Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists after the Ukrainian Revolution, 2013-14, Joshua T. Searle, 2016

rder to equip the church for mission and ministry in a changing world. The year 2013, which marked the 1025" anniversary of the establishment of Christianity in Kyivan Rus,” highlighted the issue of nominal Christianity in the post-Soviet nations of the Eurasia. Despite the self- identification of most people throughout Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as “Christian”, only a small percentage is made up of practicing Christians. In the popular perception, prayer, Bible and congregational life remain the esoteric occupations of a dwindling minority of “spiritual” © Kyivan Rus (Kuiscoxa Pyco) is the name given to the medieval federation of Eastern Slavic tribes. Although the federation was abolished by the Mongol invasions in the 1240s, many people in Ukraine, Russian and Belarus today claim cultural ancestry with the Rus. people. In these traditionally “Orthodox” nations, society is transitioning into post— Christendom, and in many regions the church has become a museum, a relic to a bygone era. Fourth, a shift is taking place from the usual short-term thinking and naive exclusivity to a meaningful partnership between traditions and regions. Thus, Peter Penner calls for dialogue and a “truly biblical partnership” in implementing “God’s mission” between foreign and national movements, as well as between Evangelical and Orthodox Churches. The mission of the churches will be served not by fawning and borrowing, but by mutually enriching partnerships and the creative construction of localised missiologies. These transitions mark a more profound shift in the missiological paradigm, which is still difficult to describe, but of a magnitude suggesting that it will result in a radical rethinking of the church and its vocation. It is no accident that these processes coincide in time with the upcoming 500" anniversary of the European Reformation. Some Ukrainian theologians and historians have even argued that post-Soviet evangelical Christians have skipped their Reformation.™ It is possible that the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity offers another opportunity to renew the church and transform society. Such a “reformation” would be directed not merely towards the renewal of the church, but also the transfiguration of society. In the same way that the sixteenth-century Reformers used the phrase, “Ecclesia semper reformanda est”,°° so the Kyiv-born philosopher, Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), insisted that, “Revolution is a perpetual phenomenon in the destinies of human societies.” Revolution is the harbinger of new life, but the revolutionary period is always preceded by labour pangs that presage the birth of a new awakening of the consciousness of freedom. Although the failure of previous attempts to instigate social reform in Ukraine can be attributed to the egotism and ambition of corrupt politicians, at a more fundamental level these “revolutions” failed because the revolutionary forces that they unleash