A Seattle-Area Ministry Wants More Cooks in the Kitchen

Sophia Lee

Hillside Church helped refugees grow vegetables. Now it’s growing a whole community around food and preparing immigrants for culinary careers.

Margaret Chege teaches students how to make Kenyan sambusas and mandazis in the World Relief Community Learning Kitchen.

Photo by Reva Keller

Margaret Chege rolls out golf ball-sized pieces of dough, drizzles oil on top, and drops one ball of dough onto another.

“This is Kenyan tortilla,” she says, pressing down. “We use it to wrap sambusas.”

Sambusas are crispy, deep-fried triangular pastries stuffed with all sorts of savories—spiced beef, lamb, potatoes. Chege is here to demonstrate how to make sambusas and mandazis—pillowy, nutmeg-scented doughnuts—at the first cooking workshop of the World Relief Community Learning Kitchen. Hosted at Hillside Church in Kent, Washington, the workshop attendees on a Wednesday morning include mothers who hired babysitters, a home economics teacher, and a mother-and-son cooking team.

Chege chose these fried snacks because they remind her of home. “In Kenya, we like tea, and we eat sambusas and mandazis with tea,” she tells the class. “Anytime we see sambusas or mandazis with tea, we think, ‘Oh, now we are home.’”

As she teaches, Chege radiates confidence and pride. She came to western Washington from Kenya in 2013 with her three children. She grew up in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, the largest slum in Africa and the third largest in the world. There, as many as 50 households may share a latrine. Chege remembers how sometimes people walked carrying bags of flour, leaving a powder trail so they wouldn’t lose their way home.

Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

She learned how to make sambusas and mandazis as a young girl, helping her mother stuff beans in dough and sometimes beef, if they could afford it. She remembers following her mother through the streets, hawking bags of the hot food. Her mother died when she was 12 years old, and then it was just Chege and her sister selling treats to make ends meet. She was in high school when she wore her first pair of shoes.

Chege rolls out more balls of dough. Oils them. Stacks them one over another. And then she flips the whole pile onto a dry hot pan, spins it around to let the bottom toast evenly, and slowly peels off each thin layer. Now they are ready to be stuffed with ground beef and cilantro.

After all the labor of making the wrappers, Chege hands her students a tip: “Usually, I just buy Mexican tortillas from the store. I think they taste even better!”

Chege has come a long way since she and the children arrived in the United States. She was reunited with her husband, who had already been in America for years and had earned asylum, but she barely saw him; he was working 16 hours a day. Chege remembers walking to Safeway to buy a bag of flour to make sambusas—something to remind her of home—and being overwhelmed by the endless aisles of products. When she mustered up the courage to ask where she could find flour, the cashier couldn’t understand her thick accent. She returned home flustered and fatigued. She was finally in America, where she didn’t have to worry about armed groups kidnapping her son or people forcing genital circumcision on her two daughters. She felt safe here. But she also felt utterly alone, lost, and homesick.

And now here she is, in a brand-new commercial teaching kitchen, using her mother’s recipes and sharing childhood memories.

Standing outside the kitchen, Everett Tustin, the senior pastor of Hillside Church, peeks in one last time before retiring from the office. His heart feels full. Tustin knows Chege and her story—she and her family are members of the church. He also knows the story of World Relief kitchen coordinator Jeff Reynolds, who’s there to supervise the event. Reynolds too is a member of Hillside Church.

Tustin knows how much it took for World Relief to finally open this kitchen, years after dreaming and planning and fundraising. Tustin had also long dreamed of a church that reflects and serves the community. This kitchen—and the people who made it happen—are a manifestation of years of prayers. Now he’s proud and full of joy: This is it. Except he couldn’t have imagined it like this.

The kitchen is a 1,215-square-foot room that’s fully certified to make food to be sold to the public. Under state law that means it’s not only a teaching center, but potentially an income-generating enterprise for the community. Four student cooking stations surround an instructor station in a light-filled space where teachers and learners can mill about. A camera over the main station allows students to watch techniques up close on a TV monitor.

When he first became the pastor of Hillside Church in 2012, Tustin had a hazy vision of where he wanted to lead its ministry. At the time, the average Hillside church member was around 60 years old and white. Yet a third of the population of Kent is foreign born.

The city’s housing costs—lower than nearby Seattle—and growing diversity attracted refugees and immigrants, who saw opportunities to settle and build businesses. At Kent’s public schools, kids speak more than 80 different languages. The city has halal markets selling whole goats, Afghan bakeries offering sesame seeded barbari bread, and churches worshiping in Ukrainian and Russian.

This isn’t the Kent that Tustin once knew. He grew up in a rural farming and dairy town 20 miles away called Enumclaw, where the population of 4,000 was majority white. His world got larger after he married his wife, Rhonda. They did ministry in Chicago, and he pastored churches in Washington and Idaho for 11 years. They spent another nine years overseas, serving in Kenya, Bulgaria, and Poland as Nazarene missionaries. Then, with aging parents and two adult daughters back in the United States, Tustin accepted the senior pastor role at Hillside and the couple returned to Washington state.

Tustin had grand plans for the congregation. He wanted a more intercultural and intergenerational church. He wanted it to reflect the community’s growing diversity and serve its needs. But how to start?

The first change Tustin made was to hire a new worship leader. He wanted people on stage to represent the community of Kent. He hired a Black man from Detroit whom he had met in Poland while he was leading choir workshops. Later, the worship leader moved back to Poland, and Tustin hired another worship leader, this time a man from Trinidad. Next, he hired an assistant pastor from Barbados, and a woman from Liberia as the children’s ministry leader. The congregation also voted in new church board members from diverse backgrounds.

Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

The shift in leadership led to both subtle and unsubtle changes. Worship services became more expressive—people pumped their arms and shouted, or let out tribal whistles and yodels. At times it was extemporaneous and organic, as people from African countries spontaneously asked if they could perform a duet or a song. Sometimes they sang in Swahili, Spanish, or French. Services didn’t always start or end on time. A growing number of the congregation didn’t speak fluent English or spoke with strong accents.

For some longtime church members, the changes were too much. It was uncomfortable, it was different, and it stopped feeling like home. Many left to find other churches.

It was a hard season for Tustin. He had difficult conversations with congregants who were unhappy and uncomfortable. He worried about tokenism, then worried about how to help the church not only catch his vision but lead it. It was like stretching a rubber band. How far could he pull without it snapping?

Often, Tustin wondered how the early churches did it, with all their cultural and linguistic differences between the Jews and Gentiles, the Hellenists and Romans and Hebrews.

“They just powered through,” he said. “There’s no evidence of them stopping and saying, ‘OK, let’s make this easy. Let’s make this comfortable.’ It seems like they just slammed right through it, and they broke down all those barriers.”

That first year of pastoring Hillside Church, Tustin walked to the local office of World Relief, which at the time was just down the road, and introduced himself as “the pastor of that church up the hill.” He asked if there were ways they could partner.

It was a natural move. The Christian resettlement agency provides refugees and immigrants with housing services, English language classes, employment, and immigration legal services. In those days, in the early 2010s, refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere were walking into Tustin’s church and asking for help. For baby food. For immigration advice. Tustin often directed them to World Relief.

The two ministries’ relationship began to grow. In 2016, World Relief held listening sessions with the local refugee-immigrant community, hosted at various sites including the church. They asked, What would help you thrive? What are your needs, struggles, dreams?

Attendees expressed a yearning for community. They wanted a space to connect with others, with their cultures, and with nature. Living mostly in small apartments without yards, they missed growing their own produce like they did in their home countries. They also had no safe place for their kids to roam and play.

Hillside Church is near multiple public transit lines, close to many schools and apartment complexes housing refugees and immigrants. It also had a massive parking lot that stood mostly empty and often flooded the neighboring middle school with rain runoff. So the church donated 1.5 acres of the parking lot to World Relief to develop it into a community garden.

Over several years, with funding from King County and other organizations, and with help from about 1,500 community volunteers, Hillside’s asphalt desert became Paradise Parking Plots, a community garden with 44 plots and six raised beds. It also includes rain gardens, cisterns, and flood-control bioswales, which collect rainwater before it can swamp the middle school.

Photos by Chona Kasinger

The Paradise gardens are a place to create friendships: watering each other’s plants, sharing tips on gardening in a new climate, and learning about one another’s produce and seeds.

At any given time from April through September, people from 16 different countries are planting and harvesting in the Paradise plots. They pay $40 to lease a plot for the entire growing season. Two brothers from Bhutan, for example, have planted mustard greens to make the Nepalese staple gundruk, a mix of fermented and dried greens that’s pungent, tangy, and full of flavor, perfect with a bowl of rice or stewed into soup.

Another refugee, a bee farmer from Ukraine, grows wild strawberries using seeds from Ukraine, plus rows of organic tomatoes and beets to make borscht, the East European beet soup staple.

Another, a farmer from Kenya, made $1,200 in one growing season selling his tomatoes at the farmers’ market.

But the Paradise gardens are not just a place for immigrants to grow produce from their mother country. It’s a place to create friendships. They water each other’s plants, share tips on gardening in a new climate, and learn about one another’s produce and seeds.

From the start, World Relief was intentional about making this a community-supported project. Local companies have donated seeds and supplies. Neighbors have volunteered time and expertise to help maintain and improve the garden. Occasionally on Sundays, the gardeners hold a farmers’ market at the church parking lot where church members can shop and engage with them after service.

