Ukraine's Influential Church Leader Shifting the Way Americans Think Church
Hailing from Nigeria, Pastor Sunday Adelaja is considered one of the greatest church leaders in the modern era. He claims to run the largest evangelical congregation in Europe with 25,000 members in Kiev, Ukraine, alone. And now, he has taken it upon himself to impact the way America's churches operate.
Adelaja, who leads Embassy of God, visited with nearly 100 church pastors in the United States this week. He was in Dallas on Tuesday to launch a new U.S. ministry called ChurchShift.
"He believes the church [in America] needs to shift its thinking and the way the churches operate in society," explained James O. Davis, president of ChurchShift. "A shift from just being a place where believers come to worship in the weekend to [one where] believers are empowered in every sphere of society to be salt and light."
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When Adelaja heard God's calling 13 years ago to start a church in a society that was predominantly white and filled with communism, he said God told him, "I want you to raise up a country of strong men and women to reach other countries, especially where the Soviet Union has been known to send death, destruction, and tears. Instead, I want to use the Soviet people to bring healing, health, and the Good News," according to Christianity Today.
Since then, Adelaja's congregation has raised a member, Leonid Chernovetsky, who was elected mayor of Kiev; a Supreme Court justice in Ukraine also came out of Adelaja's church, according to Davis; and Adelaja helped spark the Orange Revolution in 2005 which further established democracy in Ukraine.
The church was impacting European society because Adelaja "made a fundamental shift in his thinking that the church must be active in society and take responsibility for its outcome," Davis noted. "He chose to make a decision to take responsibility for the spiritual condition of his society and his nation."
Today, Adelaja is known as one of the 10 most influential Ukrainians in history.
In America, Adelaja points to an abundance of resources, opportunities and big churches. "But is the church truly making a difference in America?"
"When you think about how many churches we have in America, yet you see and we all see the growing amount of decadence in our culture, you have to ask: Is the culture changing the church or is the church changing the culture?" Davis posed.
Adelaja has started more than 600 churches in more than 40 countries. He told a crowd of U.S. pastors in Dallas that he has a genuine burden for America. Out of concern for the challenges pastors face in ministry today and out of belief that as America goes, as goes the world, Adelaja will begin touring the nation next year hosting conferences to change the way church leaders view themselves, church and God.
"I'm expecting in the days ahead a real serious shift in the way we do church in America," said Davis. "I believe that more and more people are realizing that something has got to change and yet we don't fully know how to do all that.
"It's one thing for us to theorize in ivory palaces. It's another thing to flush it out in the grassroots of life."
A ChurchShift website (churchshift.tv) will be launched within the next two weeks, Davis announced, to get churches connected with the new initiative.
"My prayer is that there will be thousands of churches like the one in Ukraine that are truly making a difference in society," he highlighted. "The society is better because the church is there."
