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 living inside “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 theological frameworks, of real value in peaceful contexts, show their limits when we try to apply them in the raw reality of local churches in active war zones. From the devastation of Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, through the tangled “armed conflicts” of the Middle East – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen – to the prolonged struggles in Afghanistan, Congo, Myanmar, and Sudan: these are not distant “crises” but immediate contexts where churches labor daily to keep a faithful witness amid violence.

When bullets pierce the walls of houses of prayer and seminary campuses, when pastors pass military checkpoints to reach their congregations, and when seminary classes continue in bomb shelters, our theological edifices don’t just show cracks – they reveal fundamental inadequacies. These are not isolated incidents but a pattern repeated across continents, where Indigenous churches live out their faith under fire, day after day.

Yes, each context has its own difficulties; together they expose a common truth: our dominant and comfortable theological frameworks, built on assumptions of peace and stability, cannot carry the realities of ministry where peace is not a given but a long-term, distant hope. The gap between our ideas and the experience of churches in war zones is not a problem for academics or researchers only. It is a crisis of faith, and it cannot wait.

The Global Church’s reluctance to engage fully with Indigenous churches in war zones shows itself in several ways. We offer prayers for peace while avoiding the complex political and social realities that sustain “armed conflicts” – a form of selective solidarity. Our support is often sanitized: aid and resources arrive, but with strings attached, requiring Indigenous churches to frame their experiences in ways palatable to peaceful contexts. And we propose “conflict resolution” models developed in peacetime, forgetting that some conflicts resist resolution altogether.

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

Think of 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 wartime in Ukraine. Their stories show the everyday bravery of churches in the places of “armed conflicts.” Even as bombs reduce their buildings to rubble and scatter their communities, they persist in gathering – in basement shelters, in damaged houses of prayer – to worship and study God’s Word. Their theological reflection comes not from comfortable classrooms but from war itself, where abstract concepts of suffering and hope become lived experience.

These leaders develop deep insight into God’s presence in suffering, into 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 meet a troubling pattern: their raw, truthful testimonies about ministry in war zones face subtle but persistent pressure to be reshaped into more digestible narratives – within “15 minutes,” as part of a panel among other voices from peacetime theological contexts. Conference organizers gently suggest focusing publicly on “uplifting stories” of reconciliation rather than the complex realities of faithful witness amid military violence. Their reflections – born of leading worship while air raid sirens wail, of teaching seminary classes in bomb shelters (I have this experience myself), of pastoring displaced congregations – are politely sidelined in favor of simpler, less challenging accounts that will not disturb the comfort of listeners from peaceful contexts.

This way of presenting war zone testimonies – passing over the inconvenient, dwelling on the positive – reveals more than institutional preference. It exposes an unwillingness to face the theological questions inside the Global Church’s own structures. When we silence or reshape these voices, we don’t just lose powerful stories; we lose essential theological insight about God’s presence and the church’s role in our broken world. The hermeneutics of peacetime theology privilege peaceful readings of Scripture, spiritualizing texts about war, occupation, and resistance while ignoring their concrete political implications. And when this theology meets war zone realities, it answers with platitudes about “praying for peace,” avoiding the question of Christian response 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, and war zone experience as a marginal aberration requiring “special” interpretative frameworks rather than an essential perspective on God’s work in a broken world. This theology comfortably discusses the martyrs of the past while struggling to face churches meeting martyrdom today, and theorizes about suffering while keeping a safe distance from those who suffer under occupation now.

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. Witnessing the consequences of the ongoing full-scale Russian war against Ukraine, I am confronted daily with the stark inadequacy of what we have 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 have come to understand as a transnational network of Christian ecclesiastical and educational communities, of mission movements, united by commitments to Biblical authority, personal conversion, and global evangelization – reveals its deepest contradictions in its response to war zones.

