitarian needs of churches in war zones, making our support seem superficial and our solidarity shallow.

Global Church institutions must address these challenging questions and make fundamental changes toward transformation to move forward. Seminaries and theological education centers must include the experiences and views of churches in war zones as a regular part of their main courses. They should not offer these courses as optional elective classes but as an essential part of preparing people to serve in a broken world. It could involve inviting war zone church leaders as guest lecturers, incorporating their writings into required reading lists, and designing courses that explicitly engage with the realities of faith under fire.

Global Church organizations must include the voices of Indigenous churches from war zones in their decision-making processes. It could involve restructuring board and leadership roles to ensure substantial representation from war-affected regions, creating protected funding pools to support prophetic witnesses, and developing secure communication channels for honest frontline reporting.

It’s time to examine our theological frameworks critically. We need to stop pretending that peace is the norm and war is just some unfortunate exception. The reality is that both peace and war have appeared throughout the Global Church’s history – they’re both part of the ongoing experience, not one being the standard and the other being the anomaly we’d rather not think about.

It requires a deep engagement with the biblical witness, which is replete with stories of God’s people navigating the complexities of empire, occupation, and war. It also requires a humble recognition that our theological blind spots and biases are often shaped by our more-or-less safe social location and experience.

Finally, new structures of Global Church governance must be created to ensure meaningful participation and power-sharing with Indigenous churches from war zones. We’re talking about building networks that actually put power in local hands – letting churches make their own decisions instead of having everything run from some distant headquarters. War-affected churches need to be able to get resources and support directly without jumping through hoops or having their requests filtered through layers of bureaucracy. And we’ve got to put systems in place that keep us honest about not just recreating the same old colonial patterns where outsiders call the shots. It’s about flipping the whole power structure, really.

The way forward requires nothing less than a radical reimagining of what it means to be a Global Church. This reimagining must center the voices and experiences of Indigenous churches in war zones, develop theological frameworks that embrace rather than avoid the reality of war, reform educational institutions to prepare leaders for both peace and war, and create new structures of Global Church governance that ensure meaningful participation from churches in war zones.

These Indigenous churches in war zones aren’t just another problem for the Global Church to solve – they’re actually calling us to something deeper. Look at what they’ve been through and how they’ve survived. The way they’ve worked out their faith while bombs and missiles are falling, the insights they’ve gained from living through hell and still believing – there’s so much the rest of us need to learn from them. Their stubborn faith in the face of violence? That’s not just inspiring, it’s teaching the whole church things we’d never figure out in our comfortable settings. The question is not whether we can be “global Christians with a global vision.” Rather, the question is whether we are willing to embrace a truly global vision – one that includes not just the comfortable and peaceful parts of our world based on “peacetime theology” but also its broken and violent regions. Only then can we truly claim to serve a global God as the Global Church.

It would be remiss not to acknowledge that amid these challenging patterns, certain Global Church organizations have consistently demonstrated a different way forward. Organizations like Scholars Leaders International, Langham Partnership, and Mesa Global (formerly Overseas Council-United World Mission), Overseas Council network (in Germany, Australia, New Zealand), Open Eyes, Keys Connections, Read Ministries, Connect International and some other partners (forgive for not naming all of them) have long recognized and actively supported Indigenous theological voices from war zones, treating them not as objects of ministry but as essential contributors to global theological discourse. What these organizations have done through their publishing, scholarships, and leadership programs is get the real theological thinking from war zones out to the world – no editing, no toning down the rough edges. And here’s what really stands out: they keep funding theological education right in the middle of active war zones. They get it – some of the deepest theological thinking happens when people are literally under fire. The way they structure their funding is different too. Instead of holding the purse strings and making churches dance to donor expectations, they actually put Indigenous leaders in charge.

