TMAI Conference Unites Slavic Speaking Christians Across Europe
When two countries go to war, it not only leads to intense suffering, death, and misery, it also often threatens to split the body of Christ—and bring lasting disunity to the church. That was certainly a concern for church leaders in Ukraine and Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. Over the past 3 ½ years, the two countries have fought a bloody and bitter war that has killed thousands on both sides. Animosity between the two countries has never been higher. Yet, in the summer of 2025, church leaders from both nations, and other Slavic speaking countries, united around a much higher and more eternal purpose: the advancement of the gospel and the strengthening of the global church.
“Last year, the leadership at TMAI recognized the massive need to minister to Russian speaking Christians across Europe,” said Bryan, one of the directors at TMAI’s headquarters in Los Angeles. In 2024, he and other TMAI leaders from around the world met to talk about how to best minister to the many immigrants from Europe who had migrated over the decades, the refugees from Ukraine and Russia who had fled the conflict over the past three years, as well as Christians ministering in the thick of the current war. Their solution was a conference in Berlin, Germany, at the European Bible Training Center, TMAI’s regional hub. The gathering would be primarily for Russian speaking church leaders from across Europe.
“TMAI has the resources and capabilities to minister to the Russian speaking world in a unique way,” Bryan said. “We wanted to do a conference that rose above the politics and focused on Christ, the gospel, and the unchanging nature of truth.”
The conference succeeded far more than Bryan or the rest of the TMAI team could have imagined. The Lord brought 450 church leaders from 24 countries across Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, to Berlin for several days of teaching, fellowship, and strategic planning all for the sake of advancing expository preaching and sound doctrine across the region, even in war-torn areas.
“It was extraordinary to see church leaders from Ukraine and Russia embracing each other, rallying around their common cause in the gospel that transcends the war that’s dividing their countries,” Bryan said. “That, for me, was the highlight of the conference and it spoke to the world-shaping power of the gospel to unite us all in service to Christ.”
Though this conference was born out of a contemporary need to cultivate unity and cooperation for Slavic people across Europe, there’s a sense in which the seeds for this gathering, and its clear impact on the Russian speaking church, was more than 30 years in the making.
Shortly after the former U.S.S.R broke apart in the early 90s, the Lord sovereignly spread Russian speaking people across Europe. He also sent men from The Master’s Seminary to Europe in order to train a new generation of pastors. These well-trained leaders found a particularly fertile harvest among the Russian speaking communities, where John MacArthur was, arguably, the most prominent preacher. Throughout the Cold War, his sermons had been broadcast into Russia and had led many men and women to faith in Christ. His expository preaching through Grace to You had paved the way for these missionaries and trainers of men. Fast-forward 30 years and Europe is by no means predominantly Christian, but the fruit of all that exposition, and those men’s efforts to train expositors, has been extraordinary.
In Berlin, where the wall fell in November of 1989, TMS alumnus Christian Andresen leads the European Bible Training Center, which currently has more than 25 faculty members, more than 40 people on staff, and 400 students. After training at EBTC, pastors are now ministering across Germany, and in Switzerland, Austria, and several other European countries where German is the predominant language. Alongside the training center in Berlin, an equally successful training center is thriving in Ukraine, even in the midst of the war. TMAI also has a training center in Russia. Over the last 15 years, Andresen and the EBTC in Berlin have developed a Bible-training program for anyone in the church, from new believers to long-time saints. Nearly 50 churches across central Europe are currently using the curriculum.
Between the training centers throughout central and eastern Europe, and the connections with churches through programs like EBTC’s Bible curriculum, a strong network of churches has developed. All these congregations are united by a love for Scripture and a desire to see churches across Europe believe and preach the Bible. And as leaders from those churches talked and met with TMAI leaders, they identified a need to minister to the Slavic community as it grapples with the war between Ukraine and Russia.
“The hundreds of people who came to the conference were hungry to hear God’s Word preached,” Bryan said. “They were eager to connect with other believers from other countries who spoke Russian, and I know it was encouraging to them, and certainly to all of us at TMAI, to see the massive and growing interest in biblical preaching and ministry.”
For Bryan, there was one particular moment that was a highlight of the conference: watching church leaders from Ukraine and Russia embrace as brothers in Christ. They modeled the unity in Christ that exists between Christians, even when the countries they call home are divided by war.
“To see those men who I know are friends on stage together (was amazing),” Bryan said. “They love each other, and their actions showed the unity that comes only in the gospel.”
Bryan, Christian, and other TMAI leaders saw an extraordinary display of unity at this conference. They are confident that unity will have a galvanizing effect on the church in Ukraine, Russia, and Russian speaking churches around Europe. The conference showed the fruit of 30 years of investment in that region of the world and it gave cause for hope that God will continue to strengthen the church in this region in the coming years.
