Ukraine: Small Groups, Lay Involvement Help Church Grow

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Ukraine: Small Groups, Lay Involvement Help Church Grow
June 17, 2003 Kiev, Ukraine .... [Ansel Oliver/ANN Staff]

Mass involvement of Seventh-day Adventist laity in the Euro-Asia region is helping the church to grow, administrators say.

The first of several lay congresses was held last month in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, bringing together more than 2,000 delegates from throughout the country. They met in Kiev’s second Adventist Church, the largest Adventist Church in the Euro-Asia region.

Currently Ukraine has nearly 2,200 small Adventist outreach groups throughout the country.

Similar conferences were also held in Belarus and in Moldova, with a total attendance of about 3,200 members. Moldova has 538 Adventist small groups and Belarus has 252.

“These are New Testament principles,” said Jonathan Kuntaraf, associate personal ministries director for the Adventist world church, referring to the use of small groups. Some regions of the world do not use small groups for ministry, he said, although such a technique has been effective for nurture of current Adventist church members. He said an event like this is good encouragement for the rest of the world church to start using small groups as a ministry tool.

Ukraine has 61,000 Adventists in a population of 49 million. From 1991 to 1998, the church experienced tremendous growth--from about 12,000 members to approximately 58,000. The limited number of pastors available has had an impact on the church’s ability to equip members in their Christian walk; the small group method is designed to help alleviate that problem.

More than 8,500 Adventist members are involved in the Go One Million initiative in the church’s Euro-Asia region, including 2,462 literature evangelists, 494 medical-missionaries, and 232 full-time missionaries. Arthur Stele, president of the church in the Euro-Asia region said, “In [our] territory, Go One Million means ‘Go small group leaders,’ because this is the way we work.”

Artur Stele, president of the Adventist Church in the Euro-Asia region.