Thread by @RyanBurtonKing

The oldest Baptist church in Zhytomyrs'ka Oblast, Ukraine, is in Solodyri, formerly Neudorf, a community of German immigrants. These immigrants joined many in adopting Baptist beliefs under the ministry of Gottfried Alf, who from the age of 27 led the Baptist movement in Poland.

The church was formally constituted by Alf in 1866, and led by Karl Ondra. Ondra was a Lutheran who set out to convert Baptists but became one himself. With 25 others, he attended the Mission School in Hamburg, Germany led by Johann Oncken in 1865.

Later the same year, 1865, 26 year old Ondra began leading the gathering in Neudorf, which was formally constituted the next year by Gottfried Alf, with Ondra as Pastor. The church saw explosive growth with regular baptisms and as many as 82 baptised at a time.

The church outgrew its building a few times under Ondra and his successors, and the present structure was built in 1907.

The church endured much persecution by the Lutheran and Orthodox communities around them. With the rise of the Soviet Union came Marxist-Leninist policy advocating the ultimate elimination of religious beliefs leading to the USSR anti-religious campaigns of 1921-28 and 1928-1941.

Wilhelm Schmidgall became pastor of the Neudorf church in 1925. The last sermon allowed at the church was in spring 1934. He fled East and worked as a night watchman on a collective farm, but was hunted down and arrested in 1936. He died two years into an eight year sentence.

What happened to the building? It was eventually converted into a hay barn for the surrounding fields, by court order. But the church never perished. All along, believers met - at some risk - in houses.

The winds of change blew through the 80s. Persecution died down, people pushed back against the phililosphies and policies that drove the USSR, and "Prisoners of Conscience" - including Baptist pastors - were released by Mikhail Gorbachev. The USSR crumbled.

An independent Ukraine was born on 24 August 1991 with provision for religious liberty in the constitution. The Solodyri Baptists got their House of Prayer back. From 1992 to 1996 they worked to undo decades of misuse.

When they finally were able to regather in it, the House of Prayer was packed to the galleries and the leaders of the church stood at the front with hands outstretched to heaven to give thanks and rededicate the building to its purpose.

Since freedom, the Solodyri church has planted 16 other churches in the oblast, all of which are now pastored by men discipled in the Solodyri church.

Since 2000, Myhailo Antonovych has been the pastor in Solodyri. He has seen much. He used to be one of the men in the field harvesting hay, and remembers driving machinery through what should have been the doors of the church. He's happy now to be gathering a different harvest.