She fled with nothing but a backpack containing a water bottle, socks, and a Bible. At 23 years old, Yevheniia “Zhenya” Poliakova watched Russian missiles shatter the windows of her Ukrainian apartment and made a decision that would change everything: she would trust God with her unknown future.
Two years later, Zhenya is planting a church in Red Wing, Minnesota—a small city on the Mississippi River that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Her congregation includes other Ukrainian refugees, curious locals, and a growing number of people who never expected to find spiritual community in a furniture store turned coffee shop ministry.
This is not an isolated story. Across America and around the world, refugees and displaced people are becoming the unexpected catalysts for church multiplication—reaching communities and places that established churches have struggled to penetrate.
The Missional Logic of Displacement
The early church understood something we’ve largely forgotten: displacement is not an obstacle to the gospel; it is often the vehicle for it.
Consider the pattern in Acts. The persecution following Stephen’s martyrdom didn’t hinder the church—it scattered believers throughout Judea and Samaria, and “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:4). Philip found himself in Samaria, of all places—preaching to people Jews considered untouchable. The result? “There was great joy in that city” (Acts 8:8).
John Calvin, commenting on this passage, noted that “God often uses strange means to advance His kingdom. What men intend for evil, God turns for good—not by changing the evil into good, but by overpowering it with greater good.” The scattering of the church was not plan B. It was the very mechanism God used to fulfill the Great Commission.
Zhenya’s journey traces this ancient pattern. Born in Zhmerynka, Ukraine to a family marked by divorce and alcohol abuse, she encountered Christ while working at a coffee shop ministry in Vinnytsia. When war came, she fled through France and Spain, eventually arriving in America through a legal refugee pathway. Each displacement became an opportunity for gospel witness.
Why Refugees Make Effective Church Planters
There are at least three reasons displaced believers often prove more effective at church planting than established Christians in settled communities:
1. They Understand Spiritual Dependency
Charles Spurgeon once observed that “affliction is the school of faith.” Refugees have been stripped of everything that provides false security—property, status, predictable futures. They know in their bones what many of us only confess theologically: Christ is all.
The Heidelberg Catechism begins with this foundational comfort: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” For refugees, this is not abstract theology. It is lived reality. They have nothing else to cling to.
This spiritual posture makes them compelling witnesses. When Zhenya shares the gospel, she speaks from a place of authentic dependence, not religious performance. Her hearers sense that she has tested and found Christ sufficient in ways that comfortable Christians rarely demonstrate.
2. They Maintain Cross-Cultural Fluency
Effective church planting requires cultural translation—making the unchanging gospel intelligible within changing contexts. Refugees are forced translators by circumstance. They navigate multiple languages, customs, and social systems simply to survive.
This fluency becomes missional advantage. Zhenya can communicate with fellow Ukrainians in their heart language while simultaneously building bridges to American neighbors. She embodies what missiologists call a “bridge person”—someone who can move between cultures and carry the gospel across boundaries.
The Belgic Confession affirms that the church is “gathered from all peoples”—not a single ethnic enclave but a multilingual, multicultural community united in Christ. Refugee church planters demonstrate this catholicity in ways that mono-cultural churches cannot.
3. They Bring Gospel Resilience
Church planting is hard. Studies suggest that 20-30% of church plants close within five years, often due to planter burnout, financial stress, or conflict. The obstacles facing refugee planters are exponentially greater—language barriers, trauma, legal uncertainty, economic precarity.
Yet they persist. Why?
Because they have already survived worse. The same resilience that carried them through war, displacement, and starting over in foreign lands becomes spiritual muscle for the challenges of church planting. They know that God preserves His people through fire—not around it.
The Opportunity Before the American Church
Here is the remarkable opportunity: the nations have come to our doorstep.
International students fill our universities. Immigrant families revitalize declining neighborhoods. Refugees resettle in cities and towns across America—often in places with little gospel presence. According to the U.S. State Department, more than 3 million refugees have been resettled in the United States since 1980. Many of these are believers or become believers. And they are planting churches.
But this opportunity requires a posture shift from established churches. We must move from seeing refugees as ministry projects to recognizing them as ministry partners—indeed, as leaders and planters who may have more to teach us about faith and resilience than we have to offer them about church strategy.
The Canons of Dort remind us that God’s elect come from “every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9). This is not future eschatology alone; it is present reality. The diverse church gathering in Red Wing, Minnesota is a foretaste of the worship scene around God’s throne.
Three Ways to Support Refugee-Led Church Planting
How can established churches and individual Christians participate in what God is doing through displaced believers?
1. Provide Platform, Not Just Charity
Refugee church planters don’t need saviors; they need partners. Rather than creating parallel ministries “for” refugees, look for ways to share platform and resources with refugee leaders. Can your church provide meeting space? Financial support? Administrative backing? These practical provisions multiply the effectiveness of planters who already have vision, calling, and cultural access.
2. Learn Humility
Refugee believers often possess deeper faith, stronger community, and more effective evangelistic zeal than their American counterparts. They have learned to depend on God in ways that comfortable Christianity rarely requires. Approach these partnerships with teachability, not paternalism. Ask: What can we learn from believers who have followed Christ through persecution and displacement?
3. Pray for Multiplication
The goal is not merely survival or assimilation. It is multiplication—disciples making disciples, churches planting churches. Pray that refugee-led churches would become sending centers, raising up the next generation of leaders and planters. The 2 Timothy 2:2 principle applies here: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”
Four generations of discipleship: Paul to Timothy to reliable people to others. This is the pattern that multiplies movements.
Conclusion: The River of History
Jon Hoglund of Desiring God recently wrote that missionaries “go with the flow of history”—not swimming upstream against the current, but participating in the river that moves “powerfully, victoriously toward the worldwide worship of Jesus Christ.”
The same is true for refugee church planters. They are not merely surviving displacement; they are riding its current toward gospel advance. What war and crisis scattered, God is using to gather. What seemed like loss has become seed.
Zhenya’s church in Red Wing is one of hundreds springing up across America through the ministry of displaced believers. Each represents a testimony that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s church—not in Ukraine, not in Minnesota, not anywhere.
The question for us is whether we will recognize what God is doing and join Him in it. The refugees arriving on our shores are not just recipients of our compassion. They may be the very leaders God has sent to re-evangelize a complacent church and reach a dying world.
“So then, those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.” — Acts 11:19-21