Beeson Podcast, Episode #643 Reverend Ivan Rusyn Feb. 28, 2023 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney. I am here with a very special guest, the Reverend Dr. Ivan Rusyn, the President of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, near Kiev. He is spending a little time in the United States now, educating friends here about what’s going on in Ukraine and rallying support for our brothers and sisters in Christ there. One year ago, on February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Today’s guest was living in Bucha, a suburb of Kiev, shepherding a seminary when this took place. Since that time his school has been shelled by Russian bombs. His people have been dispersed. His life has been turned upside-down. But he remains faithful, courageous, and determined today to honor God and care well for the people God has given him to serve. He is at Beeson this week educating our community on what’s going on and seeking our support for the work that lies ahead. Thank you very much, Dr. Rusyn, for being with us. It’s an honor to have you on the program today. >>Rusyn: It’s a great privilege for me to be here today. >>Doug Sweeney: Would you please tell you listeners just a little bit about yourself? We want to get into the current situation in Ukraine in a few minutes. But for now who are you? How did you come to faith in Christ? And how did you become the president of a seminary in Ukraine? >>Rusyn: I was born in a Christian family. It was under Soviet Union [inaudible 00:02:05]. So, I was led to Christ by my grandma and my responsibility was to read the New Testament for her. This is the way I became a Christian. I always wanted to be a minister, to serve the Lord. So, in 1997 I went to study in the seminary and some years later I became a president of the seminary. So, I have a leadership role and also I am involved in teaching. I teach missiology and also I’m involved in church planting. >>Doug Sweeney: You sound like a busy person, even without a war. Can you tell us a little bit more about your school? What kind of seminary is it? What kinds of churches do you serve? What kinds of students do you serve at the seminary? >>Rusyn: We are an interdenominational seminary. We try to serve the variety of evangelical community. So, we have students and faculty members from different evangelical churches. Sometimes we might have students from a Catholic or orthodox church. And we are serving the church in Ukraine and also beyond Ukraine. And we are serving the church in predominantly Muslim contexts in central Asia. So, this is the scope of our ministry. >>Doug Sweeney: You’ve been president for a long time. >>Rusyn: Ten years. >>Doug Sweeney: Ten years. So, for the first nine years things were more or less normal. Tell us a little bit about the history in your context leading up to the Russian invasion? Did you ... obviously the Russians have been bothering Ukraine for quite a long time, but did you experience much of that in your school? What were things like at your school before one year ago? >>Rusyn: Two years after I became a president we had the revolution of dignity. And immediately after that revolution in 2014, Russian annexed Crimea and started war in the east part of Ukraine. So, we already experienced this problem. Then we had first wave of pandemic, second wave of pandemic, and now war. So, my leadership is in an interesting time. We received a lot of signals from different governments, like from the United States and the European countries about war. And of course we tried to be ready for that. We developed a crisis plan. But we didn’t believe, because it was so ... who will start the war in 2022? Come on ... However, on 24th of February our lives were changed. >>Doug Sweeney: Do you have many students or churches connected to your seminary in Crimea? In 2014, was there a big effect on your school, based on what was going on? >>Rusyn: Yes. We were involved in mission projects in Crimea. We have been serving Crimean [inaudible 00:05:14]. We had churches planted. And I had to visit Crimea after the annexation. It was a very emotionally difficult experience for me, when you have to give your passport to a Russian soldier who just came and annexed your territory. So, it affected us, but also it broadened our ministry. Because in 2014 we had a lot of refugees on our campus. We had to re-shape our programs and also a new opportunity was opened to have military chaplains, which is absolutely a new thing for us in Ukraine. So, in our seminary we developed academic initiatives and programs in order to equip Christians to be present among our army and to serve our soldiers. >>Doug Sweeney: So, what differences did the annexation of Crimea make for your curriculum, your ministries of the seminary? >>Rusyn: We lost connection with some of our churches, with some of our students, and also questions about war, pacifism, chaplaincy, forgiveness, resistance, citizenship – become very important. And we learned that we are not ready. We felt for a while that we have a big bag of answers for questions people never ask. So, how do we make our training relevant? How can we help our students to be equipped for the new context? Not just with superficial spiritual answers, but with competent profound answers. So, it was an interesting experience which prepared us for this full scale war. >>Doug Sweeney: And then a year ago, after the invasion, what happened at your school? How did the Russian invasion effect you? I’ve referred at the top of the show to the bombing of your school. But what else happened? Did the people have to flee right away? Did your male students have to go fight right away? What happened? >>Rusyn: It changed our lives profoundly. I had an opportunity to visit our campus on the 24th. So, we implemented our crisis plan. But next day I was not able to come to the seminary again because the bridge between Bucha and Kiev was exploded. So, I was locked in a basement in Buchev for a few days while faculty and some students they were on campus. And Russians, they were less than five miles away from the seminary just on the first day of the war. So, we could see Russian helicopters, tanks, jets ... and this is a full scale wild war. As you can imagine. In Ukraine you can meet, you can see different emotions. A lot of tears and suffering. But you will never see fear. We do not fear, because until now Russia has used everything they have besides nuclear stuff. So, there is nothing that they can surprise us with. So, I had to navigate seminary from a bomb shelter. It was hard. It