Once the gardeners had a space to grow food, they needed a space to cook it. Hillside had a small, underutilized kitchen. The church donated it and some adjoining rooms to World Relief to turn into a commercial teaching kitchen.

The project took seven years to finish. (As workers tore out walls from a church building that dated to 1968, they found lots of things that needed fixing.) In June 2023, World Relief and Hillside Church finally soft-launched the kitchen. In January 2024, they opened their first cooking workshop, where Margaret Chege demonstrated how to make mandazis and sambusas.

“This kitchen is a representation of conversations,” said Jeff Reynolds, World Relief’s kitchen coordinator, who oversees the cooking programs. The kitchen will continue to host workshops from chefs such as Chege, and it will also offer a free, three-month curriculum to help refugees and immigrants kickstart culinary careers, so that they don’t have to start out making minimum wage as dishwashers. It will also offer nutrition classes to help families navigate food deserts and American markets that are full of highly processed foods.

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

Reynolds is particularly excited about starting a preservation class dedicated to curing, pickling, and fermenting garden produce.

The project has gifted him with a new community too. He graduated from culinary school and worked in kitchens for many years, then in alcoholic beverage sales until he was furloughed in 2021 during the pandemic. That was when he and his wife started attending Hillside Church. A relatively new believer, Reynolds told his pastor, “I don’t know how my knife skills can bring people to Jesus.” Tustin told him about the kitchen project and introduced him to World Relief. And now here he was, teaching people from around the world how to properly dice onions without slicing off their fingers.

Sometimes there are language barriers and cultural misunderstandings. But that’s part of the ministry, Reynolds said. “You have to insert yourself into the uncomfortable. There’s no other way to do it. And as uncomfortable as that is, at the end, man! It changes your life.”

Chege, too, had to push through discomfort. She and her family visited Hillside in 2014 after her oldest daughter, who was attending the church’s youth afterschool program, kept begging her parents to check it out. That first Sunday, they sat at the back. After the service, Chege’s husband went up to greet Tustin, and Tustin greeted him with the few Swahili phrases he remembered from his two years in Kenya: “Habari yako? Karibu. Jina langu ni Ev.” “Hello, how are you? Welcome. My name is Ev.”

“I was like, wow. It’s my first time hearing white people speak Swahili,” Chege recalls. Immediately she felt a little more at home.

Tustin invited them to an after-service church picnic at a local park. When they arrived, Chege’s husband told her, “This is amazing. This is the exact park where I used to do daily prayer walks, asking God to find a way for you and the children to join me in America!”

They became regular attenders at Hillside. It was awkward at the start for Chege. She would leave for home almost immediately after the service. She was frustrated when people kept asking her to repeat herself or looked at her blankly because they couldn’t understand her accent. “So I think, ‘I’m just not supposed to talk,’” Chege recalled. “That was a big challenge for me.”

Tustin and his wife kept encouraging her. Your English is good, they told her. At their urging she hosted a small group at her home, where she served chapati or mandazi and tea, or, if she had time, sambusas and tea. People from other East African countries came to the group. Sometimes they worshiped in Swahili.

Chege eventually grew more confident interacting with English-speaking church members. “I gained understanding,” she said. “It’s not their fault they cannot hear my language because we have a language barrier. I became more patient in listening more and trying to explain in different ways.”

There’s a painting hanging in the church sanctuary. It’s called The Table. It features a large, wooden table in the shape of a cross, with Jesus in a white robe sitting at the head, and people of various skin shades dining before him.

Tustin’s wife Rhonda painted that picture during the pandemic years—when the nation was upside down with civil unrest and racial tension—and she had her church family in mind. It’s a vision of reconciliation, of holy communion at the feet of Jesus, of a table where family members can feel so safe that they will freely voice their thoughts, disagree and forgive, compromise and celebrate.

It’s the vision that Tustin had for his church 12 years ago when he moved to Kent. The reality is not as beautiful or peaceful as the painting. The reality is messy, hard, and frustrating, and oftentimes disappointing.

Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

Tustin turns 62 this year. He doesn’t know how many years he has left as the senior pastor of this church, and he likes to quote an Indian proverb: “Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.”

He still has yearnings for his church that have not come to fruition. But, Tustin said, “I feel like the vision of the things we’re trying to do is bigger than my lifetime.”

What he is already seeing, however, sometimes brings tears to his eyes: listening to the kitchen workshop, seeing Chege and Reynolds lead, bumping into the Afghan women who gather for sewing classes in the church basement three days a week, watching church members from all walks of life pray over one another.

Each moment reminds him: It’s not his table. It’s the table Christ built, when he bore all sin and brokenness on the Cross and invited the whole world to join his family. It’s the table he set when he said, in the Gospel of Mark, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” ′

Sophia Lee is global staff writer at Christianity Today. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

This article appeared in the The Globe Issue 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Kitchen Aid".

- More from Sophia Lee

A Seattle-Area Ministry Wants More Cooks in the Kitchen

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

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Photo by Reva Keller

Chege and Tustin.

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Margaret Chege teaches students how to make Kenyan sambusas and mandazis in the World Relief Community Learning Kitchen.

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Margaret Chege teaches students how to make Kenyan sambusas and mandazis in the World Relief Community Learning Kitchen.

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The final product of Chege's demonstration: fresh sambusas and mandazis.

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

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The Paradise gardens are a place to create friendships: watering each other’s plants, sharing tips on gardening in a new climate, and learning about one another’s produce and seeds.

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

The Paradise gardens are a place to create friendships: watering each other’s plants, sharing tips on gardening in a new climate, and learning about one another’s produce and seeds.

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

The Paradise gardens are a place to create friendships: watering each other’s plants, sharing tips on gardening in a new climate, and learning about one another’s produce and seeds.

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Photos by Chona Kasinger

The Paradise gardens are a place to create friendships: watering each other’s plants, sharing tips on gardening in a new climate, and learning about one another’s produce and seeds.

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In Paradise Parking Plots—a parking lot converted to community gardens outside World Relief’s training kitchen—immigrants grow produce from their mother countries.

Church Life

Grace in Gangland

Jamie Dean

Amid violence and shortages, a Haitian pastor dares to believe that Jesus still fills the hungry.

Photo by Octavio Jones / Genesis

For the last few years, Haitian pastor Octavius Delfils has been preaching through the Gospel of John.

Throughout that time, Haiti has endured a presidential assassination, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, and a spiral of gang-fueled violence that has plunged the Caribbean nation into an even greater crisis than did the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people.

Another alarming trend: Nearly half the Haitian population is facing acute hunger. By the end of 2023, 97 percent of the population in some cities faced severe hunger, with most Haitians surviving on one meal a day.

Given the string of calamities, some pastors might consider turning to topical sermons: How should Christians respond to violence? To disaster? To poverty?

But Delfils feels his congregation in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is better served by focusing on Jesus’ words in the fourth Gospel:

“I am the good shepherd.”

“I am the bread of life.”

“The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly.”

Photo by Octavio Jones / Genesis

Pastor Octavius Delfils, at his church in Port au Prince, where he has served since 2010. For years now he and his congregants (about 70 in 2021) have battled high gas prices and shortages, and dangers from the gangs that now control the city.

What does abundant life look like in such dark days? How does a local pastor shepherd a congregation scattered across a dangerous city? How does a minister tend to bodies and souls hungry for daily bread and bread from heaven?

For Delfils, the answers are more ordinary than heroic. He preaches through the Scriptures in his local church. He feeds hungry children in his corner of the city. And as many Haitians flee the country, he stays.

Staying put is its own ministry in a nation where many aid organizations, foreign mission groups, and government entities no longer can run big programs because of perilous conditions. Daily provision now comes more modestly—often methodically, block by block, and sometimes pastor by pastor.

“I know that it’s dangerous,” Delfils says. “But I know that the Lord is there.”

Looking for danger is part of the pastor’s daily routine.

When he wakes in the morning, Delfils and his wife listen to the radio to plan their day. Is it safe to leave the house for groceries? For gas? Scanning Facebook and WhatsApp sharpens the picture, as ordinary Haitians offer intel on what parts of the city to avoid.

The situation changes daily. Gangs may block a neighborhood street for a few hours or a few days. Other parts of Port-au-Prince remain no-go areas, too unsafe to visit. Some areas are so treacherous that residents have abandoned their homes.

That includes Delfils.

The pastor once was building a home across town, after losing his previous house in the 2010 earthquake that leveled much of the capital. But now it’s too dangerous to visit his new home. Thieves took the water pump from the well outside. Delfils heard they stole building materials from the yard. A relative recently finished a house in the same neighborhood, only to have it looted.

“They came inside and took everything, all the furniture,” the pastor says. “Everything is gone.”

For now, Delfils leases a house near the congregation he serves that’s part of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Haiti.

Photo by Octavio Jones / Genesis

These days, sections of the city that once bustled with motorcycles and vendors and women carrying babies on their backs are now hushed. Running essential errands means heading out and coming back as quickly as possible. Often, Delfils says, “it’s like we are prisoners in our homes.”

As hard as other hard times have been in Haiti, Delfils, 55, says this is the worst he’s seen. Since Jovenel Moïse, Haiti’s last democratically elected president, was assassinated in 2021, entrenched gangs have filled a power vacuum and now control most of Port-au-Prince.

