Feelings of nostalgia found abundant expressions among Seventh-day Adventists in the 170-member congregation in the Ukrainian village of Pozharky when their new church sanctuary was dedicated on October 14.

During the high day, the Pozharky church was bursting at its seams, reliving its past while looking into new days ahead. More than 1,000 people attempted to squeeze into the newly built sanctuary of the church known as the oldest Seventh-day Adventist congregation in the Ukraine.

Vladimir Krupsky, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Ukraine, officiated at the dedication ceremony. “We dedicate this church to the glory of God,” he said, adding that “the best days are still ahead of the Pozharky congregation.”

Krupsky recalled the traumatic days when to be openly religious meant persecution and suffering. “We now dedicate this House of God in full freedom,” he said.

Though formally organized as a church in 1923, the Pozharky congregation claims its beginnings to late 1880s when the first believers embraced the Adventist faith brought to them from the Crimea. Seventy-seven years after the first church was established and built, the village congregation now enjoys the newest church building in Ukraine.

In recent years the church building, which housed a congregation of nearly 400 believers, was destroyed by fire, an act of an anti-religious campaign under communist rule. The new building replaces a less-than-adequate wooden structure that had been a home turned into a sanctuary. The newly dedicated church was largely built by volunteer effort of the congregation and made possible through donations from throughout the country and abroad.

Located 24 kilometers west of the regional capital of Lutsk, the village of Pozharky boasts a prosperous rural setting with a large Adventist population. The local collective farm was operated for decades by Seventh-day Adventists.

The Pozharky church has been known in recent years for its involvement in church growth, planting congregations in nearby villages and towns. “We used to be bigger,“said one church elder. “But it’s nice to know that we have many churches around that owe their presence to our church members who established them there.”

The dedication service was attended by representatives of local authorities, representatives of sister congregations, and veteran Adventist believers to whom the new church is a tribute.