was difficult. Out of 50 workers of our seminary only two stayed in their own apartments. Most of them were refugees. Some of them are abroad. We have our students fighting in the army, they are serving the army. Unfortunately we have graduates who were killed, murdered. I had to lead the funerals. So, our campus was hit by six Russian missiles. I would never imagine that our campus would be hit by real missiles. We were hit, we were shaken, maybe even fallen down, but then God gave us strength to stand up and to continue our ministry. So, we resumed teaching processes in the end of March. Online of course. And we realized that it is an extremely healing experience for our students and even for ourselves. Later, maybe in April, I had a chance to come back to campus and I was teaching from my office. There was no windows, no glass, because of explosions. When I told students, “Can you imagine I am in my office?” So, they started to cry. And I started to cry. So, we were able to start new programs here in Ukraine and also in Central Asia. And we developed a significant relief ministry. Because of the support that we received from international communities. So, now we are doing holistic ministry in Ukraine. So, it is a profound impact. We have a lot of excuses to give up, to hide. But somehow with our team we said we will fight, we will continue our mission, and it will be like our prophetic stand against this war. >>Doug Sweeney: So, when you resumed classes online ... normal classes? I mean, students still doing degree programs online? Or were there new things that you were doing with the students? >>Rusyn: Both. Education is crucial, even psychologically. It was so important for us to do things like we did when it was normal. And also immediately a huge need in new programs, trauma healing. This is so huge, big and deep trauma in Ukraine. Okay, how do we equip our churches, our people, that they will help in this? So, we developed a short term trauma healing program. And now I think we have fourth or fifth cohort of that program. So, the main reason, or aim of that program – how do we help our people to define, okay, here I can help, oh, this is a serious problem, I help to navigate person to a more, to a better expert. Because trauma is such deep that you cannot play with it. So, also we developed a few programs for pastors. The question is how do we equip pastors to serve in this environment? For example, I have a friend, he is a pastor in a church, and they decided that they will have no sermons for a few months, just prayer. And I ask him – why did you make such a decision? And he said, I just wanted to be honest with myself and with my people. I don’t know what to say. So, the best I can do is just pray. So, how do we train pastors that they can serve in such contexts? We need to develop a new set of expertise and through such programs we try to equip our pastors. And other initiatives that we have, we try to bring teams from churches and we try to help them to see what kind of initiatives they can start in their local communities in order to care about those communities and transform them. So, God blessed us. It’s an interesting experience when you don’t have windows. A lot of scars on your campus. But people come and they get education. We have some cohort of students that come to our campus. We don’t want students, all of them, to come because it’s not safe. We have rockets flying over our heads sometimes. There’s a siren, so we have to run and hide in shelters. But still for us when we are present in our campus it’s also, okay, we see God’s promise that everything will be okay. >>Doug Sweeney: Have many of your students lost access to the internet? Or has the internet been relatively stable? >>Rusyn: Most of them lost all ... every home in Ukraine is 12 hours without power every day. And you are considered a blessed one if just 12 hours. So, sometimes people do not have access, so we record everything. Now we have generators and we have Star Link, so if there is no power we use generator and Star Link. We can have teaching. We had to learn how to organize educational processes in this environment but first of all education is important because it helps us to see what kind of ministry we must have in this situation. Hermeneutics is crucial. Then also it is important for us for our souls. When we are involved in teaching we see our students, we see our faculty, it’s a healing process. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, Ukraine is a big country of course and some people are closer to the fighting at any given time than others. But I think it would help our listeners to kind of pray with the right kind of mindset – if they could hear just a few stories about what pastors are dealing with, what church life is like now. Clearly, if you’re in a context where it’s just fighting, fighting, fighting ... I mean, I would think that means you’re not having congregational meetings. But probably in many other parts of the country churches are still meeting. How is it going? What should we be thinking about as we pray for churches in Ukraine? >>Rusyn: The most sustainable and reliable institution in Ukraine now is the church. We had so many witnesses when the city was occupied, so of course Ukrainian government, police, army – they must leave. The only community that remained was the church. So, now churches in Ukraine they are centers of life. Because they have generators, people can come, they can have food, water, medicine, they can charge phones and computers. So, churches are doing significant ministry. I am so proud to see what churches are doing. And of course we have our services. Sometimes almost every Sunday we have rockets heading to Kiev, but we are gathering together. And we are serving God’s church not just in the places where we are but we also want to go to the war zone, to the east part of Ukraine. Significant elements of our ministry is the ministry to our soldiers. So, I and my team in partnership with the Ukrainian Bible Society, we are going to the east part of Ukraine, we spend time with soldiers, we serve them, we pray with them, we serve them communion. And it is a very [inaudible 00:17:10] experience to serve communion in the forest. Sometimes you can hear combat. But we know that this is our responsibility. And we are doing it now because we are responsible. We want to do it. So, at this moment church brings hope. And it’s so funny, we want to thank soldier, “Thank you for doing your ministry.” And soldiers say, “No, no. Thank you that you are present.” So, when we are