So these war zone churches and seminaries can say what they really think, speak prophetically, without worrying that some comfortable donor is going to pull funding because the truth makes them squirm. The distinctive approach of these organizations reveals that donor-driven silence isn’t inevitable – it’s a political choice. While many Global Church structures (based on my observations of publicly available information) retreat into comfortable neutrality when wars erupt, these organizations lean into the complex realities, recognizing that theological reflection forged in war’s crucible carries unique authority and insight. Their long-view approach to partnership is particularly instructive – rather than shifting focus away from war zones or reducing support to humanitarian responses only (which is terribly needed as well), they maintain and often deepen their commitment to theological education and leadership development precisely when wars intensify. This demonstrates to other organizations that it’s possible to structure funding and partnerships in ways that prioritize Indigenous agency and prophetic voice over institutional comfort.

Perhaps the most crucial lesson other Global Church organizations can learn from these institutions is how they handle truth-telling about war. Instead of requiring Indigenous partners to translate their experiences into donor-friendly language, they create spaces where war zone churches and theological educational communities can speak authentically about military violence, occupation, and resistance without fear of losing support. This suggests that Global Church structures could restructure their communication frameworks, donor education, and partnership agreements to prioritize prophetic truthfulness over institutional stability, if they are willing to learn.

Most significantly, these organizations demonstrate that supporting Indigenous theological voices from war zones strengthens rather than threatens global Christianity, proving that donors can be educated to embrace complex realities rather than being protected from them, that funding can be structured to support rather than silence prophetic witness, and that true partnership can handle the uncomfortable truths that emerge from churches under fire.

This model offers a profound challenge to conventional Global Church approaches: What if we viewed Indigenous churches in war zones not as just recipients of our help but as essential voices for our own theological renewal? What if we structured our institutions not to manage war zone narratives but to amplify them? What if we stopped measuring how well we’re doing by whether our institutions are stable and started asking whether we’re actually standing with churches that are getting bombed? This isn’t just about tweaking programs or changing how we fund things. These organizations are showing us something bigger – they’re completely rethinking what global Christianity even means and what our part in it should be. It’s a whole different way of seeing things. They show us that it’s possible to build institutional structures that don’t sacrifice prophetic truth-telling for donor comfort, that don’t require Indigenous churches to choose between authentic voice and needed financial support, that don’t treat war zone theology as a disruption to be managed but as a gift to be received.

Has the time come for the Global Church to move beyond comfortable pieties and engage with the full reality of what it means to be the body of Christ in a world where war and peace coexist? What can we learn from the most recent “Lausanne situation”? The voices from the margins are not just calling for our attention – they are calling us to transformation, presenting a prophetic challenge that demands a response. Will we have the courage to listen, learn, and be changed, or will we continue to cling to our comfortable “peacetime theologies” and structures, even as they prove increasingly inadequate for the realities of a Global Church in a broken world? The choice is ours, but the stakes could not be higher.

The challenge before the Global Church is clear: will we continue to operate within the comfortable confines of “peacetime theology,” or will we allow the prophetic voices of Indigenous churches in war zones to disrupt our frameworks and transform our understanding of what it means to be the Body of Christ in a broken world? Will we have the humility to acknowledge our complicity in silencing and marginalizing those on the frontlines of faith, and the courage to repent and chart a new course? Will we be willing to sacrifice our institutional comfort and stability for the sake of a more authentic and inclusive global witness?

These are not abstract theological questions for us, living in active war zones, but urgent matters of faithful obedience to God’s Mission and integrity of Christian character, that the war experience often bombards to fragment. The credibility of our witness, the depth of our discipleship, and the authenticity of our global fellowship all hang in the balance. If we are to be a truly Global Church, we must be willing to have our theology, our missiology, and our ecclesiology transformed by the lived realities and profound insights of Indigenous churches in war zones.

