Academic Dean's Blog

Recent sociological research (presented Dec 3, 2009) funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ukraine and the Open Ukraine Foundation indicates that Ukraine is a religious nation. Nearly 90% of polled identified themselves as religious with certain confessional affiliation. 10% identified themselves as atheists or agnostics. Questions of this research covered variety of areas of personal and social life. Among questions that the poll asked was one about happiness. Answers showed that professing believers are happier than unbelievers. It is noted that the research shows that Ukraine is a religious society in which one can freely profess his or her faith and actualize personal spiritual needs, irrespective of nationality.

Orthodox Church by Serge_ on Zooomr

In accordance with the survey results, the level of religiousness of Ukrainians is one of the highest in Europe. 53% of respondents agreed with the statement “I believe in God and I have always believed in God”. Every fifth respondent (21%) did not believe in God earlier but believes in God now. In other words, ¾ of Ukraine’s population supposes themselves to be believers. There are much less of those not believing in God: every ninth respondent (11%) has never believed in God or has stopped believing; it is probably a strong conviction statement (15% did not answer). At that, 62% of Ukrainians said that they were brought up in Orthodox environment; 6% — Greco-Catholic; 27% said that they were brought up beyond any religious influence (5% — all the other answers).

Ukrainian citizens are characterized by tolerant attitude to representatives of other religions: 71% of respondents fully agree with the statement that different religious groups have equal rights in Ukraine. 75% agree that people should have respect to all religions. At that, 66% will certainly or will probably support a person of other religious views in case if this person is going marry one of respondent’s relatives; 63% are ready to support a person of other religion during elections if this person represents a political party that a respondent supports. (From Press Release “Religion in Ukrainian Society’s Life”, March 26, 2009)

It’s definitely worth to study further this report, released as brochure Religion and Values of Ukrainians, and which is available for download here. At the moment it is available only in Ukrainian language.

Read news in English here and in Ukrainian here and more here (original). Press Release of the Press Conference, held earlier this year on March 26, 2009: Religion in Ukrainian Society’s Life is available for download here in English language and in Ukrainian here.

As I worked on our website and audio from recent chapels I downloaded and listened to another message available at the seminary website. About two years ago Mark McDonnel, Director of Biblical Studies program at undergraduate level, spoke on topic of pride and humility and importance of latter and danger of former in academic seminary setting. I was very impressed with precise relevance of the message to our current times. Well the message was great admonishing to me. It also stirred my appreciation for prevailance of such perspective and humble attitude among our faculty members.

I encourage you to listen to it and enjoy sudden, yet natural jokes that flavor this message. My prayer is for all our faculty to keep holding this humble attitude with high scholarship standards. It such a wonderful thing that we can maintain such healthy environment and model what we teach.

The MP3 file is available at this link for download from seminary website.

By the way, Mark is still here at KTS and we are happy to load him with classes to teach, and he does not mind such treatment of him. Is that humility in action?

(Photo: Mark McDonnel (right) speaks at KTS Commencement 2007 Credit: ktsonline.org).

Two recent messages delivered at Kyiv Theological Seminary chapel are available for free download at seminary’s website.

On January 27, 2009 we had Dr. James Ehrhard preaching in our chapel on the Book of Ruth, chapter 3, his sermon was answering very practical question: How do we act biblically in every situation? Dr. Ehrhard is known at our seminary for ability to build bridge of understadning between biblical texts and contemporary life, with very relevant applications to seminary community. Link to MP3 download.

On February 17, 2009 KTS President Anatoly Prokopchuk (photo above) gave exposition of several chapters from the Book of Jeremiah. Particularly he spoke on chapters 37-42. As always, it’s pleasure to listen to accurate exposition of biblcal texts with lessons for modern lives. In this sermon I was striked with lessons from lives of Zedekiah and Gedaliah who despite their opposite charachters shared one common mortal trait of unbelief. This unbelief in Jehovah, God of their fathers led both of them to tragic ends of their lives. Link to MP3 download.

What a great encouragement is to have Bible expositors speaking at seminary chapel here in Kyiv.

For a long time we have not posted any audio from our seminary chapel services. An explanation is simple this our chapel recordings done enthusiastically on any equipment available at the time. Which in turn explains various quality of the audio files. The school does not have professional and dedicated audio recording equipment and various individuals of seminary community kindly offer their devices. Presently someone generously lends her laptop computer for chapel or seminar recordings. Thus this semester, Lord wills, you can expect to enjoy seminary chapel podcasts again. SDG.

Free downloads provided at Kyiv Seminary website. This time we have two new recordings of public lectures that were conducted this academic year. Lectures were presented in English with translation into Russian.

Lecture on February 4, 2009. Scott D. Edgar, Ph.D. presented: “Mentoring – the missing link in Ukrainian Theological Education for Ministry”. The audio in MP3 format is available for download from this page.

Lecture on October 15, 2008. Wesley K. Willmer, Ph.D., Vice President for Biola University Advancement presented: “God and Money: The Vital Link Between Our Earthly Possessions and Eternal Soul”. The audio in MP3 format available for download from this page.

Maybe you’d like to download the files for listening as part of your Russian language study? Or recommend them to your friend?

Finally, thank you for keeping our school (staff, administration, faculty and students) in your prayers.

Next week our we have special event night when Dr. Scott D. Edgar presents his dissertation findings at KTS Public Seminar on Wednesday February 4, 2009. According to Dr. Edgar, he wants to “encourage mentoring relationships among the students at KTS and in the churches and organizations in which they serve”. Topic of his presentation will be Mentoring – the missing link in Ukrainian Theological Education for Ministry.

I am excited that Dr. Edgar and his wife Becky came to our seminary to teach two intensive courses this month. It’s my delight to welcome old friends of Kyiv Theological Seminary who served here in Ukraine as missionaries in 2000-2002. Dr. Edgar served as full-time faculty and active Academic Dean of KTS at that time.

You can download reproducible poster to print and share with your church this weekend. Poster Seminar Edgar A4 Eng Rus

Please pray for this event and for Dr. Edgar as he presents this important topic to us.

Just recently Kyiv Seminary registered with Twitter. http://twitter.com/kyivseminary/

You can subscribe to seminary’s RSS Twitter feed right here, without going there. 

Today we made our first post announcing new information related to Public Seminar event at KTS next week.

Interesting and fun way to represent words in visual way. Here you can see my blog presented visually with some words used here. I think that http://www.wordle.net is a great tool for teachers to bring a creative element into their classrooms. I plan to test the service and see how well my students respond to it.

Added few links to Kyiv Seminary Resources page. What did I add? Several more links to faculty blogs and partnering organizations.

This weekend Christianity Today features an article on Evangelical Church in Ukraine on its main page. Faith and Hope in Ukraine: How Eastern Europe’s most missional evangelical church is rethinking tradition and the Great Commission, by Susan Wunderink.

The article has its permanent address as well: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/october/25.70.html.

Kyiv Theological Seminary administration and faculty along with other evangelicals of our country contributed to this article. I might comment on the article later since my answers to author’s questions are included as well.

I added new page to this blog that contains list of available resources related to Kyiv Theological Seminary. The page is Kyiv Seminary Resources and it is available from link in this post or from right column under Pages section.

This new page contains list of organizational websites as well as KTS faculty blogs, pages and websites. The page will be updated periodically as I learn about online resources related to Kyiv Seminary.