Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: Four and a half years since the start of the Ukrainian war. So what’s happening now? Let’s talk about it with Valentin Syniy on Steve Brown, Etc.

Voiceover: He’s an old white guy, an author, broadcaster, and seminary professor who’s sick of religion. And he’s brought friends. Please welcome Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: Hey, we’re so glad you’re here. We recognize the gift you’re giving of time to us. Please recognize that we’re giving you a gift too. So this is a mutual giving program, in case you’re wondering. I’m Steve, the aforementioned old white guy.

Matthew Porter is our executive producer, and he’s here. Matthew, lately you’ve been trying intermittent fasting?

Matthew Porter: Yes, intermittently. Between lunch and dinner once a month religiously.

Steve Brown: Our producer Jeremy’s in the little glass booth. I don’t want to say Jeremy feels overwhelmed, but his new hobby is rocking back and forth and staring off into the distance.

Jeremy: I don’t know if that’s a new hobby. You could call that Tuesday.

Steve Brown: And our one-man IT department, John Meyers, is in the tech bunker. John didn’t blow off any fingers with 4th of July fireworks, so that’s a win, right? Dr. George Bingham is the president of Key Life. George says it’s so hot the Mormons have started loosening their ties.

And Kathy Wyatt is the soft feminine side of the program. Kathy grew up in Connecticut, so it makes sense that she ended up at Key Life. It’s about the same population.

Kathy Wyatt: Oh my.

Steve Brown: Hey guys, you’re going to love this program because it’s a catch-up program. We have interviewed Valentin Syniy before about his book. If George will pass it to me, I’ll hold it up. It’s called *Serving God Under Siege: How War Transformed a Ukrainian Community*. I hold it in my nicotine-stained fingers.

But that’s been a while ago. And as the war in Iran heats up and goes back and forth, the Ukraine kind of has been put on the back burner in this country. Things are still happening there, and they’re still scary. So we thought we would talk to Valentin again. And by the way, Lyuba, his wife, is here, and she adds a lot of depth and beauty to this interview.

Valentin holds a master’s degree in theology and history and a doctorate in theology. Since 2006, he’s been the president of Christian Institute and Evangelical Seminary in Ukraine. Valentin is also the author of the book I mentioned to you, *Serving God Under Siege: How War Transformed a Ukrainian Community*.

You guys, it’s good to have you with us again. I’m glad to see you’re healthy. I’m glad that a bomb hasn’t fallen on your house yet. I’m glad that you’re still faithful. I’m glad that you’re still teaching the truth. But what is happening? Is the war over and everything is fine, or what?

Valentin Syniy: The war is going on. In the area where we live in Kyiv, about a month ago, there was a large shelling, and a house was ruined and 20 people were killed. Usually, Russia destroys different parts of Kyiv. Maybe five or seven days ago, Russia destroyed one of the oldest Orthodox churches in our country, in Kyiv. It's a part of this historical area, Kyiv Lavra. This was destroyed maybe one week ago. This war is not finished; it's going on.

This is hard because if Christians are not strong in their relationship with God, some people lose their faith. If we talk about our family, I don't remember if I told you before, but our son-in-law is now in the army and he's a combat medic. Maybe in our previous podcast he was in the army, maybe not, because this is for us. He’s still there.

Steve Brown: He’s a brave pastor, and you are brave too. You ever think about just leaving and going to a safe place somewhere in the world?

Valentin Syniy: It is a difficult question for me because as a minister, I always think about where I am and I think through my mission. My mission is preparing new leaders for churches. That’s why I am supposed to be where I am now.

Steve Brown: I’m not surprised. That’s what I expected you would say, and I would be very surprised if you did run because that’s not a part of your nature. How is the church doing? How are Christians doing? Are they remaining faithful?

Valentin Syniy: The majority of churches have a lot of new people coming to the churches and they stay faithful. But there is a huge migration from January until now of people leaving Ukraine. This is a really huge challenge for our community and for our churches.

Steve Brown: I can imagine that that’s difficult. Do you see any lessening or do you see an end to this? Do you feel that someday it’s going to soon come to an end or you’re stuck with this forever?

Valentin Syniy: This is a difficult question for us because we don’t know. The future is not in our hands. On the other hand, I do understand the words that Jesus said. He said that you will live in this world and you will have grief. It doesn’t mean that some of you will have grief. All of us will have this grief in our lives. When you live in this situation, you understand that grief is a part of our everyday life.

Of course, we would rather not have these challenges in our life, but it’s a part of life. One more thing that I’ve come to understand during this war is that one of the names that Jesus has is a Man of Sorrows. We can be co-workers with Jesus in his ministry if we understand the strength of his resurrection.