This transformation will undoubtedly be costly and uncomfortable for those who are not in the war zones. We’re going to have to face up to our own prejudices and the stuff we just don’t see – or don’t want to see. We need to own up to how we’ve been part of systems that shut people out and treat them unfairly. And honestly? We’ll have to give up some things we’ve always held onto, practices and assumptions we thought were sacred. This means showing solidarity that’s more than just giving someone 15 minutes to share their story at some conference panel. Real solidarity, not the tokenism we’re used to. But this is the way of the cross, the path of discipleship to which we are all called. It is the way of a God who entered fully into our world of violence and suffering, who took on flesh and dwelt among us, who bore the scars of our brokenness and sin. It is the way of a Savior who consistently aligned himself with the marginalized and the oppressed, who spoke truth to powers and empires and challenged religious and spiritual hypocrisy, who called us to take up our cross and follow Him.

We’re at a crossroads here, and we need to be brave enough to face the truths that make us uncomfortable. We’ve got to be humble enough to actually learn from people we’ve pushed to the sidelines. And we need to believe – really believe – that a Global Evangelical Christianity that actually lives up to its name isn’t just some nice idea, but something the Gospel and the world desperately need. May we be willing to have our theology and praxis disrupted and reshaped by the prophetic witness of Indigenous churches in war zones. And may we, through the power of the Spirit, embody a more authentic and inclusive vision of the Body of Christ, one that bears witness to God’s justice, reconciliation, and hope in a world of violence and division.

The voices of the silenced are speaking. The question is: will we have ears to hear, hearts to be changed, and hands ready to act in solidarity and obedience? The future of the Global Church, and our faithful witness to a watching world, depends on our response – to challenge “peacetime theology” as the major current agenda of the Global Church and to allow the prophetic voices from war zones to reshape our understanding of what it means to follow Christ in a world where war and peace coexist.

This is not a call for the Global Church to abandon its commitment to peace, but rather to recognize that true peace is not the absence of “armed conflict”; it is about the presence of justice. It is a call to move beyond a theology of convenience that avoids the messy realities of war and to embrace a theology of discipleship that bears witness to the love and truth of God even in the darkest of contexts. It is a call to stand in solidarity with those on the margins, to amplify their voices, and to allow their faith forged in the fires of war to challenge and deepen our own.

In a world where war is an ever-present reality, the Global Church cannot afford to remain silent or to retreat into the comfort of “peacetime theology.” We must be willing to confront the uncomfortable truths, to grapple with the complexities of faith in the midst of violence, and to bear witness to the hope of the Gospel even in the face of death. This is the path of authentic discipleship, the way of the cross, and the hope of the resurrection.

May we, as the Global Church, have the courage to walk this path, to stand with those on the frontlines of faith, and to allow their prophetic witness to lead us into a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Christ in a broken and divided world. May we be a church that not only proclaims peace but also pursues justice, that not only comforts the afflicted but also afflicts the comfortable, that not only seeks unity but also speaks truth to power.

In doing so, we may discover that the voices we have silenced hold the key to our own renewal and transformation. When we actually put the people on the edges at the center of our attention, we might discover that’s exactly where God’s heart is. And we may realize that it is only by bearing the scars of the world’s pain that we can truly embody the healing and hope of Christ.

This is the invitation that the prophetic voices from war zones extend to us – an invitation to die to our comfort and convenience, to take up our cross and follow Christ into the heart of the world’s suffering, and to discover there the power of a love that overcomes even the deepest darkness. It is an invitation to be the Global Church not in name only, but in truth and in deed – a church that bears witness to the Gospel in the midst of war and in the pursuit of peace.

May we have the courage to accept this invitation, to allow our hearts to be broken by the things that break the heart of God, and to be agents of His reconciling love in a world torn apart by violence. And may we, through the power of the Spirit, be transformed into a church that truly reflects the global body of Christ – scarred yet hopeful, persecuted yet faithful, divided yet united in our witness to the One who is our peace… Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war…
— —
Taras M. Dyatlik, Ukraine
18 November 2024, Monday
[reviewed on 26 May 2025, Monday]
999 days of the ongoing full-scale Russian war