Mennonite Mission Network—Olga, a middle-aged Sunday school teacher in a Ukrainian village, stepped off the platform at Odessa Theological Seminary clutching her certificate of study as her husband bounded up to her with a congratulatory bouquet of flowers.
For Olga, who’d been attending seminary part-time for two years, her graduation day represented years of effort and sacrifice by both herself and her family.
Years of work and study came together for about 50 students in four different programs at the Ukrainian seminary’s June graduation ceremony, which was the biggest in several years. For teachers like Mary Raber, the graduation was a reminder of how "right" things can be—especially after the normal challenges and frustrations of a school year.
Raber, a Mennonite Mission Network worker who lives and teaches in Ukraine, served as adviser to four bachelor degree students at the seminary. All these students wrote major research papers and defended them at an oral exam.
Although Raber wasn’t sure one of the students, Konstantin (Kostya) Strelianyi, would be able to pull together all the resources he needed, she was pleased to see the methodical way he tackled his project and the "good" rating he received from the committee.
"He [Kostya] is now all excited about offering a few lectures on the history of the evangelical movement in Ukraine at his home church," Raber says, "and I’m confident that by now his level of research means that he knows what he’s talking about.
"I felt reassured as I thought of all these graduates turned loose in the world," writes Raber, "each one faithfully living up to his or her own particular calling."
Odessa Theological Seminary began as Odessa Bible School in 1989, when new freedoms in the Soviet Union allowed religious groups to begin teaching publicly. More than 180 students began their studies there. After four years of non-residential work, these preachers and Sunday school teachers graduated from the school with degrees in church ministries. They were appointed as pastors and deacons in various cities, and in these cities they started some of the first preaching ministries and Sunday school programs of the post-communist era. In 1991, the school was reorganized as Odessa Theological Seminary, but the school’s mission—to train church leaders—remained the same.
Raber, who has had connections with the seminary since 1993, began a term of service with Mission Network in 2009. Her work fits well with Mission Network’s mission to train and equip local leaders.
After a summer break from teaching, Raber began a new school year on Aug. 30. In addition to her work with undergraduate students, she also helps coordinate a master’s program in applied theology, training church leaders for ministry in a post-Soviet context.
The master’s students are involved in full-time ministry, so finding time to study is a challenge, especially since the students are reading in English—which is not their first language.
Too many of the students had fallen behind in their work to justify the program’s partners at International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague sending a professor for the module scheduled for this fall, so Raber wrote to the students suggesting a week of "study hall" on the Odessa campus instead.
"Nobody took us up on the offer," says Raber, "but I think they’ll turn in enough work so that we can go on with the program in February."
Ashot Gyurjyan is one of the master’s students in Odessa’s program and a good example of the program’s main goal of further preparing active ministers and teachers.
He works at Armenian Theological Seminary, and Raber visited with him while she spent two weeks teaching there.
"Ashot is a preacher and teacher whose advanced studies will strengthen the academic program there," she says.
While in Armenia, Raber taught two classes, Spiritual Life and Ministry and Introduction to Social Service Ministry, to Christian education students. At the end of October she spent a week at Donetsk Christian University (in eastern Ukraine) teaching Christian education to a mixed class of pastoral ministry and mission students.
