He lives and ministers as the pastor of an evangelical church in Kherson, the Ukrainian city close to the front line of the war. But Pastor Sergei doesn’t allow the proximity of that war to prevent him from continuing to hold services – even when there are Russian soldiers present on the streets outside. Early each morning, hundreds of people start to line up outside the church building where he serves, each one hoping to be one of the first two hundred and fifty in the queue – for two hundred and fifty is the number of small bags of food that the church prepares to hand out to those in need each day. Except Sunday. But even on Sunday, still the people come. Three to four hundred of them, attending services each week where they receive spiritual food. But there is more to this story, for Sergei has cancer and needs treatment – treatment that his daughters in the U.S. plead with him to receive in America.
But Pastor Sergei won’t even consider the idea, for to do so he would not only have to leave Kherson and Ukraine, but also the people who depend on him for help. Even though he has, on occasions, been so unwell that he has collapsed and lost consciousness, when he is urged to get the help he needs he responds only by asking who will care for the people if he doesn’t. Like perhaps the apostle Paul before him, Pastor Sergei is content to be like Jesus, by sharing in his Saviour’s suffering all for the sake of others.