What troubles me most is how Global Church structures avoid strong moral language. They do not call things by their real names. Instead come the softer, politer words: “conflict,” “situation,” “crisis,” “unrest,” or “complex emergency.” They do not want to recognize and name war. For me, this is no innocent linguistic preference – it is a profound missiological and ethical failure. The word “war” demands immediate action and moral clarity, and the mobilization of real resources; it compels us to take sides, to face just war theory and the role of local churches and theological schools in war zones. Instead, we choose terms that suggest temporary disruptions – manageable through standard humanitarian responses and conventional peace-building.

The pattern is most visible 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; the essential work seems to be 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 arrives with expectations attached – explicit or implicit – that shape both narrative and response, preferring “neutral” humanitarian frameworks over direct engagement with war’s theological and missional realities. A self-perpetuating cycle forms: Indigenous churches must frame their experiences and needs in ways palatable to distant donors, while Global Church institutions keep 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 insight “political activism” rather than receive it as legitimate theological reflection forged in war’s crucible? Perhaps most troubling is our selective hearing toward churches under occupation. Their wrestling with questions of justice and resistance, of survival, gets dismissed as “contextual theology” or reduced to simplified narratives of personal forgiveness. But who gave us the authority to delegitimize their contribution to Christian thought? When did “peacetime theology” become the universal standard against which all other theological reflection must be measured?

The pattern turns painful in how we manage post-war narratives: we 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 carry complex insight about faith and compromise, about survival – yet we edit these stories into narratives that will not disturb our donors or our “peacetime theology” frameworks. What does this managed remembering and institutional amnesia cost us? How many theological and missional insights have we lost because they came 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 is not 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 keep “more neutrality” while they suffer in war zones is not merely a practical constraint – it is theological violence. When we demand that churches under bombardment frame their experience through “peacetime theology,” we ask them, in effect, to deny their reality: to speak of abstract peace while missiles fall on their houses of prayer and to reason about reconciliation at military checkpoints – to keep institutional neutrality while their communities face active destruction.

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

The theological cost is heavier still. Pressed to adopt “neutral” frameworks disconnected from biblical justice, Indigenous churches face an impossible choice between authentic witness and institutional survival. The rich biblical traditions of lament and prophetic resistance, of God’s action in the history of wars, become dangerous territory to avoid rather than essential resources for war zone ministry. Their insight – God’s presence known amid bombing raids, resurrection hope practiced in occupied territories – must be stripped of its prophetic edge to fit acceptable “peacetime” parameters.

This distortion paralyzes both sides. Local churches strain to keep missional integrity while meeting donor expectations; Global Church entities lose their capacity for prophetic engagement with war’s realities. The result: a framework that speaks elegantly about peace and stays silent about bombs, that discusses God’s sovereignty without wrestling with what it means 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 only about institutional change; it is about spiritual renewal. It asks the Global Church to consider who it is, and what its mission is, from the experience of those so often kept at the margins. It demands a change in how we think about God and the life with Him – a readiness to let go of what we have always assumed, to take in what makes us uncomfortable, to hear opinions radically unlike our own. It asks deep repentance for our complicity in silencing and marginalizing those on the frontlines of faith. And it means a renewed dedication to the Gospel’s call: solidarity with the afflicted, prophetic testimony against injustice – and hope in the face of mortality.

Given this, let me ask several hard questions of the leaders of Global Church entities. Why do our missiological frameworks assume, first of all, contexts of peace and stability – and what does this reveal about the underlying assumptions and privileges of Global Church structures? 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 treated as “contextual” while Western peaceful theology is treated as “universal”?

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

If Global Church structures systematically sanitize war into “situations” and “conflicts,” are we not taking part 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 meet military violence with nothing but their faith and courage? Why does the Global Church’s “missional focus” conveniently drift away from war zones just when Indigenous churches need the most substantial and sustained support – and is our “strategic planning” merely a sophisticated name for institutional self-preservation that sacrifices Indigenous churches on the altar of donor relationships and comfortable neutrality?