They also control major roads leading into the city—severing vital routes that businesses, hospitals, and aid groups depend on for transporting goods. Attempts at crossing gang-controlled areas risk extortion, robbery, or kidnapping.

Even in churches, long seen as sanctuaries, many leaders and worshipers no longer feel safe. Some church buildings have been attacked and looted. In one high-profile kidnapping, gunmen killed a deacon and snatched his wife outside a Baptist church on a Sunday morning. In another incident, assailants kidnapped members of a worship team during a live stream service.

The world was shocked when, in October 2021, the 400 Mawozo gang abducted a missionary team of 16 US and Canadian citizens outside Port-au-Prince. The gang demanded $1 million for each member of the group, most of whom remained in captivity for 61 days before escaping.

But Haitians are by far the most common targets for kidnappers, and the ransoms demanded are usually much smaller. Kidnappers sometimes pluck children from the street and demand whatever a family can afford.

Most church gatherings have been spared, but many church members wonder: How now shall we gather?

For Delfils, the answer hasn’t been easy, but it’s been clear: We keep coming to the house of the Lord.

Preparing for Sunday mornings starts on Mondays.

As Delfils studies the Gospel of John for his sermon, he also studies any hot spots near the church to make sure worshipers can get to the building. Usually, they can. But occasionally, blocked roads make access to the area impossible and some decide to
stay home.

One woman told Delfils that two Sundays she was stopped by armed men in the street on her way to church. (They eventually let her pass.)

Another pastoral task: How to shepherd the flock during the week? Delfils describes this as one of his biggest burdens. He wants to be able to visit church members, but often it’s too unsafe or roads aren’t accessible.

Photo by Octavio Jones / Genesis

While phone calls and Facebook messages help, the pastor longs to be in living rooms with his church members and next to their hospital beds, helping them face the traumas of their everyday.

“We had one lady who was kidnapped at her work,” Delfils says. “She’s a nurse and she was working during the night and people came with weapons and kidnapped her.” At least three of his church members have been chased from their homes and can’t return. One family has chosen to stay in a dangerous area, and Delfils worries about them.

Some members are burdened for their pastor. When a gang briefly took over Haiti’s main fuel depot and triggered a severe gasoline shortage, friends dropped by Delfils’s home to share a few gallons with him, making sure he could drive to church on Sunday morning.

Travel may be complex, but the heart of Sunday services remains simple: The congregation sings, prays, confesses their faith, listens to the pastor’s sermon, witnesses baptisms, and takes the Lord’s Supper. Delfils says the ordinary means of grace strengthen God’s people for extraordinary times.

People sometimes question whether they should meet in person, but Delfils insists that the church remain open. “I explain that we need to continue to serve the Lord,” he says. “We can do that.” He says while online meetings are occasionally necessary, “the fellowship of the church—we cannot replace that. . . . We don’t want to miss being face-to-face.”

Another thing that can’t be replaced: the Lord’s Supper. The church has been able to buy bread and still has enough communion cups to keep serving the congregation.

Once a month, the Lord’s table stands as a reminder: Jesus is living bread, broken for sinners living in a broken world. And sometimes the Bread of Life surprises his children with joy.

In John 6, Jesus is concerned about a crowd of hungry people.

They’ve been following him in a remote place and listening to his teaching. Jesus asks one of his disciples where they can buy bread so the people can eat. Philip balks at the impossibility of the question, but Andrew points out a boy with five loaves and two fish.

Jesus feeds the 5,000.

Photo by Octavio Jones / Genesis

In much of Haiti, hunger seems like an impossible problem. The UN World Food Program (WFP) reports the country has one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity, with more than half of its population chronically food insecure and 22 percent of children chronically malnourished.

Between August 2023 and February 2024 alone, the price of food rose by 22 percent, making it even less affordable for millions of Haitians.

Delfils translates the statistics to daily life: A single meal from a street vendor can cost about a day’s wages for a typical Haitian worker. For some, wages are far lower and food far more expensive. Delfils estimates the average family subsists on one meal a day.

“I don’t know how people are living with the money they make,” he says. “It’s a miracle they are.”

Delfils hasn’t miraculously fed 5,000 people, but he has methodically fed 500. That’s the number of children who attend the school Delfils helps to run. He’s taught at the Christian school for years, and his church has long met on the grounds. But when missionaries associated with the project had to flee the country, Delfils and local workers kept the K–12 school going.

For many children, the daily meal of rice, beans, and meat is a literal lifeline. Donors outside Haiti help fund the food budget that’s almost as much as the budget for salaries. Delfils finds children and their parents aren’t just hungry for food. They’re hungry to learn and grow—to keep coming to school, despite the dangers.

When the church organized a Vacation Bible School program over the summer, 300 children showed up. In the comfort of a secure compound, “they spent the days learning from the Word, playing games,” Delfils says. “It was a lot of joy.”

It was so much joy, a couple dozen of the children kept coming back for Sunday school on Sunday mornings, joining church members already gathering to feed on fellowship and the Bread of Life Jesus revealed himself to be in the Gospel of John.

Delfils says that gives him hope at a time when many concerned friends and family members are urging him to leave Haiti. The people need a shepherd, he says. And Haiti needs the church.

“The only place where change can start is for the church to listen to the Word and live the Word, and people will see how we have hope in the midst of the catastrophe in Haiti,” he says.

“I believe only the Lord can do something for Haiti.”

Jamie Dean is a North Carolina-based journalist with two decades of experience in domestic and international reporting.

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Church Life

He Befriended His Family’s Murderer

Ellen Vaughn

A neighbor killed a pastor’s wife and children during Rwanda’s genocide. Years later, they’re preaching together.

Illustration by Matt Williams

Gahigi Stephen and Sendageya Matias were once neighbors in a small village near Rwanda’s border with Burundi. Stephen, a Tutsi, is tall and slender with a broad smile. A pastor, he had a wife and children and a small farm where he raised cows.

Matias, a Hutu, has widely spaced dark eyes, a humble manner, and a ready smile. He and Stephen were friends. Once, when the pastor saw that Matias was in need, he gave him a cow—a gift that provided milk, manure for crops, and extra income.

In April 1994, Stephen knew that something terrible was going to happen. He had heard about killings in other areas. In the rural countryside, the machetes had all been sharpened.

Stephen and his family fled their home. If they could only get to the border with Burundi, perhaps they’d be safe. They and other Tutsis from the village ran through fields of sorghum, pushing through thick jungle bushes in the night. As they neared the border, there was a burst of gunfire. Stephen saw friends and neighbors running one second and then punched down by bullets the next, lying still in the dirt. Stephen and his family were surrounded. He saw Matias, his Hutu neighbor and friend in the darkness, a machete in his hand. The man’s face did not look right.

“I was filled with hate,” Matias says now. “The government supported us; they told us to go and kill. The district officials told us to get going, do your work, massacre them all.”

Matias was 37 at the time. He felt like Satan was twisting his mind. “I was in a terrible state. I would kill people and take their clothes. Even the women we found dead, we would take their clothes.

Illustration by Matt Williams

“I went to Pastor Stephen’s family with so much hate. I wanted to do harm even though he had given me a cow. I killed the rest of his cows. I killed six of his family.”

In the chaos of that horrific night, after Stephen recognized his neighbor among the angry mob, the pastor became separated from his family. He ran again through the bush. He heard a child crying. He stopped. In the dim light he could see a boy, about four years old, whimpering near the base of a tree, blood all over him.

“My heart!” Stephen says with tears even now, three decades later. In his confusion and terror, he had almost not recognized his own son. He rushed to the tree and knelt in the dirt. He whispered to the child, “Who am I? Who am I?”

“Papa!” cried his son.

Stephen scooped up his only surviving child and ran and ran and ran. He and his son made it to Burundi.

In 2024, Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary of its genocide, which began after assailants shot down a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda’s Hutu-led government blamed the crash on Tutsi rebels, unleashing a campaign of systematic killings of Tutsis. They used machetes, guns, and clubs to kill 800,000 people in 100 days.

“Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss, and the lessons we learned are engraved in blood,” President Paul Kagame said at an April 2024 ceremony.

When the genocide was over and almost a million people lay dead, Stephen returned to his village. Matias was arrested and thrown into prison, along with tens of thousands of his fellow perpetrators.

Stephen had survived. But each day was excruciating for him. “How could innocent people be killed like this?” he says. “I was full of hate. I didn’t want to see or hear people like Matias. So much pain. In Rwandan culture, men are not supposed to cry. I had my life and my little son; I was lucky. But I had lost everything else. My wife, my other children, my aunties, my parents, my sisters. I was hungry. I was poor. Nothing!”

It was hard to pray. When Stephen did, pouring out his pain to God, there was only silence. Then one night Stephen felt God say to him, “I want to take away your pain. I have preserved you to use you. I want to use you to show my glory.”

Stephen wept and punched his fists in the dirt. He sobbed all night. Then, impossibly, in the morning he began to feel rest. “I began to feel a new mind,” he says. “Christ, on the cross, said, ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.’ My boss Jesus Christ went through this. I began to take small steps.”

In taking those steps, Stephen discovered that forgiveness could mean life for him. Without forgiveness, he would spend the rest of his years in a bitter monotony of mental torture and anger. And if Christ had the power to forgive, then surely he would share that power with Stephen.

It wasn’t merely an internal mental or spiritual process. Forgiveness required small, active steps—doing what Stephen perceived God was telling him to do.