present people they have hope, “Oh, church is here.” So, if church is here I think Jesus is among us. So, it is crucial for church to be incarnated and to suffer in the same way as our society suffers. So, it makes us authentic and churches are growing. >>Doug Sweeney: What we read about in the newspapers in the US or see online here on the US with respect to Ukraine now is that the government asks the younger men, the men who can fight to stay, don’t go. But they allow others to go. And I’m imagining that means there are some other people from your seminary who have fled the country, maybe in Poland or they’re living somewhere else. Do you have a way of keeping up with them? Do you know how to pray for them? How to care for them? Or are you simply waiting for the war to end and people to come back before you really understand how their lives have been- >>Rusyn: In Ukraine we have martial law. And from 24th of February a man which is between 18-65 has no legal rights to leave Ukraine, it’s impossible. So, every man remains in Ukraine and can be called to army. You may ask what I’m doing in the United States, how I left Ukraine. So, this is the confirmation that churches are doing a great job in Ukraine. Our government recognized how profound and important our ministry is. And our president issued a law which grants me opportunity to travel abroad. So, I write a letter to our government and they give me permission and I can leave. So, for me this is a great encouragement that even government, they recognize how crucial church is in this moment. Yes, millions of Ukrainians left Ukraine. Millions of families are divided because of war. Wife and children can be abroad, husband is in Ukraine for almost 12 months. And of course many Christians they are called to serve in the army. We have faculty members that are serving and we pray for them and it seems that a very heavy battle ahead of us. And it seems that more of us will be called to serve in the army. And if we will receive that call, we will go. So, until now, when our faculty they go as volunteers to army, they say if you need us we are ready. Usually after they research what they are doing and they say, you are more effective in what you are doing, so just continue to do [relief 00:20:53] ministry. But it seems that there will be a huge battle in Ukraine and we might end up in the army. >>Doug Sweeney: So, next week I believe you fly back to Budapest and then you find a way maybe by car to get into Ukraine. >>Rusyn: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: When you make it all the way back home, and you get to the school, what do you expect the situation will be? What are you expecting to need to do right away as the president, as a gospel minister? >>Rusyn: I have to catch up with all of my work and we have some important initiatives, educational initiatives that we want to start in order to prepare more pastors and leaders. And next ten days we are promised to have a new wave of escalation. So, we are waiting for that time. And I will be involved in the relief ministry and in teaching, leading, and also in church planting. I am a church planter. >>Doug Sweeney: Surely you can’t plant a church during the war can you? >>Rusyn: Well, this is the best time to plant a church. Because people have such a big need in God. And you do not play in atheistic games when you have a war. And if church is authentic, if church suffers together with the people, if church is not afraid of hard questions people come, people listen. So, I am so happy that we started [inaudible 00:22:40] church a few years ago. In Ukraine, God is the only hope we have. If you compare Russian Federation and the Ukraine. And frankly speaking, I have no religious explanation how Kiev, why Kiev survived. The only answer that works for me is it was God. Our army was in the east part of Ukraine and Kiev was almost surrounded by the Russian army for more than a month. So, every day we felt like this was our last day, this is our last day. And then they just disappeared. So, we say, “God, thank you!” And there is a very difficult future ahead of us after this war. And there is a huge responsibility of churches and seminaries. How do we [inaudible 00:23:40] our society through lament, healing, and it’s hard for me to say this word but – to forgiveness. I don’t see as an institution or community besides the church that has capacity to facilitate that process. So, I strongly convince that without the gospel, without the church, our country has no future. I am so afraid that because of such deep violence and trauma there is a danger that we might be hostages of this experience. So, we have to help our society. We have to help ourselves to go through all of these phases but to reach that freedom from hatred, from trauma. So, there is a lot of work to be done in the future. And this is why I see that educational institutions like our seminary and other, we have a lot of work to do. >>Doug Sweeney: Many of our listeners have been praying for Ukraine for a long time. And this conversation I hope will shape their prayer lives in the days ahead. But as we draw the conversation to a close, are there specific ways in which you want our people to pray for Ukraine these days? >>Rusyn: Yes, there is. Please do not pray for peace. It’s very diplomatic. We pray in Ukraine for just peace. We pray for victory because in our case just peace is possible only after our victory. Very briefly, this war is not about land or territory. This war is about the very existence of the Ukrainian identity. Freedom, democracy, and justice. Unfortunately, there is no space for the Ukrainian identity under Russian dominion. They do not want to kill our bodies, they want to kill our soul. This is why Ukrainians fight as they fight. So, pray for just peace. Pray that we will be capable to protect our freedom, our democracy, our identity, and pray for Ukrainian churches that we will have enough capacity to lead our society through this difficult time. There is no other community that has this calling and has this capacity. So, this is my prayer. And pray for Christian leaders, that we would have strength, courage, and vision to serve in a way that our churches will bring blessing. >>Doug Sweeney: We will pray. Listeners, you have been listening to the Reverend Dr. Ivan Rusyn. He is the president of Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary. We ask you to pray for him and for his school and for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. And we say goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.