The time has come for a fundamental rethinking of how the Global Church engages with Indigenous churches in war zones – a reformation that begins with several uncomfortable acknowledgments. First, any theology that cannot speak to the experience of churches in war zones is incomplete, inadequate for a truly Global Church. Second, theological education that does not prepare leaders for ministry in war zones fails a significant part of the Global Church – and renders our spiritual education insufficient. Third, prayer without action and aid without understanding – and peace without justice – are not truly missional: such a response stops at the humanitarian needs of churches in war zones, and our support turns superficial, our solidarity shallow.

To move forward, Global Church institutions must face these questions and change. Seminaries and theological education centers must make the experience and the thought of churches in war zones a regular part of their main courses – not optional electives, but an essential part of preparing people to serve in a broken world. That could mean inviting war zone church leaders as guest lecturers and incorporating their writings into required reading lists – designing courses that engage the realities of faith under fire directly.

Global Church organizations must bring the voices of Indigenous churches from war zones into their decision-making. That could mean restructuring boards and leadership roles for substantial representation from war-affected regions and creating protected funding pools for prophetic witnesses – with secure channels for honest frontline reporting.

It is time to examine our theological frameworks critically. We must stop pretending that peace is the norm and war some unfortunate exception. Both peace and war run through the whole history of the Global Church; both belong to its ongoing experience – not one the standard and the other an anomaly we would rather not think about.

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

Finally, new structures of Global Church governance must be created for real participation and power-sharing with Indigenous churches from war zones. This means networks that put power into local hands: churches making their own decisions rather than receiving them from a distant headquarters. War-affected churches must be able to reach resources and support directly, without layers of bureaucratic filtering. And there must be safeguards that keep us honest – so that the old colonial pattern, outsiders deciding for insiders, is not quietly rebuilt. The power structure itself has to be turned over.

The way forward is 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 secure meaningful participation from churches in war zones.

These Indigenous churches are not another problem for the Global Church to solve – they are drawing us toward something deeper. Look at what they have lived through, and how. The faith they have worked out while bombs and missiles fall, the insight gained from passing through hell and still believing – there is much the rest of us have to learn from them. Their stubborn faith in the face of violence is not merely inspiring; it teaches the whole church what we would never learn in our comfortable settings. The question is not whether we can be “global Christians with a global vision.” The question is whether we are willing to embrace a truly global vision – one that includes not only the comfortable and peaceful parts of our world, held together by “peacetime theology,” but its broken and violent regions as well. Only then can we truly claim to serve a global God as the Global Church.

And I must name the exceptions: amid these patterns, certain Global Church organizations have consistently walked a different way. ScholarLeaders International, Langham Partnership, and Mesa Global (formerly Overseas Council–United World Mission), the Overseas Council network (in Germany, Australia, New Zealand), Open Eyes, Keys Connections, Read Ministries, Connect International, and some other partners (forgive me for not naming all of them) have long recognized and actively supported Indigenous theological voices from war zones – not as objects of ministry but as essential contributors to global theological discourse. Through their publishing, scholarships, and leadership programs, they have carried the real theological thinking of war zones out to the world: no editing, no toning down of the rough edges. And they keep funding theological education in the middle of active war zones, understanding that some of the deepest theological work happens under fire. Even their funding is structured differently: rather than holding the purse strings and bending churches to donor expectations, they put Indigenous leaders in charge.

So these war zone churches and seminaries can say what they think, speak prophetically, without fearing that a comfortable donor will withdraw support because the truth is uncomfortable. Their approach shows that donor-driven silence is not inevitable – it is a 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 born under fire carries its own authority and insight. Their long-view partnership is especially instructive: rather than shifting focus away from war zones or reducing support to humanitarian responses only (which is terribly needed as well), they hold – and often deepen – their commitment to theological education and leadership development precisely when wars intensify. It can be done: funding and partnership can be structured to put Indigenous agency and prophetic voice above institutional comfort.

