As war continues to devastate Ukraine, a powerful spiritual revival is unfolding amid the ruins, according to Ukrainian evangelist David Karcha, who told a gathering of European church leaders that in a time of war, the gospel becomes unstoppable.
Speaking at the European Congress on Evangelism in Berlin on May 29, Karcha described how churches across Ukraine have become beacons of hope, drawing thousands to Christ even as the country endures deep physical and emotional suffering. His address came just a day after Franklin Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin to pray for peace, underscoring the Congress’s message of gospel resilience in the face of crisis.
“In a time of peace, the gospel is powerful. But in a time of war, it is unstoppable,” said Karcha in his opening remarks in which he brought greetings from the evangelical wider Church in Ukraine to the Berlin Congress delegates.
A Church, he said pointedly, and not the buildings “because then they’d not be allowed to suffer.” Instead, the Church greeting the Berlin Congress is one that “cannot be bound” or “darkened with smoke.”
After Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Karcha said Ukrainian evangelicals faced a critical choice: to fracture and flee, or to remain and share in the suffering of their fellow countrymen. This was “not because we had a plan, not because we felt ready, but because we saw that even the smallest act done in faith becomes a part of something much greater.”
Hope as a reality is something searched for as part of human existence seeking “something greater, something essential,” Karcha pondered. For the Church in Ukraine, this journey of hope, made within the light of the living Lord Jesus, has meant taking small steps as a unified community moving together. By doing so, “it becomes a movement no war can stop.”
Karcha wanted to set the record straight about religious persecution, often dominating news about Christian Ukrainians. He pointed out that the main headline story is about evangelicalism in Ukraine with masses of people turning to Christ. As an example, the church minister said that in 2023 “alone,” Baptist churches witnessed “thousands of people publicly profess their faith through baptism.”
The church has woken up to the spiritual hunger in the country and stood up to the challenge of serving not just bodies but souls.
In the last three years, Karcha testified that “hundreds of thousands of people have walked through the doors of Ukrainian churches and encountered the love and care of God.”
“Many of them for the first time in their life,” he added, and told the story he heard from a German pastor at the Congress of a particular woman who knew nothing of church but fled to Germany as a refugee and sought shelter in a church. She experienced food, care and the church showed love, telling her about Jesus. The woman eventually gave her heart to Jesus Christ.
Karcha thanked churches across Europe for their loving support for Ukrainians in the past few years of the war.
“The body of Christ is not confined to one country or to one border, but is alive and active whenever his people are present,” said Karcha, to more applause. “Thank you for being his hands and his heart for those who are in real need.”
“God is teaching us to listen and to see where he is already at work,” he continued.
“Ukrainian churches are there on the front lines, ministering as chaplains in the trenches and grounds, at hospitals, bringing prayer and the hope of Christ to the soldiers in the fire of battle and places of hopelessness.”
“We are there for the widows of fallen soldiers and for the orphans whose mothers are never coming home, holding their clothes, sharing the grief. We minister to those who have lost everything, homes reduced to rubble, families torn apart, bodies and souls scared by unspeakable fragments and torture brought to us by the Russian army.”
All of these ministries start with active listening, Karcha said, “We listen. We pray. We help. And then when we see how we can help and what can be gone, we speak Jesus.”
A man called Viktor, in his mid-fifties, came to Karcha’s own church as a refugee, “like so many other at that time.” He was a quiet man, according to the church leader, who seemed broken and carried a “lifelong lifetime of burdens.”
One day, Viktor asked Karcha if they could talk. He disclosed that he knew about God since childhood and spent many decades running away from him, causing pain around him. However, he declared a readiness to surrender his life to Christ.
“He cried. He wept. And he was born again, right in front of our eyes,” said Karcha, adding that God is still at work and listening, and still redeeming, bringing children home.
“Dear brothers and sisters,” Karcha told delegates, “this is a little bit of what God is doing in our country. He's awakening his church, stirring a desperate search for hope, and teaching us to listen and watch him work.
“He's stirring suffering into testimony, fear into faith, and small acts of love into seeds for his kingdom. In the world's eyes, Ukraine is a story of war. But in God's eyes, It is a story of revival, a story that reminds us all that the gospel… advances. That even when the rockets are exploding next to us, the foundation of Christ stands firm. That even in the darkest night, the light of his truth still breaks."
"Let history bow down to the cross," Karcha said, concluding with an encouragement to boldly proclaim Jesus as Lord regardless of circumstance.
