What is your ministry?
I pastor a church in Costiceni with my whole family. I am also the OCC regional coordinator and part of the ProUkraine project as part of the Baptist Association ministry. Also, I started a discipleship group with five other men to help them grow in faith and serve Christ.
When did you trust Christ?
I grew up in a Christian family, and my father was a pastor of the church. One Sunday morning, while attending Sunday school, when I was 16 years old, I felt God's presence moving on my heart, and together with my brother and another friend, we surrendered our hearts to Jesus. We were baptised a year later.
What have been the defining moments of your Christian walk?
One defining moment was my father’s testimony. He was a small church pastor and did not have a salary, but he was always very involved and interested in every person in the church. I was involved in every aspect of church life, understanding that everything I did was for the glory of God. In 1999, I was accepted as a student at Emanuel Baptist University in Oradea, Romania, and this helped me with the foundational things in pastoral ministry. The mentoring relationships I developed while there helped me to grow in faith. Another pivotal point has been the war experience. When the war started two years ago, I was in Romania, but I decided to return to Ukraine. Other defining moments included having the family, my local church ministry, being part of the leadership team, and being the Operation Christmas Child Western Ukraine coordinator.
What do you hope to gain from participating?
I would expect to have practical answers for developing the discipleship ministry in my context, in a war-affected country, and through these answers to help those who recently came to Christ grow in their faith and become leaders themselves.
What is your leadership role or what were your past leadership roles?
I pastor a church in Costiceni with my whole family. I am also the OCC regional coordinator and part of the ProUkraine project as part of the Baptist Association ministry. Also, I started a discipleship group with five other men to help them grow in faith and serve Christ.
Why should someone invest in your ministry?
I am a pastor and a minister in a unique context, a war zone country in which people who didn't consider faith before are now coming to Christ. Churches that were almost empty before the war are now filled with non-Christians, locals, and refugees. Here is an excellent opportunity for the Gospel. Even though I have double citizenship and could have left Ukraine, I stayed to serve Christ and the people with my wife and two children. However, I need all the help I can get to be effective in this ministry.
