Four years after the full-scale invasion began, many Ukrainian families have found a church home in Denmark and Germany. The children learn the language quickly; parents and grandparents often still hear the sermon in a language that is not theirs. Here is how MulingStream puts the whole sermon on their phone, in Ukrainian.
Four years ago today, on 24 February 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Families packed what they could carry and left, and many of them found shelter in Denmark, in Germany and across Europe.
Many of them also found a church. Some came from Baptist, Pentecostal and other evangelical congregations at home, some from Orthodox or Greek Catholic families, and some had never been to church before and were welcomed in at a hard time in their lives. Danish and German congregations opened their doors, their halls and often their homes.
This post is about one quiet difficulty that remains in many of those churches on a Sunday morning: the sermon.
In a Ukrainian family that has lived in Denmark or Germany for a few years, the language is rarely shared evenly. The children have been at school since the first autumn and follow a Danish or German sermon without effort. Parents who work have learned enough for daily life, and often not enough for a forty-minute sermon full of Scripture and stories. Grandparents, who came because the family would not leave them behind, may still understand very little.
So the family sits together, and hears the service differently. The children laugh at the pastor's joke a second before their parents look to them for an explanation. Someone leans over to whisper a summary. Afterwards the conversation at lunch is about what the pastor actually said.
Churches have tried many good things: a Ukrainian volunteer who interprets, a printed summary, a separate Ukrainian group in the afternoon. They help. They also depend on one or two people being available every single week, and they rarely carry the whole sermon as it is preached.
MulingStream works with what everyone already has. The pastor preaches in Danish or German as usual, with MulingStream running in the browser on the laptop or tablet that already sits at the front. Ukrainian guests scan the QR code on the screen, or open the link the church shared in its group chat, and choose Ukrainian. No app, no account, no headset handed out at the door.
From then on the sermon appears on their phone in Ukrainian, live, while the pastor is still speaking. They can read it in the Cyrillic script they grew up with, or listen to it in a Ukrainian voice through an earbud. The grandmother can listen; the father can read along and look up at the pastor; the teenager does not need to translate for anybody.
Ukrainian can also be the language that is spoken. Many Danish and German churches now have a Ukrainian pastor, elder or worship leader among them, and some host a Ukrainian congregation in their building. When a Ukrainian speaker preaches or gives a testimony, the Danish or German members can follow on their own phones in Danish or German.
That opens doors that were hard to open before: a joint service where both congregations hear each other, a baptism where the whole family and the whole church understand, a thanksgiving evening where the hosts finally hear in full the stories they have been part of.
A sermon in a church with Ukrainian members is full of names: the families being prayed for, the towns they come from, the pastor of the Ukrainian group, a Bible place the pastor keeps returning to. Names are exactly what translation tends to guess at.
Since last week, Keywords let a church give MulingStream the words that must never be guessed at, so they come through intact in every language the room is running. Nobody should hear their own name or their home town mangled in front of the room.
Setting it up takes about two minutes: sign up, add the languages your guests need, share the link or the QR code, and start speaking. There is nothing to rent and nothing to install. New accounts start with a free, generous trial, so you can try it on an ordinary Sunday before deciding anything. How the day works for a church is on how it works for leaders, and what the guest sees is on how it works for listeners.
MulingStream does not replace a volunteer interpreter or a Ukrainian ministry in your church. It sits alongside them, covers the Sundays they cannot be there, and lets them sit with their own family for once.
Ukrainian is one of 200+ languages on MulingStream; see them all on our languages page, and Ukrainian on its own at Ukrainian on MulingStream.
The children follow the Danish. The grandmother follows the Ukrainian. For once, the family hears the same sermon.
From 25 February 2026, the day after this post, a demo room runs around the clock. Open the listener demo room on your phone, choose Ukrainian, and hear a real talk arrive in Ukrainian before you show it to anyone in your church.
Since 19 March 2026, Smart Translation builds whole sentences from what the pastor means, and Smart Hints add a short note under a line when something would not travel on its own. When the pastor quotes or names a verse, a Ukrainian listener sees the reference and the verse itself from a widely used Ukrainian Bible translation, and a Danish or German saying gets one line of explanation.
Since 7 April 2026, MulingDisplay can put the captions on the screen the room is already looking at, so an older guest without a smartphone can read the sermon in Ukrainian from the screen at the side of the hall.
Since 5 August 2026 the MulingStream website and the listener screens are available in Ukrainian, Danish and German among many others, so a Ukrainian guest sees the whole thing in Ukrainian, and the Danish or German pastor can read about it in their own language.
Since 2 September 2026, churches can use MulingStream with church passes, and every church gets its first two services free. What each pass covers is on pricing for churches.
See which languages your guests can read and hear, with what each one offers, on our languages page.