Steve Brown: I can’t tell you how much I admire you. We’re in a relatively safe place. We got a lot of bad politicians, but so far they don’t have guns. I would hope that if I were in your situation, I would do and say exactly what you’re doing and you’re saying. I admire you much. I pray for you and am so thankful for the witness that you’re making in a very dark situation. Hey guys, we’re going to take a break, but we’re going to come back and we’re going to find out some more about Ukraine, about Russia, about what’s happening.

Hey, thanks for joining us. We’re talking to Valentin Syniy, who is the president of an evangelical seminary in Ukraine and has a unique perspective on what’s going on in Ukraine. If you think of it, pray for these guys. Pray for Lyuba too. This is not an easy place to serve, and they’re not leaving. They know that Jesus said to expect this, and they expected it, and they’re standing strong and their witness is strong.

Valentin, in reading through some of your recent writings, you’ve noted that the apostles gave special attention to immigrants and people who have been displaced, specifically 1 Peter. In the ordeal that you guys have gone through in the last four and a half some-odd years, has that changed the way that you look at some scripture? Maybe not your interpretation, but you kind of see it through new eyes?

Valentin Syniy: Yes, during this war, I started looking at some passages of scripture in a different way because I’ve read the same passages several times. Since the war started, I saw a different meaning in these passages. For example, when we read from Matthew 7, it talks about two builders building a house. We know that the main topic is that we need to build our house on solid rock, on Jesus. But there is yet another topic that I found for myself in this passage, that all of us sometimes face the storm.

Steve said there are no problems in America, but I believe that we all have problems. We may have different challenges. Maybe a person is not facing a war, but maybe someone's child started using drugs or a young girl in a family got pregnant. All of us have to go through storms.

Another passage of scripture that I would like to mention is the books of Ruth and Esther that talk about the life of people where we don't see God. God is not visible in these books. He is somewhere outside of the story. This is the world that we live in, where God is somewhere outside of this history. We don’t see a miracle happening every day. Although God is not visible in the book of Esther or Ruth, he is working through the hands of people. This is what supports me a lot.

If we talk about migration, I would separate one topic into two. On the one hand, the Bible teaches us that we need to accept people. On the other hand, when we accept people, it means that our culture will change and our beliefs will change. For me, it’s very important to understand the balance between hospitality because the Bible teaches a lot about hospitality and the importance of accepting different people with different traditions.

For me, this is now a theological question. Everyone remembers the story about Solomon or different stories about how people who started using the traditions of different nations lost their faith and lost their national identity. Because of this, very important to understand the balance between hospitality and our faith, our language, and our tradition.

Ukrainian churches pray a lot about our brothers and sisters in different countries to be safe. On the other hand, for us with connections with different nations, it's very important for Ukrainians in different countries to understand how to be Ukrainians after migration. And same for the countries that accept Ukrainians, how to build these relationships.

Steve Brown: That is so wise and balanced and biblical. You guys blow me away. And you’re right, we have our stuff too, everybody does, but nobody’s shooting at me. And different than you, I carry a gun, so I would shoot back, especially if it was random, if they did it because I was a Christian. I might still shoot back, but I would repent after I did. We’re talking to Valentin Syniy and Lyuba is such an asset. We’re glad she’s here. She’s a lot better looking than he is, too, so not bad. Don’t go anywhere.

Hey, we’re talking with Valentin Syniy and with Lyuba too, who’s helping sometimes with the translation. If you want to keep up with Valentin’s work, open a Chrome browser, then go to—write this down—tci.org.ua. That’s tci.org.ua. Then right-click and choose "Translate to English." You got this. And you can find him on Facebook, Valentin Syniy. That’s V-A-L-E-N-T-I-N dot S-I-N-I-Y.

Valentin, we were talking some about immigration and the experience with that and the challenges and concerns with that. You’ve learned a lot about comparing or understanding what when the Bible deals with things like immigration and sojourners, the context of that versus the situation that you’re seeing there. Can you talk some about that, how they compare?

Valentin Syniy: Thank you for this question. By the way, TCI has an American non-profit. It's TCI Foundation, if you wonder about our organization in United States. This organization helps us in our humanitarian work in the frontline or in occupation areas and help with our academic work. But if talking about migration and comparing migration in the Bible and comparing modern migration like Ukrainian migration, I see a couple differences.

First, in the Bible we see group migrations. This happens more often. We see individual migration, probably only when we talk about Joseph. When the war started and people started moving out of the country, it was family migration or individual. This is probably one of the differences. The Bible was written at the time when the culture itself was collective, and modern culture is more individual.

Also, when we consider migration in the Bible, we find that a man would be leading a migration group. Two cases were different, though. It’s the case of Naomi and Ruth. In Ukraine, when this migration due to the war started, the majority of men went to serve in the army, and the majority of migrants were women and children. Because of the fact that economy changed and education changed, the women that left Ukraine could find jobs and work in the countries where they moved to.