So the pastor went to preach the gospel at the stinking, overcrowded prison where Matias and other killers were behind bars. When Matias saw the pastor in the crowd in the prison yard, he hid. He knew Stephen had come to kill him. And he understood why.

Photo courtesy of ICM

Ellen Vaughn, an author and speaker based in northern Virginia, reported this story from Kigali, Rwanda.

Stephen did find Matias. He told him a few simple facts. Because of Jesus, Stephen told Matias, he had forgiven him for killing his family. He told Matias that if he repented, God would forgive him. God could make him new.

No. Matias couldn’t believe it. Too good to be true. Impossible.

But eventually, Matias began to believe Stephen’s sincerity, and the power of his forgiveness helped him believe his message. He confessed his crimes to God, to Stephen, and to government authorities. He told Stephen where his family’s bodies had been thrown on that dark night years earlier. Stephen found a measure of closure in news that he could bury their remains.

After almost 10 years in prison, Matias was released. He’s in his late 60s now. Most days he meets up with Stephen. “He drives me in his car,” Matias says. “I share food with him. We want to carry this message of forgiveness and reconciliation all over Rwanda.”

They speak to Rwandan groups and visitors to tell their story and show the miracle of their rekindled friendship. Matias speaks simply about the darkness of the past. He doesn’t philosophize. “I was saved. I felt my guilt removed. Now Stephen and I are friends.”

Stephen feels the same way. He says that forgiveness and a desire for reconciliation don’t come from human determination, but from the power of the Holy Spirit.

“After the genocide I had many enemies,” he says. “Now, because I forgave, I have no enemies. And I have a friend. Matias.”

Ellen Vaughn, an author and speaker based in northern Virginia, reported this story from Kigali, Rwanda. Her latest book is Being Elisabeth Elliot.

This article appeared in the The Globe Issue 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Impossible Friendship".

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Church Life

Grown Old in ‘A Wild Place’

Mindy Belz

During 64 years in Thailand, Allan and Joan Eubank have planted churches and started schools and ridden elephants and sent a dance troupe to the White House. They’re not done yet.

Photos by Todd Brown

The main road to the home of Allan and Joan Eubank runs through Maejo, a district of Chiang Mai that once brimmed with rice fields. Today, many of the watery fields have been built over with shops and gas stations. Nearing the house that Allan Eubank designed and built 30 years ago, there’s newer development too: basketball courts, a community center, and a church the Eubanks helped to start.

I arrive to mud underfoot in their unpaved driveway and rain pinging off the tin roof. It’s the wet season in northern Thailand, and the water is rising in a rice field visible just beyond the porch. Rain slushes off mango and banana trees in the yard.

“When we first came to Thailand, we had no hot water and no phone,” said Joan, who was 28 years old when she joined her husband on this mission field in 1961. “To call home to talk to my folks, I stood in line once a year at midnight and waited to reach them in Texas. I paid 80 baht for three minutes [about $4 at the time]. That was our only connection to home, besides returning to the States every four years.”

Photo courtesy of the Eubank family

Allan, who speaks in a deep marbly Texas accent, said, “It was a wild place then. Everyone had guns or knives and was ready to use them. But God was with us.”

Joan is 92 and Allan is 95. The couple have called Thailand home for almost 64 years. At the start, they seemed an unlikely pair to land on any mission field.

Joan Hovis left college her freshman year to join the United Service Organizations, which supports active-duty military personnel, as a singer. She eventually auditioned for Rodgers and Hammerstein, the composer-lyricist duo that revolutionized the American musical. She starred in numerous Broadway shows they created and in 1950s television shows.

Photos by Todd Brown

Joan first met Allan at a USO show in Korea in 1953, where he was serving with the Army Corps of Engineers. “She had an aura of goodness,” he recalls.

After helping with the show, Allan wrote to Joan and followed her career. A geological engineer, he left the army after the war to join the Texas oil boom. It was a gold-rush time to work for Standard Oil, but Allan couldn’t shake a nagging call to the mission field.

Joan was living in New York by then, where she became friends with Julie Andrews and an understudy for Broadway star Barbara Cook. She traveled to London to perform in the West End production of the musical Plain and Fancy, then to Brussels to play the lead role in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel at the 1958 World’s Fair. She won the lead for the traveling Broadway hit Oklahoma!—which took her across the United States and to Fort Worth, Texas.

Joan says she was learning that it “wasn’t hard” to be a Christian in show business at that time, but she was “serving myself when I wanted to be serving others.”

By 1958, Allan had won acceptance by the Disciples of Christ mission board and enrolled at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, where he reconnected with Joan. When the Oklahoma! tour ended in 1959, they married. They had a son, David, the following year. In 1961, they set off for Thailand.

Now, more than six decades later, both missionaries retain vivid recall of those early times. They also can recount in detail the Thai people who would make up all their next chapters together.

As the rain slacks outside, we sit at a round table off their kitchen before large bowls of khao soi, a northern Thai curry noodle soup. Around us the walls are covered in photos and Thai art. Through open windows doves coo in the yard. As they talk, the Eubanks complete each other’s sentences. Allan acknowledges he talks too much and prompts Joan to share more of her own stories.

Joan had a stroke in November 2022 that affected her short-term memory and forced her to slow down. She uses a walker now. She works a soft toy in her hand to strengthen weak muscles, but her eyes still sparkle with warmth and interest in everyone at the table.

Joan will sing when asked—a classical, lyric soprano that can overcome a voice shaky with age. She’s also quick to correct Allan on details surrounding their early beginnings and the struggle to make Thailand their home.

Following language training in Bangkok, the family (now including a daughter), moved in 1963 to the village of Sam Yaek, 50 miles from the capital.

“Bangkok was more cosmopolitan than I expected,” Joan says, “but when we got out in the country, we were 20 years without phones or hot water.” There were no schools or good roads. A generator provided electricity at night.

“We had help, we had community, Joan was teaching, and soon we had three children,” Allan said. They eventually had a fourth.

By then Allan already had made his first foray to the Burmese border in an effort to meet with the Talako, a remote sect of the Karen tribe that had not been reached by Christians. The team, which included a doctor, nurse, and local guides, had to cross three jungle-covered mountain ranges to reach the Talako chief at Laytongku village, a 21-day trip. They traveled by train, then up the Kwai River by boat. After resting the night at a mission hospital, the team rode elephants for 12 days to reach the village.

There would be more arduous expeditions year upon year, and times also when the missionaries were warned to stay away. It was 2008—decades later—before Allan first baptized a Talako man.

“They expected the white brethren to bring power and prosperity, but all we brought was Jesus,” Allan said.

“There were no churches in that whole border area,” Allan said. “Now there are twenty.”

Two years ago, when Allan was 93, he returned to help dedicate a pair of churches, one of which had more than 100 members and was in Laytongku.

The Eubanks crossed a long list of barriers. They helped bring Christian teaching to the Lao Song villages that surrounded Sam Yaek. (The Lao Song originated in Laos and Vietnam and held to a blend of animism and Buddhism and the worship of ancestral spirits.)

In the 1990s, Allan worked alongside his son David to further missionary work among the Wa people, another ancient people group living in areas of Burma and China bordering Thailand. The Wa were known as headhunters, opium producers, drug lords, and communists. But as conversions and churches increased, the Wa sought mission leaders like Allan to help establish schools, orphanages, and health care, and for help translating scripture.

With each breakthrough, the Eubanks say now, they underestimated the power of spiritual warfare and had to learn new ways to confront it. They are candid about facing their own temptations too. They would redouble their prayers against evil and work harder to get to know local people, especially those captive to spirit worship and idols. Sometimes they had to listen more and talk less.

Photos by Todd Brown

The entrance to Jordan Pond, where the Eubanks have hosted about 300 baptisms.

As they did, the Eubanks found many were weary of poverty, empty rituals, spirit houses, and shelves of carved images. They encountered people longing for lasting hope. Sometimes Allan simply laid his Bible on a shelf next to Buddhas or idols, he said, and that was enough to spark a conversation and curiosity about Christ.

“Our battle, like Ephesians 6, is not against flesh and blood. This I wasn’t taught in seminary,” he says.

In 1980, with Joan’s training in theater and growing cross-cultural experience, the Eubanks brought to life a new kind of dream: they started a Thai folk-dance troupe.

Some Christians opposed traditional dance and drama performances, called likay, because they drew on pagan traditions. But the Eubanks were determined to use Thai music and instruments in worship, and they saw a way to incorporate Christian themes and stories into likay—popular events that drew many Thais who would never attend church. The Eubanks consulted with music teachers at Payap University in Chiang Mai. Eventually, they partnered with the university to form the troupe. Its first dance was based on Psalm 150; later performances acted out parables.

The Thai Folk Drama Troupe was successful enough to go on international tour in the 1980s and 90s, visiting China, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. It performed at the White House in 1987, and in Manila at the Lausanne II Congress on world evangelization in 1989.

The Eubanks helped start the Thai Christian Foundation to accept donations to further the arts and fund local health, education, and development work.

Thailand’s Christian numbers remain low—only about 1.2 percent of the total population—but Allan still sees results from missionary efforts. “Even though there aren’t many Christians, I think Christian missions have changed Thai society,” he says. “We saw schools spread, and kids become teachers all over the rural areas, leading to more good work, roads and electricity.”

