This was the question asked by Valeriy, an Innovista trainer based in Kyiv until February this year. As the war escalated, he and his wife made the decision to leave Ukraine along with their children.
'I have always had a missional spirit, wanting to go and tell people about Jesus. Before the war started, one of my pastor friends asked, ‘where will you go if the war comes to our country?’ We decided we would go to Poland, where I connected with some leaders from Ukraine.
A journey across nations
After being there for a short time, I knew in my heart it wasn’t where we were meant to be. There wasn’t an opportunity for me to fully use my gifts, there were lots of people there already doing the work. So I asked God this question, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?’ and He said ‘the Netherlands’. We knew nothing about this country, we had never been before but we decided we would go.
I quickly got to know some of the team who were helping refugees arriving in the country, and in conversation with a leader one of the local churches, it was suggested that we could use their church for services for Ukrainian refugees. He offered the use of his building and even served coffee every Sunday afternoon!
I was honestly quite terrified, I had never led a church before, I felt the responsibility of leading the 50 people who arrived, many who hadn’t experienced church before and some who had travelled over 100km to be there. It was a great privilege.
A unique opportunity
Being here in the Netherlands as a refugee is a unique opportunity to share the gospel with people and it is also the hardest time in my life. I feel the impact of spiritual warfare as we stride forward and ‘spread our nets widely’. In partnership with another church in a neighbouring village, we are leading the Alpha Course – it is encouraging to see people come and develop a deeper understanding of God and to ask their questions, questions which have developed over the course of the last seven months – why does God allow suffering? how do I pray? how does God guide me?'
When asked how his Innovista leadership training is helping him in this new and unknown venture, Valeriy replied; ‘This is the theory being put into practice. Innovista helped me understand that we need to ‘look under the bonnet’ of the church, to see how it works, solve problems and seek opportunities to grow a team. There are many talented people here but another thing Innovista taught me is that relationships must be based on trust, and there hasn’t been time to develop that yet. For now, I am holding the leadership in my hands. Building a church in a different culture is challenging and we need to take it step by step.’
Please pray for Valeriy as he steps into this new season, serving the Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands and slowly starting to build a strong team around him.