Another very big difference with Ukrainian migrants is that our people try to have an official status in the countries, which probably never happened in the previous migrations. Even when we talk about the previous migrations in Europe, people when they migrated didn't pay attention to the official status. For a lot of people from different countries, sometimes it's absolutely okay not to have official status. For our nation, it's very important to have official status. This is the difference between modern Ukrainian migration and previous migrations in the past.

Steve Brown: That’s helpful. It’ll help understand what’s going on. We’ve got more of this coming up. These are our heroes, both of them. They stay when a lot of people are immigrating out to get to safety. These people aren’t even thinking about it. So be sure and pray for them. Guys, there’s more of this, but it’s very hard work, so we have to rest up. But like Jesus, we’re coming back.

When I think about our library, it reminds me of this Japanese technique where broken pieces of a thing are glued together. It's called kintsugi. For me, this is God's kintsugi what he's doing. A lot of people heard about our story with the library and they started helping us. First, it was Lincoln Christian University that donated a little about less than 30,000 books.

And then there were a couple more organizations that got together in order to help us ship the books. It's Theological Book Network, Scholar Leaders, and a couple churches, like small Baptist union, Valley View from California, and one church in Illinois together sent this book for us.

And one more organization, it’s Engineering Ministries International, EMI. They make the architectural design for the first floor of the building that TCI now uses. They sent people who volunteered to be with us, make the drawings and the design of this first floor and help us in this project. After this, Ukrainian people from different churches help rebuild this first floor. Many American churches support us to have money to buy this material for rebuilding this first floor.

In August of last year, three librarians visited us, one lady from Austria and a couple from Texas. They visited us to catalog these books. In June of this year, five people visited us, a couple from Washington state, the same couple from Texas, and a lady from Austria. They helped catalog this library again. Now, approximately 12,000 books are cataloged from this more than 30,000.

One more group will be in August, three librarians will work again. Now TCI thinks about people who are interested visit us. It's possible only in summertime to finish this cataloging. This is really interesting because librarians are working with us. People from architectural and design help us in this first floor. It's a miracle how God use different people with different gift.

This reminds me of a text from the Bible. I just recently read this text, and it's where Paul says that we're different members of the body. He writes a letter to the church in Corinth. Paul says that those members of the body that we cover are not so meaningful. We protect them. When I read this text very many times and just recently, I heard this question from the Holy Spirit: "Which members of the body do you need?"

I usually say I want the pastor to talk to me. I would very much want to be friends with successful businessmen. The Holy Spirit gave me this answer: "For your spiritual life, you need those parts of the body that have to be covered. That will help you in your growth." We often desire to be surrounded by very important people in church, but God made it so that we need each other.

Steve Brown: You know, we could have spent a lot more time with him. We had a lot more questions, but there’re going to be other times. We do a lot of this, don’t we, Matthew?

Matthew Porter: Yeah, as we were talking to them, I kind of started reflecting back to some recent guests where we’re talking to people who are literally in the middle of a war in Ukraine, other side of the world. We’ve had ongoing conversations with people in Israel, another active war. We’ve talked to people who have been involved in actively smuggling illegal Mexican immigrants and so, regardless of how we feel, this is somebody who’s also on the frontline of that.

We’ve interviewed somebody who’s very involved in politics and influencing policy and dealing with politicians. So one, kudos to our guest relations coordinator, Kathy, and two, this is the place to be. We want to be connected to what’s going on.

Steve Brown: And you know, that says something when Valentin was talking about Christians stepping in and making a difference with the loss of the library and some of the other things. I was just blown over and remembered that there is a sense when a Christian cries, the brothers and sisters should taste salt. We’re literally one, a family, and it’s over all the world. And when they suffer, we suffer. When they’re afraid, we’re afraid, because we’re a part of the same family, the same body of Christ.

That’s an important thing to remember, especially after this kind of discussion where you see that reality fleshing itself out in real life, in real sorrows, in real difficulties. And that’s certainly what’s going on in the Ukraine. Good hour. I’m glad we did that. I learned a lot. Okay, how are you going to teach me next week?

Jeremy: You know, I don’t know if we can top—when you just listen to them and when he gets to a point where he feels like he can’t communicate it well in English and she jumps right in.

Steve Brown: That's another thing. It's like jazz.

Jeremy: Exactly. And yet she’s done it so much that it’s almost like she can read his mind. Every once in a while you can tell she’s thinking, "What?" But then she comes right back with it. Anyway, next week we’re just back with us Americans. Scott Sauls is going to be with us. He has a new book out called *Mercy King*, which I think will be an interesting interview. He’s gone through a very, very difficult period of time in his life and ministry, and so this will be interesting to see how his processes have changed.

Steve Brown: So we’re going to talk about dark things. I think you’re going to do it next week.

Jeremy: No, we’re going to end up well.

Steve Brown: Oh, okay. You join us. We’ll be here same time, same place. Between now and then, don’t do anything we wouldn’t, and that gives you a wide, wide berth.