The picture that opens up when one crosses the threshold of Pentecostal and Сharismatic churches with Ukrainian roots in the urban landscape of Polish cities is a disproportion of men and women. In general, this is quite a normal phenomenon, because women dominate these movements, accounting for two-thirds of all adult members. This trivial and well-known fact ceases to be so if we look at it through the prism of the current time and situation of crises, including the current military one in a neighboring state.
On February 24, 2024, crowded rallies were held in many European and Polish cities to remind that it was on this day in 2022 that the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began. There was also another, lesser-known date for remembrance in the world - the 10th anniversary of the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine. In this war, civilians, regardless of their gender, are one of the targets of destruction, which breaks all civilized ideas about the depravities of warfare in our time. This is a little-known and painful fact about the practices that Russians used to resort to in Abkhazia, Chechnya, Syria, and many other places. Today most of the more than 1,5 million Ukrainians who have received any form of national protection in Poland are women and children of all ages. There are very few men in this category, because with the declaration of martial law in Ukraine, men of military age, from 18 to 60, do not have the right to travel freely abroad. This is a situation where many Ukrainian families are divided, and where women abroad become the heads of families, the sole caretakers and breadwinners for children or older family members who left with them.
Forced displacement, severance or ethereality of social ties, and loss of roots are complex examples of human experience. Many Ukrainian women are now living in a state of constant expectation and temporariness, because they simply want to return home. In Ukraine and abroad, these feelings are somewhat similar. But what is home for them today? Some are waiting for the war to end, some for the security situation to improve, some for the borders to open.
Even though Poland is a place of physical security, it is easier to survive and hold on in foreign countries when you have a safe, understandable space, a community of people who are your own. It is not uncommon for Pentecostal or Charismatic churches of Ukrainian origin to serve as such a safe place for displaced people from Ukraine. The church in the understanding of representatives of these denominations is not a building, but a community of people united around Christ.
These are places where, due to many circumstances, a kind of "little Ukraine" emerges, the native language is spoken, and a strong connection with home is maintained. Geographical locations and communities that do not leave people alone with their problems, particularly women and children, and where one comes to another for one's own. This is changing the face of the church, because there are incentives that encourage it to be not a place of purely and exclusively Sunday gathering for a few hours, but to live throughout the week. Of particular note is the fact that these "little Ukraine's" are emerging in the communities of Evangelical Christians and Protestants. Why this is the case and why it is not a matter of chance or exception is another story.
In fact, Ukrainian female refugees have been the ones who have contributed to the quantitative growth of Ukrainian Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Poland over the past two years, and whose requests, even if not always explicitly, help these churches provide adequate and appropriate types of assistance to those forced to flee Ukraine. The needs and demands of the first weeks or months of the full-scale Russian invasion and those that exist today are different. The churches that initially welcomed, fed, transported, and provided shelter for Ukrainian refugees today have a number of ministries designed to facilitate Ukrainians' adaptation and integration in Poland, including language courses. They are also places where Ukrainians can find up-to-date and adequate information on legalization in Poland, social assistance, etc. At the same time, women in churches articulate the need, types and forms of assistance. For instance, they are speaking about need of psychological and pastoral care to help those of their compatriots who are experiencing the trauma of war. And this means almost everyone, because there are no Ukrainians who have not lost something or someone in this war.
Neither Ukrainian Charismatics nor Pentecostals deny the existence and manifestation of spiritual gifts in women-speaking in tongues, prophecy, visionary work, and healing. Male pastors with decades of ministry and more than one mission or church community established both in Ukraine and in places of forced displacement share with their flocks the testimony that it was women who led them to faith in Christ and repentance, to a qualitative change in their lives. In the areas of evangelism and evangelistic work among different age groups, administrative work, leadership in home groups and prayer meetings, females find use for their skills and spiritual gifts everywhere. Ukrainian Charismatic churches are much more liberal in their attitude to women becoming clergy, deaconesses, or pastors than traditional Pentecostals, who remain conservative in this matter. Women are, in one way or another, figures of authority, albeit non-public, in Ukrainian Pentecostal or Charismatic churches in Poland. Despite this, no woman is a founder or a leading pastor of such a church in Poland. In fact, just like it still is in Ukraine.
Dealing with and surviving during forced displacement, issue of preservation of divided families, femaile clergy, leadersof churches and preachers when there is a real threat that the number of male ministers may dramatically decrease due to the war - all these questions are being asked in one way or another. Finding the ways and answering them, particularly in practical terms, is part of the road to what these churches will be like in the future.
Author: Ganna Tregub