Photos by Todd Brown

The Eubanks host Bible studies in their living room.

The Eubanks’s work spread within their own family too. Son David founded Free Burma Rangers, an international humanitarian medic corps based in neighboring Burma (or Myanmar). Three daughters all are teachers: Ruthanne, a drama teacher in Kosovo; Laurie teaches in Japan; and Suwannee teaches art in Beijing. The couple have nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who are part Thai. Grandson Dave Dawson married Mint, a Thai from the Lahu and Wa tribes the family continues to work with.

It’s late afternoon and the two Burmese women who help Joan in the kitchen are serving us coffee and brownies with cream at her request. Both refugees, they want to tell me how they became Christians, and Joan translates. The women first learned about Christ in Burma, but it’s easy to see how they benefited from a long-standing network of missionaries across the region, generations of people like the Eubanks who took on spiritual warfare and faced down their own temptations in order to reach people groups who had never heard about Christ.

“The mission taught us: Don’t retire on the field,” Allan says. “But you immerse yourself in the culture and the language, and it becomes your life.”

When it came time to leave active service, the Eubanks received a call to a church in Texas. As they prepared to leave Thailand, Allan says he realized, “I heard the Lord call me to Thailand, but I never heard him call me home.”

Joan says she felt the same.

Instead of moving back to the United States, they retired from their mission agency and used their Thailand-based foundation to carry on their work, with others taking over much of the organization. They built their Chiang Mai home, and it became a hub for family, friends, and expat Christians.

Joan and Allan served on the mission field for 39 years and now have served in the same field as retirees for 25. “The joy of being here is that God can use us late in life,” Allan says.

The couple no longer travels to the States. Everyone in the family is usually together in Chiang Mai for Christmas (and plans to be again in 2024).

Was there ever a time you wanted to give up? I ask as the afternoon darkens toward evening.

“Yes!” they both answer at the same time.

But Allan pauses as the rain beats down again outside, then says, “Staying on has helped us to learn that God can use weak and poor people like us.”

On any day they are surrounded by a community of fellow believers, members of their own family but also many Thai locals whom they’ve led to Christ. Allan has built other houses adjoining his property for some of them, with a church just down the road where they remain active. At a watering hole behind the house dubbed Jordan Pond, Allan says he and other church leaders have baptized 300 people over the years. When the rains let up, Allan has a ready list of more candidates for baptisms.

Mindy Belz is editor of the Globe Issue and is former senior editor at World magazine. She reported this story from Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This article appeared in the The Globe Issue 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "A Long Obedience and then Another".

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Grown Old in ‘A Wild Place’

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The entrance to Jordan Pond, where the Eubanks have hosted about 300 baptisms.

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The Eubanks host Bible studies in their living room.

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Church Life

Meals with Jesus

Mindy Belz

A note from the editor.

Photography by Jen Judge

Back at the turn of the century, I sat under moonlight on a charred log with a clutch of Sudanese women making coffee over an open fire.

It was the most absolute darkness I’d ever experienced. No one for perhaps a hundred miles had electricity. Before us, a circle of Sudanese church leaders with a sprinkling of rebel guards spoke quietly. Behind us, barely a mile or two, soldiers from Sudan’s army mustered in garrison towns, eager to overtake this area.

The lights of a star-filled sky suffused the arid ground where we sat, an encampment near the Ethiopian border of Blue Nile State. Surrounding villages housed thousands of Christian South Sudanese, who hunkered down in their huts amid an armed conflict with the government that was already nearly 20 years old by the time I arrived in 2000.

War survivors still drink coffee, and they want to show hospitality to guests. The women spread green unroasted beans in a shallow tin held over glowing coals. Under darkness they relied on the crack of the coffee beans to know when they were done. Once the beans had browned, they passed the tin around for us to smell then ground it fine using a wooden mortar and pestle.

One of the women set the jebena, a pear-shaped Ethiopian coffee pot, over the flame, sieved the coffee into it, then nestled it into the coals to heat. Soon the aroma rose in the night air, a multitude of herbs, caramel, and spice. A slight woman lifted the jebena and strained coffee through a mat of woven dried palm leaves into our small tin cups, serving the men first then us.

I wanted that thimble of coffee never to end.

A man began to sing an Uduk hymn. Everyone joined, an African harmony sung in five-tone scale that I imagined drifting out over this cloaked continent and rising to the heavens. I have the recording of it still. Listening a quarter century later I see the Sudanese faces shining with faith and joy. I taste the richness of the coffee and feel the peacefulness that could envelop a wartime night.

Whether by starlight, candlelight, sunlight, or overhead light, meals with Jesus transform our days. Yet sometimes we don’t realize we are having them. A simple coffee made possible by some of the poorest people on earth became a stilled moment of communion during some of my hardest reporting days.

Food and cooking “stop us dead in our tracks with wonder,” writes author Robert Farrar Capon in The Supper of the Lamb. “Even more they sit us down, evening after evening, and in the company that forms around our dinner tables, they actually create our humanity.”

The Old and New Testament writers understood this. Feasts are for remembrance, for strengthening our communities, for serving, and for welcoming strangers. Jesus straddled the opulence of the Roman world and the agrarian society of ancient Israel, and he shows his people how to feast at a groaning board or at a spare table with a piece of bread and a sip of wine.

Christianity Today’s Globe series began as a way to spotlight snapshots in the life of the church around the world. For this year’s Globe issue, we selected writers who could travel the world—North, South, East, and West—to see how the church is answering at quarter-century the ancient question found in Psalm 78: Can God set a table in the wilderness?

One way we know the church of Christ is alive in the world—despite news of scarcity, scandal, and division—is to see it feeding people literally and equipping them spiritually.

In this issue we meet a pastor in Haiti who feeds 500 children at a K-12 school despite gang-led roadblocks and the flight of Western aid.

We see how the church-run supply lines of Ukraine persist, then cross enemy lines to learn how Mennonite farmers for more than a century have worked Russia’s Siberian soil into crops feeding communities near and far.

In Vietnam we visit a once-seedy village of opium addicts, transformed through one-by-one conversions into a brimming market town that draws many visitors.

At a seed lab ministry in Thailand, Asians learn to revive local crop strains to combat food scarcity. Explains the director, “We’ve seen pastors come to us, saying, ‘We are planting a church to share the gospel, but of course we’re going to help our neighbors with food insecurity. Jesus met people’s physical needs, so why wouldn’t we?’”

Jesus indeed came to earth prepared to meet physical needs. This strengthened communities as it also was a way to the heart, the mind, and the soul. Meals with Jesus became material assurance and also metaphor.

At the home of Mary and Martha, at Peter’s house, and Matthew’s home. Out in a desolate place. In Cana, Capernaum, Bethany, and Jerusalem. By Jacob’s well in Samaria in the heat of day. On the sea at night. And there on the beach at the dawn of a new day.

We have a glad Savior who quit the table of the Upper Room and took on death so he could fry fish, break bread, and share wine—or water drawn from a well or fresh-roasted coffee—into eternity with us.

The stories here are only a foretaste of a global church that today is feeding and caring for neighbors around the world. Eat and drink up.

Mindy Belz is editor of the Globe Issue and is former senior editor at World magazine.

- More from Mindy Belz

Ideas

Meet the Christian Cyborg Who Named His Brain Chip Eve

Interview by Maaike E. Harmsen

Elon Musk’s first Neuralink recipient is a believer, both in God and in the future of cybernetic enhancement.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, WikiMedia Commons

It’s officially been one year since Noland Arbaugh, a 30-year-old Christian, became the first human recipient of a Neuralink brain-machine interface chip.

In 2016, a spinal-cord injury from a swimming accident left Arbaugh with quadriplegia—able to breathe and speak but unable to move his arms or legs. Now, with the Neuralink implant, nicknamed Telepathy, Arbaugh can control a computer cursor just by imagining movement, allowing him to play chess and engage with others on social media.

The brain chip bypasses Arbaugh’s damaged nervous system and transmits movement-related signals to Neuralink’s computers, where a supercomputer processes the data and translates his thoughts into action. While the implant enables Arbaugh to interact with technology in groundbreaking ways, it only sends data out of his brain—it cannot receive or modify input.

Neuralink is a company formed by SpaceX and Tesla co-owner and engineer Elon Musk with the mission to “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.”

Many are praising this advance in neurotechnology, especially for its ability to enhance the quality of life for those who suffer from neurological disabilities, like Arbaugh. Yet others have raised significant ethical concerns, including data privacy and security, potential risks for users, and equitable access.

After seeing Arbaugh post about his faith last year, CT reached out to ask him how he grapples with the implications of this technology—its promises as well as its ethical and theological tensions. He shared about the abundance of Christians in the neurotechnology field, the reasons he named his brain implant Eve, and his spiritual journey throughout the process. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from?

I’m from a smallish city called Yuma, Arizona. It’s basically in the middle of a desert. It was always hot here. I grew up in a nondenominational church, around 2,000 members. My mom started going to a church here when I was a little kid. I worked with her. I worked at a summer camp for kids when I was in college. So I was always in the church. I was a student leader at my church when I was in high school. And so it was fun growing up; it was a really good time.

My college studies were international studies with an emphasis in politics and diplomacy. I wasn’t planning on using that specifically for anything. I was always interested in politics, and I was always interested in the world in general. And so it seemed to fit with my interests, but ultimately I was going to use it to possibly go to law school.

How did your accident change your life and faith?

