Upstairs, four American college students from Tennessee rifle through a pile of wooden planks and rubbery wallpaper, occasionally landing on a dusty roll of film or movie poster. One girl has been collecting trinkets for the past two days and has amassed a collection of coins and floral tiles to bring home with her. Downstairs are more Americans and around twenty Ukrainians diligently drilling holes and hauling branches into large red containers. All are intent on turning this dusty, cavernous theatre – which still shows signs for Indiana Jones 4 – into a new church and community space for the upwards of 1000 Ukrainian refugees now residing in Gummersbach, Germany.
Among them is Pastor Nickolas Skopych, an unassuming man with a wiry salt-and-pepper beard and kind eyes. He grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, born to parents who did not believe in God. At 18, feeling young and aimless, he stumbled across a few American evangelicals on the street distributing brochures about Christianity. “I took it because we didn’t have literature about Christianity. It was impossible to have the Bible, or New Testament,” Skopych explained. These brochures changed the trajectory of his life, infusing it with new meaning. “I take this brochure, and read it, and think about life. I understand that the very high meaning of life, I can only find with God,” he said. “It helped me.”
Decades later, Skopych — having become a Pastor of the Almaz church in Ukraine — visited Gummersbach just before the start of the war. After Russia invaded Ukraine, hundreds of his congregants and friends followed, bringing their friends and family members with them. Skopych had spent the past year praying for a larger church space. Last year, Skopych met the senior pastor of First Baptist Church (FBC), a megachurch in Hendersonville Tennessee, who was visiting Germany. This pastor had been seeking a “native, German-speaking” church to collaborate with, but was so moved by Skopych’s story that he changed course. A few months later, he returned with the head of church missions, who was similarly compelled. Skopych found the theatre space. FBC paid for it. All of this culminated in 10 FBC members flying to Gummersbach on a mission to convert the theatre into a church.
Since the start of the war in 2022, 152 Ukrainian churches have been planted across Europe, 64 of which are in Germany. When I spoke with the head of missions at FBC, he expressed a desire for the mission to extend beyond Almaz church in Gummersbach. “This will be a central training hub,” he said. “It will be an opportunity, not only for Ukrainian churches to be expanded, but also, I feel that this is the beginning of a revival of Christianity in Europe.”
My piece will thus explore the growing connection between American evangelicals and Ukrainian refugees, with a focus on Germany, but possibly expanding to Ukrainian experiences in Tennessee as well. Why are these American evangelicals so interested in assisting Ukrainian refugees in particular? How have these 64 new Ukrainian churches across Germany been shaped by American missionaries and ideals? How do these newfound connections through Christianity impact the politics of evangelical Americans back home when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war? Is this actually reviving German/European Christianity on a larger scale?
My reporting from Gummersbach will play a central role, supported by scenes described to me from Tennessee. I have already spoken with most members of the American mission, the head of FBC missions, as well as Pastor Nickolas, his children, and his friends. I have also spoken with one of the Ukrainian women whom a member of the American mission, Mike Bible, sponsored to come to America through U4U. I plan to support these with interviews from a few more new Ukrainian churches in Germany (contacts I can access through Pastor Nickolas), and academics who study church planting.
I’ll contextualize my piece in reporting on how American evangelicals have lobbied to support Ukraine in the U.S. and the history of evangelical church planting. I find it an interesting connection that evangelical Christianity was disseminated to Ukraine through American missionaries in the first place, and now these Ukrainians – persecuted for their Christianity by Russians – must turn to these same American evangelicals to support their religious and communal lives in the diaspora. There has been no reporting on this topic outside of Church blogs and Christian media, so I’m hoping to get this piece published in a Tennessee news outlet or some more mainstream American media (likely combined with Miriam’s reporting on the related topic of how and why young Ukrainians have been turning to Christianity to process the war).
