FCBH opens hearts in Ukraine

UKRAINE — Prisoners, hospital patients, the disabled and residents of children’s homes: these are just some of the people, young and old and from many different social backgrounds, who have been touched by the Ukrainian Bible Society’s Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) program.

The Bible Society’s links with Hosanna Ministries date back to 1991, but FCBH really started to take off in Ukraine when the Bible Society was granted permission to use Hosanna’s regional recording centre there in 2001. This has led to a significant increase in the distribution of audio cassettes, and this year alone it plans to make available 3,000 sets of cassettes free of charge. The following testimonies give an insight into how FCBH is bringing God’s Word to Ukrainians who are unable or unwilling to read it for themselves.

Pastor Petro Kulbach of the Birth of Christ Church in Zhitomyr reports that, within a few months of starting a FCBH listening group, attendance rose from 25 per cent of his congregation to 30 per cent. “In my opinion, it’s a very important program for Ukraine,” he says.

This is the response of one lady who attends his church:

“We listen and then discuss and as questions arise and are answered it makes me read at home to learn more about the Gospels. All this makes us read more and think more. The Word of God is food for thinking for each of us. It is important to study and listen to it because faith really does come from hearing the Word of God. I try not to miss a single listening session because I know I will hear something the Lord is trying to tell me.”

Ivan Beletsky leads a Romani church with his wife Angelika in Uzhgorod, in Ukraine’s ethnically diverse western region of Transcarpathia.

“It’s so good to have the FCBH tapes. We have been working with the Romani people since 1996. Many of them are illiterate, but they need to hear the Word of God. We teach some of them to read and write, but regrettably we can teach only a small percentage and the tapes are therefore very useful to those who cannot read. It would be wonderful to have many more tapes in Russian and Hungarian because many people here speak these languages.”

Another important area of work for the Bible Society’s FCBH program is hospitals. Staff in hospitals across the country have been very encouraging since they have begun to witness the impact on patients. Yevhen Moskryak is chief physician of Lviv’s hospitals.

“We are so grateful to the Bible Society for such a generous gift. Our patients are people who suffer from incurable illnesses. We have been looking into developing a strategy that would produce a therapeutic effect on patients, helping to relieve their pain, the main cause of their suffering. As part of this work, we are going to use these tapes.”

Father Bohdan Boyko of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reports that Sunday School students are keen to participate in listening sessions.

“Our Sunday School here runs the FCBH program and this year 405 pupils graduated from the classes. We hold them in a house which is equipped for listening to the tapes. The children come and they study the Bible during a full academic year, even borrowing the tapes from the school library so that they can listen at home!”

For Serhiy Suzko, the Bible Society staff member who co-ordinates the FCBH program, testimonies like these make it very clear how important this ministry is.

“Our primary task is to reach all people with the Word of God,” he says. “Nothing can move the heart of a man more strongly than the Word spoken in his native language. Today we have the New Testament recorded in many languages, including Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Slovak, Czech, Tartar and Romani. I’ve been reading the Bible in my native language since childhood and I can understand those who have been deprived of the chance to do this, who experience such joy now when they hear the Word of God in their own language and their hearts are opened.”

For an earlier report about the impact of FCBH in Ukraine, see World Report 391/21.

This report refers to project UKR015. (WR 396/9 - 09/10.05)