Within the first year after my accident, I had just met someone, and the first thing he asked me was “Do you ever consider suicide?” I think it’s a valid question for someone in my position. A lot of people struggle with whether or not it’s even worth living at this point. I need someone to help me with just about everything in my life. I’m an incredible burden on all those around me.

I’ve been incredibly blessed to have a family who was willing to take me in and to ultimately just love me and say that it is worth still having you around. I believe personally that that day that I was injured, it was not an end to my life, but a beginning in a lot of ways. I believe God saved me that day. The path that I was on before my accident is something that I’ve thought about tremendously.

Even though I grew up in the church, when I went to college I definitely didn’t live a godly life at all for years. And I wasn’t planning on it. My goal was to go and do everything I want to do when I’m young, and then when I get older, I’ll settle down and turn back to God—I’ll do it on my time, on my terms. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but I was on a path to destruction, and God saved me that day. There were times where I was incredibly angry, bitter. But ultimately, I knew in my heart that I would always turn back to God. And so I’ve always felt as if I had a purpose.

I found very early on that maybe my purpose is not to be a Job. I’m sure many people believe that they are Job in their lives, that their story is Job’s. I thought very early on that maybe I was one of Job’s children who got killed in a terrible accident and my mom is Job—and I am her tribulation.

How would you describe your reasons to apply for Neuralink?

I had no idea what Neuralink was when I first was given the opportunity to apply. My buddy called me one day and said Neuralink opened up their human trials: “Do you want to get a chip in your brain?” We applied right then and there over the phone. He filled it out for me. We made some jokes about it just because I wasn’t taking it incredibly seriously. I said I wanted an Iron Man suit in the application letter.

In the process of becoming the first patient, did you talk about your faith in your daily life?

No, I don’t think it came up at all, honestly. Not at first, at least. In this field, I don’t expect to see a lot of religious people—in the tech field, the medical side of things. But then we started meeting people face-to-face, and they met with me and my mom. My mom is very open with everyone about her faith, so it very quickly became known who we were.

And I was blown away by the number of people who shared our beliefs. I think about everyone that I met on the medical side; the vast majority of them were Christians. We very quickly connected with all of them on a very personal level. And it became more of an open discussion.

When I went in to do my surgery, the last thing I did before they put me under anesthesia was ask if I could pray over the room. And so I prayed over all the surgeons and the nurses and everyone that was a part of this. My prayer was put on the hospital intercom, and even Elon was listening in by phone. I especially prayed for my mom because I knew she was going to be a wreck while I was having brain surgery.

How has this whole process of getting an implant and meeting those people influenced your faith?

It made me step out of my comfort zone quite a bit. I was always very afraid about excluding people from this process or offending people. I thought it was my responsibility to be a good advocate for Neuralink. Posting for the first time on X about my faith was one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my life. I was extremely afraid. I was more afraid about posting about my faith than I was about the brain surgery. The brain surgery was so simple!

I noticed you named your implant Eve. Why is that?

There were a few different reasons why I chose the name Eve. I’ve always loved the name Genevieve. And then there’s WALL-E and EVE, or Eva. So I thought that’s kind of cute, being robotic and everything. I also said we’re on the eve of something great with Neuralink. Then, obviously, God made Adam, and he gave Adam a helper named Eve. And I always like to throw in a little joke: Adam and Eve cursed humanity, and so I said maybe it’ll be the same thing with me and this implant.

Elon Musk has mentioned two other goals for the future of Neuralink apart from helping people with spinal injuries: He said it could help us prevent the AI overlords from overtaking us. And he said it could help us to have a kind of enhancement, like an extra brain connection to a computer, so he can finally work on his electric-airplane business. What do you think about those goals?

I’m really excited about that sort of future. I believe that cybernetic enhancement is really fascinating. I know when that day comes, it might be a much different story about how it’s implemented and how it’s controlled. I don’t believe that’s ever stopped us from moving forward in the past. You would hope that it would give people pause to think through the ramifications—to think through exactly what direction we’re going and how it is handled.

You are training the Neuralink machine, but the machine is training you as well to learn to move the cursor by thought. How do you feel about that? And how is your brain data protected?

I learn the little quirks of the implant and the software side of things just as much as it learns from me. Who knows what I’m changing in the brain just from having this implant? Maybe that will become apparent in five or ten years.

Neuralink has my data; I don’t care what happens in 50 years. As far as my data goes, very specifically, they’re allowed to do whatever they want with it. I don’t do anything bad on my computer, so I’m not worried about my data. I feel confident that my data is stored safely with Neuralink since they have good cybersecurity and firewalls.

Are there any boundaries in what you want the machine to be trained in?

I don’t want this to become a situation where you can control people’s minds, control people’s thoughts—where you can write onto someone’s brain things that you would like them to see or hear or act. But I think there is almost an infinite number of applications, such as being able to input and output different languages. So those sorts of things I’m really excited for. Again, I’m blown away by what the Neuralink is capable of, and it’s just implanted in my motor cortex.

Neuralink now has specific motor-cortex data which could be duplicated in an Optimus Robot from Tesla. There are many technological possibilities we can think of. But how might you personally, as Noland Arbaugh, the first Neuralink patient, make a difference for the future of technology?

I have a vision of what the brain-machine implant can be used for, and I hope that those visions come true in 50 years. Anything technology can be used for good or bad. The internet, telephone, and any technological advancement can be used for good and bad. It is a tool for humans to use. I am extremely positive on that front—that the people who will use this, the vast majority of them, will use it for good.

I have no doubt in my mind that there will be people who use it negatively. That is just a fact of life. But that goes for everything in our world. Humans are good and evil. And this technology shouldn’t be hindered because of that. I don’t think it will be, so it gives me a lot of hope for the future. I think the good will far outweigh the bad.

You’re very aware of your position and role as the first patient, and you’re an ambassador for Neuralink, but you also have a chance to talk with the developers. Do you think, as a Christian, you have something special to bring to the table in the ethical discourse surrounding this technology?

I hope this is something that I am more comfortable talking about as time goes on. It’s not something that I am extraordinarily well-versed in. I do believe that as a Christian, I have a unique perspective on all this. I have found that a lot of people I work with on the Neuralink side also share my beliefs, and they also share my vision of wanting to help people with disabilities first.

As a Christian, I hope to give this discourse an extra layer of something that maybe they’re missing if they’re just looking at things from the business or tech or science side of things. Hopefully, I can be there to bring a different perspective—and ultimately my platform to spread the Good News so that, if nothing else, people might hear about Jesus.

Some see human beings as essentially just slow computers held together by meat—reducing us to the biological. What do you think of that?

If we were just the body, if everything was just neurons firing in our brain, we wouldn’t be who we are. Our conscience gives us our morals in the world, and I believe all of that comes back to God ultimately. Without our conscience, we have no connection with God. But how much of the brain can you take away and still have a conscience? Where is it located? If we took away half of the brain, would you still have a conscience?

As a Christian, how do you view the human body, the bodily resurrection, and the soul?

There’s a lot to look forward to in the Resurrection, and it’s not just about a bodily resurrection. It’s not just about being in our perfect bodies. It’s about having a complete resurrection of the soul and of being finally in the presence of God. I do want a body that is perfect, but even more I want this desire for sin to be gone.

We talked about faith and technology. Some Christians say technology distracts us from God. What is your view?

Yeah, it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. It’s something that I am not sure I fully appreciate but I’m working toward—because anything can become an idol in our world. Anything can become a distraction, something that we treasure in our heart more than God—and that has nothing to do with the item. We need to learn to treasure God first and to be able to put aside these distractions.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t still useful. It doesn’t mean we can’t still push the boundaries of things. I’ve been given this opportunity to be a part of this study and to use the Neuralink for whatever I want, for as long as I want. And what am I going to do with it? After eight years of being paralyzed and not being able to do anything, am I going to take this and now turn away from God because I don’t need him anymore?

I have just been reading The Reason for God by Tim Keller. He says that what people don’t realize is that freedom is not about being free from every constraint. It’s about finding the constraints that give you the most freedom—the freedom that comes with being a Christian.

Maaike E. Harmsen is theologian earning a PhD in new technologies and Reformed philosophy.

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News

Apologist Wesley Huff Goes to Modern-Day Mars Hill: Joe Rogan’s Podcast

Kate Shellnutt

The even-keeled Canadian scholar is amassing a growing platform to defend and explain early biblical texts after a viral debate and popular interview.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Youtube

Apologist Wesley Huff’s modest YouTube following of around 1,200 surged to 450,000 this month. Hundreds have reached out to say they have picked up a Bible, started going to church, or professed faith because of something he said. His parachurch organization, Apologetics Canada, is fielding record levels of interest.

It’s a spotlight the 33-year-old Canadian PhD student never expected.

But on January 7, Huff became the first biblical scholar to join the ranks of over a thousand celebrities, fitness gurus, philosophers, scientists, authors, activists, conspiracy theorists, and skeptics who have appeared on the most popular podcast in the world, The Joe Rogan Experience.

Huff landed an invite to the show after a viral debate on YouTube with a former Rogan guest got the host’s attention. Rogan, a comedian and fighting commentator, has branded himself a truth seeker, building a massive audience around his winding, off-the-cuff interviews with friends and guests over the past decade.

