Evangelizing Through Business in Ukraine

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Time to take a trip around the world all the way to the Ukraine. I'm Stu Epperson with Truth Talk Weekend. So glad you all are here listening. We are going to go to a place that is dark, that has been ravaged by alcoholism and death and struggle and poverty, and you're going to meet a man of God who's doing something about it. And I first met this man of God through another man of God who's been a real mentor and friend to me for years, a banker of all things. Scott Reed, it's good to have you here, my friend, on Truth Talk Weekend. Thank you, Stu, very much.

We have had a great friendship and I have really cherished it over the years. Well, you and Dennis Lennon and Kerry Mitchell and all these guys go over there to Ukraine and you come and you come back with these awesome stories about what God has done. And I'm thinking, are you going over there and you're preaching in open air or you're passing out tracts? You know, we're going to mentor business people. And through the business channels, souls are being saved and seminaries are being started, of all things.

But tell everyone who this man is sitting next to you, and tell everyone about your ministry real quick. Yeah, regarding our ministry, we have a company called Troika International, and many of us are former business executives. And we use business and business teaching as a platform. And we began actually in Russia, Shabaksari, Russia, in 2002.

And we are now in Lviv, Ukraine, which is in the northwest portion up near Poland, of the Ukraine, a city of almost a million people. And we teach entrepreneurs, small businessmen and women, mid-sized, from mid-sized companies. And we teach them sound, successful business practices from a Western perspective. But then we share the Gospel with every student. We pour our lives into them. We develop relationships. We share our testimonies. And we teach these courses for a year. Each one's a week in length. And we send teams over.

I go once or twice a year and lead a team. And just a joy to share. A lot of these people are into making money and into worldly success. And we try to point them towards Jesus.

Wow. And how did you meet this character right here? And how did the seminary come about? Well, he'll tell us about that. But tell us who this guy is and how you guys intersected through all this Ukraine stuff. Well, when we were teaching in Lviv, we came across a seminary, the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary, UBTS, and went for a visit. We met the president, who's a wonderful dynamic leader, a young man in his early 40s, but one who has been blessed of God and is put by God in this position for a purpose. And he introduced me to Joe, Joe Privet, who I have the honor of hosting for a few days. He lives in St. Louis. And Joe fell in love with Slavic Peace, the president, and tried to help him financially and help him grow in his knowledge, get some education here in the U.S. And Joe will explain all that. But Joe Privet started the Ukraine Partnership Foundation, headquartered in St. Louis, that, again, is the supporting arm of UBTS.

And basically everything they do and all the money they raise and everything supports the seminary and its tremendous growth. So he's here in town. He spent a couple days in Charlotte with the Carmel Church and a good friend there and talked to some folks. And he's here in Winston-Salem for the next few days sharing his testimony and what's going on at the seminary with friends and colleagues throughout the city.

That is awesome. Well, Joe, it's an honor to have you on. And, hey, with an introduction like that, man, you've got some high levels to step up to here, sir.

Put that right on your chin and tell us a little bit about your passion, my friend. I was introduced by the founder of the seminary to his academic dean at the time who was one of the brightest 29-year-olds I had ever roped elbows with. And he asked me if I would help get support for him to get an earned theological degree in the U.S. so that he could have credibility as a seminary president going back to Ukraine. And Slavik determined at age 12 by meeting a U.S. missionary that he was going to devote his life to serving God through the church. And God called him then to raise up leaders of churches in Ukraine. So I was able to mentor him, to relate to him, and to on occasion go back and teach organizational leadership in his seminary. Fantastic.

So you got connected that way, and this thing has really grown. I'm holding your brochure here. I see all these students here smiling. They're excited about the Word of God, the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary because that's what it's called.

Training developed Ukrainian church leaders growing, biblical, missional, accountable. It's all right here. I tell you what, this growth, why all this growth? What's going on over there?

What's the hunger? Put that in our heart, kind of what God's doing there. Slavik declared that the seminary exists for the church, and he measures his effectiveness as a seminary by the effectiveness of the local church, not by how many students he has, but how the local church is reaching and transforming communities. So that is what made him so attractive then, and he declared that his values were going to be acted out, not only lived in the mind, but lived in the behaviors. So he holds his students accountable for leadership in their churches. Okay, so both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. That's a great way to put it. Head to the heart, to the feet, to the hands, right? Exactly.

That's exactly. Being the body, living the gospel out in a culture. Tell us about Ukraine real quick. High levels of alcoholism. I know there's a lot of challenges.

Scott shared this with me many times. What's happening over there? A lot of challenges, severe economic situation over there, the war in eastern Ukraine that you know about, and many of those students, many of those young ministers in east Ukraine are going all the way across Ukraine to experience this seminary and go back and transform their churches and communities there.

So they're going deep. You're taking them deeper in the Word, teaching them theology. Who is God? Who is Jesus? Who is the Holy Spirit? What does it mean?

What is the doctrine of salvation, sanctification, glorification, all these different aspects? Some things we take for granted. We kind of grew up with it, but a lot of these guys haven't had that. Maybe you haven't even had a full manuscript of the Bible in their possession. They haven't, and importantly for us, what they haven't had is a grace of Jesus Christ explained to them in a compelling way. They grew up under communism where everybody in power is your enemy, and you're trying to tell them that the ultimate power is your friend and loves you, not trying to get something from you, but trying to give something to you. And that's what they are living out. It's a whole different thinking. It's a whole different mindset. The gospel always comes into a... the gospel comes in all kinds of different cultures.

You're not trying to take them Americanism, you're trying to take them the good news of Jesus, which is far bigger and transcends anything that any specific country could not necessarily contribute. Exactly, and we're trying to be angel investors in the background, mentor, finance, all kinds of organizational leadership. But what we have the opportunity to do is to train the leaders who are training the pastors who are training, in turn, the congregation to go outside the church and transform communities. That's tremendous. So you were there with us this morning at Wednesday in the Word to talk to our guys about what the Lord's doing. And some of the guys had jaw-dropping episodes when you shared the growth. Tell everyone you had, you shared a second ago, but again, you know, look at this, it's on the pie chart here, but you started with how many in 2012 and now you have how many enrolled in 2018?

35 to 700. And it is just amazing how pastors, existing pastors, senior pastors of large churches are asking Slavic, can you come and help us create the kind of environment, the kind of excitement about telling about Jesus in our churches that you're doing in the seminary? So he's not only traditional seminary in the sense of training up leaders, but he's also very innovative in how he, if you will, infects. He uses the term infect. I want to infect them with the love of Jesus Christ so they can go and infect others.

I love it. So how can, and there's just a few, 30 seconds left, how can we pray for you? How can we support you? What's the website on that information for the special seminary work in Ukraine? A lot of listeners may want to go, get their church involved, support it.

Go ahead. There are many opportunities to serve in person there. There are certainly opportunities to support with prayer, financial support.

All of this is, they have great opportunities through their ministers to use resources that we can give them. Wonderful. And let me see the websites on here somewhere. We'll put it at our website when we promote it, but I guess there's probably a website of some sort in there of a... Yes, upfmissions.org.com. Fantastic, upfmissions.org or dot com. Just Google maybe one of the few seminaries in the Ukraine, right, in that part of the country.

It is larger than any other seminary in Europe that we know about. Well, thanks for the visit. Let's keep praying because this is, God's doing a work there and he's using you and he's using Scott Reed and a lot of these folks to send the word of God to a place that's dark that many have forgotten.

Ukraine, poverty, alcoholism, and amid that the light of Christ is shining. Yes. Keep your work there. Awesome. Thank you. This is the Truth Network.