Poland: What a ministry privilege!

Wow! What a great week we had in Poland! While our other 4 kids went to their own conference in Slovakia, we went further north. EB, Quentin, our good friend and Atlantan Brent Harrison and I went to our Polish ministry’s Christmas student conference. It was held in the mountains of southern Poland. It was truly one of the great ministry experiences of my life.

I can still remember Billy Graham speaking on Matthew 9:37 (“the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few”) at a Christmas conference I attended in 1983 as a college student. God used his talk to change the direction of my life. What a privilege to be before a group of Polish students a generation later to communicate the same Biblical truths. Poland is a very conservative, God-fearing country. But personal knowledge of God (John 17:3) is very rare in Poland with less than 1% of the population being evangelical. There are more Jehovah Witnesses than Baptists in Poland.

Over the course of 4 days I spoke 4 times to the main session and helped lead two other seminars. The theme of the week was STEWARDSHIP. I used the Christmas story (Matthew 1:18-2:23 and Luke 2:1-19) and examined different characters to highlight different aspects of stewardship. I was able to dig deep into the Biblical story of Christmas, which is surprisingly unknown among European young people. I did this as I was teaching on four aspects of stewardship: stewardship of God’s gift to us (baby Jesus), relationships (Joseph), money (the Magi) and our very lives (The Great Commission). By week’s end I was emotionally spent but what a great way to pour out yourself!

The talks and seminars generated small group and one on one discussions. Here Brent continues answering questions after our “men only” seminar. EB is counseling a Polish college student who attended our relationship seminar.

The young man in the middle, Raphael, came to Christ at our “American Café” outreach that I participated in a year and a half ago in Krakow. Rafael gave his testimony at this Christmas conference. Another girl also gave her testimony (not pictured here) who came to Christ after my talk on the first night about the meaning of Jesus coming to earth as a baby.

We gave each student at the conference a copy of John Piper’s book, “Don’t Waste Your Life.”

The students expressed their appreciation to us with this gift of a Polish ceramic tray.

The cold Polish countryside.