Huff presented historical evidence for the accuracy of the Scripture and asked the host what he thinks of Jesus. Christian listeners celebrated his episode as a sign that Rogan’s skepticism has been shifting toward openness to faith. Since the show has 33.5 million followers across Spotify and YouTube, some commentators suggest Huff’s interview could represent “the single widest-reaching broadcast of the gospel message in history.”

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A post shared by Wesley Huff (@wesley_huff)

It’s all a bit overwhelming. Huff said he’s offsetting his imposter syndrome by reminding himself that only God could orchestrate such an unexpected connection.

“I’ve felt more reliant on the Spirit’s leading than I have for a long time,” Huff said.

In his testimony, Huff recounts how he was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down at age 11, then totally healed four weeks later. He remembers it as the craziest month of his life. This month might rank second, he told CT, and become another turning point in his faith story.

The attention began in December, when Huff—who researches early Christian manuscripts, ancient languages, and scribal transmission—posted the full two-hour video of his debate with Billy Carson, an author who claims aliens visited ancient civilizations and denies the Crucifixion.

With restrained patience, a library of scholarship behind him, and a kind, Southern Ontarian lilt in his voice, Huff defended Scripture and dismantled the authority of certain noncanonical and plagiarized texts cited by Carson, such as the Gospel of Barnabas.

The debate went viral, and Carson, who didn’t want it released, threatened Huff with a cease-and-desist letter. Meanwhile, Rogan sent Huff a direct message on Instagram to ask him on his show.

The invitation came on Christmas Eve, right as Huff and his wife were scrambling to find a missing stocking, but the apologist immediately agreed to an in-person interview scheduled less than a week later.

Rogan’s podcast draws a largely young male audience, and around 90 percent of its guests are men. Huff considers himself a “semi-regular” listener. A doctorate student at University of Toronto’s Wycliffe College, he has made several videos in response to Rogan’s inaccurate claims or questions about the Bible over the years, including the theory that New Testament stories came from psychedelic mushroom hallucinations.

Rogan has been widely criticized for spreading misinformation, entertaining conspiracy theories, and platforming false ideas. His fans appreciate his openness and curiosity, his willingness to change his mind, and the way his conversations can really go anywhere.

By the time Rogan asked him on the show, Huff already knew Rogan’s interview style and propensity for tangents; his historical interest in figures like Marcus Aurelius, Genghis Khan, and the pharaohs; and his growing interest in Christianity, with the influence of repeat guest Jordan Peterson.

“I think the purpose of a conversation like this is to make inroads with someone like Rogan,” Huff said in an interview with CT. “When you see Paul, when he’s at Mars Hill, he’s speaking to his audience, and he’s drawing from his audience’s perspectives. And he’s not necessarily giving a go-in-for-the-kill gospel presentation, but he’s relating it to the gospel.”

Huff also likened his approach in the interview to the approach of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:9–23: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.”

During the conversation, they wandered from talk of verifying ancient documents to creation myths like the Babylonian Enuma Elish to ancient Egypt and the pyramids. Huff also pushed back on what he saw as Peterson’s use of Jesus as a moral figure rather than a teacher.

Toward the end, Huff asked Rogan a question directly: “What do you think of Jesus?”

“Well, it certainly seems like there’s a lot of people that believe that there was this very exceptional human being that existed, so the question is ‘What does that mean?’” the host responded. “Does it mean he was the son of God? Does it mean he was just some completely unique human being that had this vision of humanity and this way of educating people and spreading this ideology that would ultimately change the way human beings interact with each other forever?”

https://www.x.com/solamediaorg/status/1882096323215737001

Huff said he was impressed by his answer.

“He’s not a Christian; he doesn’t profess to be a Christian. But I could tell he was mulling over things much in the same way that when Jesus talks to his disciples in Mark chapter 8 and asks the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’” Huff said. “I could tell that he was thoughtfully engaging with who the person of Jesus was, especially since we’d spent a good amount of time talking about the fact that there is a historical Jesus, a fact that he’s questioned in the past.”

Evangelicals shared clips from the show on social media, mostly applauding Huff’s research, direct answers about Christian beliefs, his willingness to say “I don’t know” when asked about topics beyond his expertise, and his instinct to offer correction for any instances he misspoke or made mistakes during the unscripted interview.

Some were Rogan fans excited to hear an explicitly Christian voice on the podcast, and some tuned in for the first time out of curiosity.

https://twitter.com/HonestYPTweets/status/1877739394183864626

Denny Burk, pastor and biblical studies professor at Southern Seminary’s Boyce College, called Huff’s interview a “masterclass of careful scholarship and Christian apologetics.”

Australian pastor Stephen McAlpine blogged about Huff’s concise gospel presentation to Rogan’s “sweary, sweaty” audience, who may go unreached by typical apologetics.

“Huff is proof that, although many an apologetic argument in this current anxious age has switched from issues of reliability and historicity to issues of meaning and purpose, you cannot have one without the other,” he wrote. “After all, all sorts of ‘woo-woo’ can offer you meaning and purpose, but if they cannot be backed up by reality or reliability, then they are on shaky ground. There is a good chance they cannot hold the weight they promise to hold.”

Commenters watching the Carson debate remarked on Huff’s demeanor, the way he could offer correction and evidence without gloating or shouting down his opponent. Perhaps that’s partly because of his Canadian roots, he said, but it’s also a deliberate effort to avoid being a “bombastic” debater.

Huff cited the lines before and after the popular apologetics verse “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet. 3:15), which instruct Christians to “revere Christ” and speak “with gentleness and respect.”

“I’ve always felt very convicted that it’s about the hope more than it’s about winning an argument,” he said. “People are going to ask questions about the reason of hope you have, not necessarily that you’re going out there defending and tearing down arguments, although I think that there’s a place for that.”

YouTube and social media have emerged as new platforms for gospel proclamation and evangelism; some speakers are informative and winsome, some get views for being combative and reactive. Online apologists are seeing fruit and whispers of a revival, viewership numbers tick up and as follows share testimonies of new belief and changed minds.

In addition to a video series called “Can I Trust the Bible?,” filmed on the ground in Egypt with Apologetics Canada, Huff has a personal YouTube channel to share response videos and explainers with titles like, “Onomastic congruence – how names show the Bible’s accuracy” and “Is God’s name Jehovah or Yahweh?”

With a new level of attention around him and his work, Huff said his focus remains working with Apologetics Canada to equip the church to respond to a new era of apologetics questions from the spiritual but not religious, from people turning to New Age, from anyone hurting and looking for hope.

He quoted Blaise Pascal: “Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.”

“That’s what we at Apologetics Canada want to do,” he said. “We want to make people wish that Christianity was true by the way that we act, and then we want to show them that it is true. It’s been a real gift to be able to have more people be aware of the ways that we are attempting to do that.”

Huff said he remains in touch with Rogan and, during the show, left him a memento.

Huff cut out Egyptian papyrus in the exact shape of an ancient scrap believed to be the oldest record of a New Testament text and copied the bits of Greek script by hand.

“You for real nerded out,” Rogan chided as he held up the facsimile of a fragment known as P52.

The verse on the parchment comes from John 18, where Jesus proclaims, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me,” and Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

News

Catch and Release: ‘The Fish’ Goes Off the Air

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

In a major radio deal, one company is giving up on Christian music while another pursues expansion.

Christian radio DJs Kevin Avery and Taylor Scott interview Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys in 2006. The Kevin and Taylor Show is going off the air with the end of 'The Fish.'

Rick Diamond/WireImage/Getty Images

Janet Jameson loves The Fish. She listens to Atlanta’s 104.7 FM nearly constantly—in her home, in her car, and all day at her office. She even follows her favorite DJs from the station on Facebook, which is how she saw the announcement that The Fish is going away.

“It’s with heavy hearts that we tell you that The Fish is coming to a close on January 31st,” DJ Taylor Scott wrote in a joint Facebook post with her cohost, Kevin Avery. “We are so incredibly honored that we had the privilege of bringing you ‘Good, Clean, Fun’ and doing life with you for 24 years.”

More than 1,000 people responded with tear, heart, and hug emojis. Jameson, who lives in the suburbs northeast of the city, couldn’t help but leave a comment.

“This news breaks my heart!” she wrote.

She isn’t the only faithful listener crushed by the news. North of Atlanta, Jeanne Shannon wrote, “Oh no!!!” and told the DJs, “You all have given so many incredible blessings and encouragement to us all over the years!!”

Melissa White, in another suburb, commented she’d just had a dream that was asked to pray for one of the DJs, “so I began praying for God to keep his shield of love around her,” and then she woke up and saw the announcement.

Catherine Black Adams, from a small town near the Georgia-Tennessee border, wrote that she would be praying for the DJs as they embarked on their next chapter. “I’ve been a Fish listener for years with our kids & now our grands,” she said.

Similar scenes are playing out in Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Oregon, and California, as news spreads that Salem Media Group, the largest Christian radio company in the United States, is selling Christian music stations and retiring its Fish brand. The deal marks the media company’s final exit from contemporary Christian music.

Salem Media did not respond to request for comment. But Edward Atsinger, Salem’s cofounder and executive chairman, said in a statement that the sale is a “strategic decision” that allows the company to pay off $159.4 million in long-term debt.

Salem ran into some financial trouble in 2020 and saw its share price drop from a high of about $30 in 2004 to just 80 cents. The company’s investment value was downgraded to “poor quality” and “high risk” by Moody’s, a top credit-ratings agency.

