“With all my disadvantages, with my accented Russian
language, I went out and said, ‘Hey, this will help you.’
And people have responded.”


KIEV, Ukraine - Every Sunday, thousands of worshipers crowd into an arena here for a rollicking evangelical Christian service. A choir and rock band belt out gospel tunes in Russian. People shimmy in the aisles. It is as if an American megachurch had been transplanted to Kiev, birthplace of Slavic Orthodoxy. Could there be a more unlikely success story in the former Soviet Union than the Reverend Sunday Adelaja, an immigrant from Nigeria who has developed a huge following across Ukraine?

From his start in a ramshackle apartment soon after the Soviet collapse two decades ago, Mr. Adelaja has built a vast religious organization under the banner of his church, Embassy of God. He is one of Ukraine’s best known figures, pairing evangelical tenets with a philosophy found in religiously oriented self-help books.

But he is also reviled by some who resent a black African luring white Slavs from their religious traditions. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church calls him a cult leader, and law enforcement officials have repeatedly investigated him. It is not hard to find racial caricatures of him around Kiev.

The Russian government has barred him from entering the country, though he has a growing number of adherents in Russia.

Mr. Adelaja, who has a boisterous laugh and a relentlessly sunny personality, tries to brush aside the insults. He said his church’s popularity showed that Ukrainians were on a spiritual quest after the atheism of the Soviet era. He said that more than 100,000 people regularly attended services across Ukraine, with a population of 46 million.

“I came to this country disadvantaged as a black person,” he said , adding that he was blistered with slurs and epithets. “But still, with all my disadvantages, with my accented Russian language, I went out and said, ‘Hey, this will help you.’ And people have responded to it.”

Mr. Adelaja, 43, arrived in the Soviet Union in 1986 as a college student, later moving to Kiev. He and his Nigerian wife speak fluent Russian, the native language for many here.

Embassy of God has affiliates throughout the world. In Ukraine, the church undertakes a wide array of charitable activities, feeding thousands every month at soup kitchens and running treatment centers for addiction. But Mr. Adelaja has also tapped into a desire of people in formerly Communist countries to learn entrepreneurial skills and make money.

On a recent Saturday , Mr. Adelaja conducted a seminar . Reading from an iPad, he recited Bible passages and discussed how Christian principles could assist in business.

He and a parishioner, Ishtvan Birov, 35, bantered about innovation. The conversation veered from Jesus to Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive. “Apple takes a model and keeps improving on it,” Mr. Birov said.

Mr. Adelaja responded, “That is the principle of God ? to always keep making it better.” He added, “God is strategic thinking.” Mr. Adelaja is not a Ukrainian citizen, but he said that the authorities feared deporting him because of a potential backlash from his many parishioners.

Mr. Adelaja said he did not live a life of luxury. He said his parishioners were encouraged to donate 10 percent of their salaries to the church, though many do not. He said the money goes toward the church’s activities, including plans for a new $50million headquarters. He earns a living largely from sales of his books, he said.

His opponents said he was promoting false Christian ideals.

“His methodology, his biblical views are twisted,” said Dmitri A. Rozet, who runs a Web site called Adelaja Watch. “He wants to use God for human benefit.”

Still, at a recent service, parishioners seemed enthralled. “

My life was a nightmare,” said Anna Vdovenko, 63. “Now, I am living. And it is all thanks to Pastor Sunday.”


By CLIFFORD J. LEVY