Being in Ukraine
David & Shelly Hayes
T
~by Bob Gustin
he walls and shelves of David and Shelly Hayes’ home in Nashville are sprinkled with art and artifacts from Ukraine. Brightly patterned pysanka, also known as Ukrainian Easter eggs, traditional nesting dolls, landscape and cityscape paintings, and more. The cultural artifacts are reminders of a land and people now bearing the scars of a brutal Russian invasion. But David and Shelly know first-hand the resilience and determination of the Ukrainians. He was pastor of the Parkview Church of the Nazarene just outside Nashville from 1986 to 1992 and again from 2005 to 2014. But he spent two full years working in Ukraine, 1992–1994. He made periodic visits back, staying for months at a time in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, living in Kyiv and travelling to Russia, the Republic of Georgia, Belarus, and throughout Ukraine. After his last Parkview assignment, David spent the next five years in consulting, training, and coaching
26 Our Brown County • May/June 2022
David and Shelly visiting Kyiv in 2018.
roles for the church, and is now hospice chaplain for SouthernCare Hospice in Bloomington, while continuing online mentoring and training of church leaders across eastern Europe and Asia. An Indiana native, David earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. After graduation, he was a youth pastor in Anderson, Indiana, then an admissions counselor for the university. It was his work as an admissions counselor, and the travel and speaking it required, that gave him a taste of the ministry. But he was drawn to mission work. “I can’t describe it to you,” he said, “but I can still feel the angst. For three years, I told them I wanted to go behind the Iron Curtain.” Shelly was born and raised in Valparaiso, Indiana, but her parents had a second home in Brown County. She met David when both were students at Olivet Nazarene University, and they were married in 1979. She has a degree in business administration and marketing, previously working as marketing director for Gaither Family Resources in