The number of Christian radio listeners actually increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the economic impact hit advertisers hard, and many of the ministries that bought blocks of time on Salem stations to air teaching and preaching, including Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Tony Evans, David Jeremiah, the late Charles Stanley, and the late J. Vernon McGee, cut back on their media expenditures too. Salem’s stock value recovered in 2021 but then started slowly sliding downward again. At the end of 2024, shares were selling for about 20 cents each.

The company decided to get out of Christian music radio and focus on talk, returning to its format roots. Salem started as a Christian talk radio company in the mid-1970s, and its most dedicated listeners are still those who tune in for preaching, teaching, and commentary. Salem has also seen growth with its conservative political shows hosted by Charlie Kirk, Bill O’Reilly, Eric Metaxas, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, and Jay Sekulow.

Salem differentiates between Christian and conservative talk-show formats but sees them as “highly complementary” since both focus on “conservative views and family values.” Currently, Salem has more than 100 radio stations and broadcasts in the top 25 media markets. Its syndicated programs are distributed to roughly 2,700 affiliates.

“Listeners develop, learn and grow in their faith as they gain answers to questions relating to daily life, from raising children to improving marriages,” the company says. “Christian Teaching and Talk is our core, foundational format.”

Salem’s shift doesn’t spell the end of Christian music on former Fish stations, though. Seven of Salem’s music stations were acquired by Educational Media Foundation (EMF), the parent company of K-Love and Air1. EMF will begin operating the stations on February 1.

David Pierce, EMF’s chief media officer, told CT that conversations about programming and personnel are ongoing and that some familiar voices may end up staying.

“Our goal is to keep Christian music on these stations,” he said. “We’re thankful to be able to promise that.”

Between 2019 and 2021, EMF was the fastest-growing radio company in the US, purchasing 39 additional stations. But this recent acquisition will expand its coverage of major markets, putting K-Love and Air1 on the radio in places like Dallas, Cleveland, and Los Angeles. EMF currently reaches about 18 million listeners every week and controls more than 1,000 broadcast signals across all 50 states.

Christian radio ranks fourth in the US for overall station count. The rise of streaming brought massive shifts to the music industry, but Christian radio has remained important to older listeners, who trust DJs to curate their music. Christian radio is also finding new listeners among younger adults, tired of trusting algorithms and open to other ways of discovering new music.

K-Love, which plays mostly pop- and rock-style contemporary Christian music, caters to an older audience, while Air1 attracts a younger demographic with more contemporary worship music.

The shift from Salem’s Fish format to K-Love or Air1 will bring noticeable changes to the hourly mix of music and advertising. Salem’s commercial format required stations to devote time to marketing. EMF, by contrast, is a nonprofit. Pierce told CT the noncommercial funding model of both networks enables them to dedicate a greater proportion of their airtime to music than traditional commercial stations can.

K-Love and Air1 also have strong relationships with labels and artists in the Christian music industry, cultivated through high-profile concert series and its annual K-Love Fan Awards. Through the success of its radio brands, EMF has established itself as a powerful music-industry gatekeeper.

The company has achieved this, in part, by cultivating dedicated listeners.

“Radio is a trusted medium,” Channah Hanberg, who serves on the Christian Music Broadcasters board of directors, told CT. “DJs can create a personal connection, and Christian music layers on a spiritual connection.”

While many of the radio programs people listen to are national, the stations also connect listeners to their local communities in ways that streaming services do not. Hanberg, who is also vice president of media for Crista Media in Seattle, said radio stations remain sustainable and competitive because they have the potential to connect people to their cities and regions.

“You can turn to a local station and be encouraged, and you get information about your local community and events,” Hanberg said. “Christian radio is about more than music; it’s a ministry.”

The Fish’s listeners in Atlanta, praying that their DJs get new jobs on the radio soon, would certainly agree.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

A Letter from the President

Timothy Dalrymple

Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, and a global God.

I often tell how an encounter with the witness of Mother Teresa forever changed my life. It happened in my middle teenage years, as I was growing up in California’s Central Valley, that I found a documentary that followed her from India to locations around the world. The story of this faithful nun from Albania, caring for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, found its way through the work of faithful storytellers all the way to California, where it exploded my small view of what it might mean to follow Jesus.

That’s our hope for this Globe Issue. That we will allow God, in the extraordinary work he does through ordinary people, to challenge, inspire, and transform us. That we will allow him to explode our sometimes-small sense of what he might call us to.

John Stott once said, “We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.” And when Billy Graham laid out the vision for Christianity Today in 1955, a year before we launched, he dreamt that we might one day “have at least one hundred reporters throughout the entire world carrying all the religious news possible.”

Stott and Graham understood how important it is for the Western Church—particularly the American Church—to learn from and be inspired by the non-Western Church. These two giants in the faith continue to inspire what we do today, and, in many ways, inspire what you hold in your hands right now.

The Globe Issue is brought to you by generous partners of The One Kingdom Campaign, the first comprehensive campaign in Christianity Today’s history.

One of the campaign’s three initiatives, The Global Initiative, is elevating the stories and ideas of the global Church. It enables CT to dramatically expand our coverage to better represent what God is doing in every corner of the planet. In fact, you may have already noticed CT’s growing global team of editors, reporters, and translators. Our prayer with this Globe Issue is that your vision for the kingdom of God on Earth increases. And that your heart expands for the sisters and brothers you meet here.

We invite you to learn more about The One Kingdom Campaign at OneKingdom.ChristianityToday.com. If you would find joy in partnering with us, we would be honored to partner with you.

Dr. Timothy Dalrymple is the president and CEO of Christianity Today.

- More from Timothy Dalrymple

News

Moscow Continues Targeting Christians in Russian-Occupied Territories

Jill Nelson

As Trump pushes for a Ukraine deal, local church leaders fear for their congregations.

Worshippers leave Sunday service at Sukovska Baptist church in Ukraine.

Scott Olson / Getty

President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office. He failed to deliver but on Wednesday issued on social media an ultimatum to Russian president Vladimir Putin: End the war or risk “Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions.”

Trump’s tough stance against the Kremlin doesn’t mean Ukraine is off the hook. The president’s administration hasn’t revealed which concessions it will request from Kyiv, and Putin will undoubtedly negotiate for sovereignty over territory he has occupied and illegally annexed.

Conceding Ukrainian land to Russia comes with a host of geopolitical downsides, but a lesser-known consequence affects churches: Moscow targets non-Orthodox Christians.

Across Russian-occupied Ukraine, Kremlin troops have shuttered places of worship since the first invasion began in 2014. Religious persecution only increased after the full-scale invasion in February 2022—proof that Putin’s conquest contains a religious component, say local Protestant leaders.

Pastor Mykhailo Brytsyn was aware of the Kremlin’s tactics yet still taken by surprise when Russian soldiers flooded Melitopol, a Ukrainian city of 150,000, in March 2022. They arrested several of his friends—local clergy from non–Russian Orthodox congregations—and closed their churches. Six months later, troops stormed the sanctuary of his own congregation, Grace Church, during morning worship.

“We could not imagine that armed soldiers with their faces covered with masks, in helmets and with shields, would storm the church right during the service,” Brytsyn told CT.

The soldiers fingerprinted and photographed congregants and copied their identification documents. Then they searched the church, interrogated Brytsyn, and escorted him home to hunt for “extremist literature” proving ties to the West. Their search was in vain. Still, the Russian commander gave Brytsyn two days to leave town.

Brytsyn lives temporarily in Ukraine’s Rivne region and continues to pastor his church, now scattered throughout 16 countries. He also partners with Mission Eurasia to document atrocities committed against Christian communities in Russian-occupied territory.

In Melitopol alone, Russian forces closed all churches unaffiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, including Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches from the Ukrainian Patriarchate. In the broader region of Zaporizhzhia, only 15 Protestant churches remain open, compared to several hundred prior to the invasion.

This pattern has been repeated throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. Many Christians are concerned about the consequences of a US-brokered deal that includes land concessions.

“One of our churches is in Kherson. It’s unclear whether a brokered deal would include that city or not,” Jon Eide, country director for Mission to the World, said earlier this week. The church leaders would not feel safe under Russian occupation and would likely relocate, he added.

Ukrainian Christians face another hurdle: Kremlin propaganda claiming Kyiv persecutes Orthodox Christians has seeped into conservative circles in the West, undermining Western support for Ukraine. Brytsyn visited the United States and Europe seven times during the past two years and identified Russian narratives in the questions people asked during his presentations.

In October, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense banned churches linked to Moscow, citing propaganda dissemination. Russia’s patriarch Kirill supports the war in Ukraine, and Putin has framed his conquest as a “holy war,” orchestrated to protect Christians from immoral Western influence. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church announced its separation from the Moscow Patriarchate, but the decision hasn’t been formalized.

The restrictions placed on Kremlin-affiliated churches do not mean Ukraine is broadly targeting an entire community, Brytsyn explained. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a member of the recently canonized Kyiv Patriarchate, operates freely.

Moscow, on the other hand, makes no room for Protestants and non–Russian Orthodox churches. According to some reports, nearly 40 Ukrainian clergy members have died in targeted attacks since 2022.

“There can be no freedom where Putin’s troops have arrived,” Brytsyn said. “I lived in the Soviet Union for 25 years, and I know the oppression that believers were subjected to there. Now the Russians’ practice is even worse.”

- More from Jill Nelson

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