Mississippi church sends money, members to Ukrainian seminary students

Joel and Mary Ellen Ragains started the Church Planting Program at Kiev Theological Seminary (KTS) as a means to equip young believers in church planting and evangelism.The four-year program has the students learning on campus four to six times a year and ministering in their communities the remainder of the time. One requirement keeps students focused on reaching the lost. 

“The unique thing is that they must plant a church while they are still in seminary so it does not take four years for them to start a church, which has been a major black mark against seminary education,” Mary Ellen said. 

A large part of the Ragains’ strategy is to involve American churches and ministers in the learning process. Pastors who have both church-planting experience and proper educational requirements visit Kiev to see firsthand what is happening in the Church Planting Program. They then catch its vision of training and equipping these young men to plant reproducible churches in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, and return with volunteer teams to work with students when they are ready to plant churches. This lends credibility to each student and gives him extra encouragement and help. However, the Ragains are careful not to foster dependence on the West.

“We ask these churches to partner with us in the Church Planting Program and not the individual church planters, so that it does not become a dependent situation,” Mary Ellen said. “We move them around to different churches each year.”

This is how Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Miss., became involved. Dr. Rick Morton, then a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, now discipleship pastor at Temple, taught evangelism at KTS several years ago. Both he and his pastor, Dr. Tony Merida, fell in love with the students and saw the value of the program. Rick has been committed to come every year since, and Tony recently made his second trip.

“The partnership is important because it emphasizes what I believe to be the role of the church in America with regard to international missions,” Tony said, “namely, giving financially and equipping local pastors to do their work.”

Temple Baptist is in a five-year partnership with the KTS Church Planting Program in three main ways: they send a monthly gift to the program, which the school uses for scholarships to students who could not otherwise afford seminary; they send teachers, like Tony and Rick, to teach during the two-week courses; and they send teams from their church to assist the actual church plants.

Inspired by their involvement in Ukraine, the believers at Temple Baptist have established a non-profit orphan-hosting program. This summer they will bring 10 orphans from Ukraine to Hattiesburg for two weeks. This passion began with Rick’s adoption of two children. Since then another church family has adopted two teenagers, and Tony’s family is in the process of adopting four children this week.

“Our passion at Temple is church planting and orphan ministries,” Tony said. “We have been blessed to establish these relationships in Ukraine, and hope to do so in other places, as well.”

If you want to know more about how to get involved in sponsoring students and helping plant churches in Ukraine, contact Joel and Mary Ellen at kievkonnect.com.

 

Posted by Karen Pearce on Apr 21, 2009

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