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Sunday Adelajah, a Nigerian who came to the former Soviet bloc 18 years ago to study journalism, became a pastor instead. Now Adelajah leads a 26,000-member Pentecostal church called the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations, in Kiev. In the wake of the presidential election controversy, Adelajah and the church have taken a stand in support of opposition candidate Victor Yuschenko, who was poisoned during the campaign. Earlier rounds of voting were riddled with fraud, and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner, despite two independent exit polls showing he had lost. Initially, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the election of Yanukovych.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protests, and the country's Supreme Court ordered a new election between Yanukovych and Yuschenko for December 26. Aiding the protesters are Adelajah and his church. Adelajah, 37, spoke with Stan Guthrie, CT's senior associate news editor.

What brought you to that part of the world?

I was studying journalism in Minsk at the Belarusian State University. I finished my master's in 1992. So I went from there to the Ukraine to work with one of the first independent television stations after the collapse of Communism. They had never heard commercial television before then. As I was working on that television station, I had an encounter with the Lord. So that encounter led me to resign my appointment, because I was sure God was telling me that I was majoring in bad news in the regular news, but that he had called me to major in Good News. And what this country needed most at this time was not journalists. They had enough journalists who could report news. But he really needed me to focus on his news and be ready to champion the cause of spiritual regeneration and revival in that part of the world.

How did you start your church?

Well, I made an announcement on television that anybody who wants to study anything about the Bible, that they could come and have a meeting with me. Because I was limited financially, I had to start my first congregation in my apartment. We started studying the Bible with the several people. Of course, initially I was very discouraged because I was expecting "normal people" to come, maybe students, maybe teachers, maybe market women, but the people who showed up were drug addicts and alcoholics. I'm a black man. I'm originally from Nigeria, and in the Soviet Union, they look down on people of color and because Communism had taught them that these people are inferior and only Communism could salvage them and save them. And through revolution they could become normal.

So that's how the regular Soviet person would look at you. A regular Soviet Russian or Ukrainian would never go to listen to a black man. Because they think they are supposed to teach you, what can you teach them?

Anyway, I had a very hard time. It was a challenge for me in the beginning to have members, because people would just not go. I understand that. If I had been brought up in such a culture, I would find it difficult myself to cross the road to listen to any black man talk and to try to teach me about God—especially in a culture when you are taught that there is no God in the first place. The only thing I was taught when I was in the university there is how to prove that there is no God through science and mathematics and physics.

The first four years, I couldn't get any Russians saved. But God directed me that if I really wanted to be effective, I must go to the down and out people, and I should not expect the "regular people" to come.

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December (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48