The most instructive lesson other Global Church organizations can take from these institutions is how they handle truth-telling about war. Instead of requiring Indigenous partners to translate their experience into donor-friendly language, they create spaces where war zone churches and theological communities can speak plainly about military violence, occupation, and resistance without fear of losing support. Global Church structures could do the same – rebuilding their communication frameworks, donor education, and partnership agreements around prophetic truthfulness rather than institutional stability – if they are willing to learn.

Above all, these organizations prove that supporting Indigenous theological voices from war zones strengthens rather than threatens global Christianity: donors can be educated to embrace complex realities instead of being protected from them; funding can be built to support rather than silence prophetic witness; true partnership can bear the uncomfortable truths that come from churches under fire.

This model puts a hard question to conventional Global Church approaches. What if we saw Indigenous churches in war zones not as 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 our success by institutional stability and started asking whether we actually stand with churches that are being bombed? This is not a matter of adjusting programs or funding mechanics. These organizations are rethinking what global Christianity means and what our part in it is – a different way of seeing altogether. They show that institutional structures need not sacrifice prophetic truth-telling for donor comfort, need not force Indigenous churches to choose between authentic voice and needed financial support – need not treat war zone theology as a disruption to manage instead of a gift to receive.

Has the time come for the Global Church to move beyond comfortable pieties and engage the full reality of being 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 merely asking for our attention – they are drawing us toward transformation, a prophetic challenge that demands a response. Will we have the courage to listen and learn – and be changed – or will we go on clinging to our comfortable “peacetime theologies” and structures, even as they prove ever less adequate to the realities of a Global Church in a broken world? The choice is ours. The stakes are not small.

The challenge before the Global Church is clear: will we keep operating within the comfortable confines of “peacetime theology,” or will we let the prophetic voices of Indigenous churches in war zones disrupt our frameworks and transform our understanding of the Body of Christ in a broken world? Will we have the humility to admit 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 give up institutional comfort and stability for a truer, more inclusive global witness?

For us who live in active war zones, these are not abstract theological questions but urgent matters of faithful obedience to God’s Mission – and of the integrity of Christian character, which the war experience bombards into fragments. The credibility of our witness and the depth of our discipleship – the authenticity of our global fellowship itself – hang in the balance. If we are to be a truly Global Church, we must let our theology, our missiology, and our ecclesiology be transformed by the lived realities and the hard-won insight of Indigenous churches in war zones.

This transformation will be costly and uncomfortable for those outside the war zones. We will have to face our own prejudices, and the things we do not see – or do not want to see. We will have to own our part in systems that shut people out and treat them unjustly. And we will have to release practices and assumptions we thought sacred. It means a solidarity that is more than fifteen minutes for someone’s story on a conference panel – real solidarity, not the tokenism we are used to. But this is the way of the cross, the path of discipleship laid before us all. 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 placed 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 stand at a crossroads, and we need the courage to face the truths that discomfort us, the humility to learn from those we have pushed to the sidelines – and the faith to believe that a Global Evangelical Christianity worthy of its name is not a fine 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 truer and more inclusive vision of the Body of Christ – one that bears witness to God’s justice and reconciliation, to God’s 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 – on challenging “peacetime theology” as the reigning agenda of the Global Church, and on letting the prophetic voices from war zones reshape our understanding of following Christ where war and peace live side by side.

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

In a world where war is an ever-present reality, the Global Church cannot afford to stay silent or retreat into the comfort of “peacetime theology.” We must face the uncomfortable truths, wrestle with the complexities of faith amid violence – and 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, 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 let their prophetic witness lead us deeper into following Christ in a broken and divided world. May we be a church that not only proclaims peace but pursues justice, that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable – and that speaks truth to power even as it seeks unity.

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

This is the invitation the prophetic voices from war zones extend to us: 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 let our hearts 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, and 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