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Recently, a MeadowBrook team returned from a week-long visit to Siedlce, Poland to visit some of our global missions partners who are there on the front lines in local church and church planting ministry. About the Siedlce Church Ben and Sarah Layer moved from the United States to Krakow, Poland about 25 years ago to plant a church. Within a few years, a small local church was established. Ben discipled and handed the church over to a Polish pastor before moving his family to Siedlce (an hour east of Warsaw) to establish another church in 2004. Growing a local church is a slow process in Poland, but in the goodness of the Lord, they were able to plant a local church in Siedlce (the first evangelical church in the city) and it has grown over the years to almost 75 members. Also, through their labors in Siedlce, the Lord has allowed their church to plant another church in a smaller city about 40 minutes away (Łuków). Later this year, the Siedlce church will send one of its Polish pastors to the Łuków church to become its full time pastor and then they will begin work on a new church plant in another city.  The Siedlce church also has a publishing ministry that they began years ago that seeks to find good resources that are in English, translate them into Polish, and publish them in order to disciple and equip Polish Christians and Polish pastors because those resources are not readily available like they are in the United States. And one more note on the Siedlce church, they have a dream of buying a piece of property and building a building for the church. The reason for this is that they are beginning to outgrow their current space and a building would give them plenty of meeting space. As well as meeting space, it would legitimize the presence of their church more so in the community and make it viewed less like a cult. Another reason they desire a building is to have space to house and train pastoral interns. Their hope is to be a training center for future Polish pastors and so they are aiming to create an internship whereby they can train these guys up to shepherd well the Lord’s flock in Poland. MeadowBrook’s partnership with Siedlce came about through our partners, missionaries Taylor and Anna Neese. Taylor and Anna were members of Grace Fellowship in Anniston and are both graduates of Jacksonville State University. They along with their two kids, soon to be three, moved to Siedlce to work alongside Ben and Sarah and the church there. They have spent their first year learning the language and culture and plugging into ministry in the church as well as getting to know people in the community and seeking to share the Gospel with them. About Poland and the Difficult Ground for the Gospel Poland is historically a Roman Catholic country. Catholicism is extremely prevalent and influential in Poland, still to this day. Every town and city will have at least one, but more likely, numerous Catholic churches that are spread throughout the city limits. But what about evangelical, Gospel-preaching churches? Of the approximately 900 cities/towns in Poland, around 600 of them have zero evangelical churches that exist in their borders, meaning that if someone wanted to visit an evangelical church, they couldn’t…they would have to drive potentially an hour or two to the nearest town where there might be a Gospel-preaching local church. It may surprise you to find out that percentage-wise, Poland has a smaller percentage of their population that is considered “evangelical” than Saudi Arabia. According to joshuaproject.net, Saudi Arabia, with a total population of around 34.5 million people, consists of 0.5% of their population that are considered “evangelical”. On the other hand, Poland, with a total population of approximately 38 million people, consists of 0.3% of their population that are considered “evangelical”, which makes Poland statistically less reached for the Gospel than Saudi Arabia. Of the “evangelical” churches in Poland, there is, like in the United States, a spectrum of those that are solid theologically to those that are not. Of the approximately 580 “evangelical” churches in Poland, about half of them preach a prosperity gospel message and others are not careful in protecting doctrine and solid biblical teaching. In reality there is somewhere between 200-250 biblically faithful, Gospel preaching churches in Poland. And among those churches, they estimate the number of true evangelical Christians to be somewhere around 20,000 people. For more information you can check out https://gospel4poland.com/ Praying for Poland and the Gospel Work There Pray for Taylor Neese and Ben Layer and their families as they seek to faithfully pastor and disciple people in the Siedlce church as well as raise up future Polish pastors. Pray for the Siedlce and Łuków (pronounced “wu-koov”) churches that they will continue to grow in Christlikeness and be able to make the name of the Lord known in their communities. Pray for the publishing ministry of the Siedlce church, that the Lord will continue to give them relationships with good translators who will faithfully and effectively translate the articles and books into Polish and that these resources would be used to disciple and equip many in Poland. Pray for the building project of the Siedlce church and their dream to be a pastor training center that will be able to impact all of Poland. Pray for more biblically faithful churches to be planted throughout Poland, that the name of Christ would be known and worshiped among the Polish people.

Are missionaries super Christians? Now, that is an interesting question to think on. Most everyone would likely say “No” (and rightly so), but in their hearts they would view missionaries as pretty much a super Christian, something they themselves would feel they could never attain to in their own lives. After all, where we live, our culture puts a premium on a “good and comfortable” life with all the bells and whistles. And the life of a missionary is viewed as a life of sacrifice, of giving things up that we could have had. Sure, we agree, that the reason they give things up (for the name of Jesus being known among the nations and to further grow His Kingdom) is a good thing! But we aren’t willing to do that with our lives…we will leave that to those super Christian missionaries. But what does the Bible say about what a Christian is? Let’s take a look at some of the things Jesus tells us in the Gospel accounts. In Matthew 13:44-46, Jesus says, The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. In other words, a normal Christian is one who realizes the eternal, infinite value of his or her redemption and inheritance from Christ Jesus our King, that they no longer hold any value on the things of this earth and are willing to part with all of it in order to pursue Christ and his kingdom! And again in Luke 9:23-24 and 14:26-27, Jesus says, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it… If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Did you catch what Jesus said in those verses? If you didn’t fulfill those qualifications, you cannot be His disciple! Now let’s circle back to the initial question regarding missionaries being super Christians. I would venture to say, after looking at the words of Jesus that missionaries are not super Christians at all, but rather their brand of Christianity and faith is normal Christianity per Jesus’ definition of it. Now, I do not take that to mean that everyone needs to sell all they have and move somewhere hard for the sake of the Gospel. On the contrary, the biblical norm is that a few from the church were commissioned to go and the vast majority stayed in their local context as faithful witnesses and church members (look at Acts 13:1-4). But this does take us back to evaluating our hearts towards Jesus and the things of this world. Do we hold on to our things in this world too much or do we approach our lives with radical, normal Christian faith every day, where we deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus with everything we have got where we live in our families, in our jobs, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our local church, in our community, and among the nations? May we be found faithful when we stand before King Jesus one day for his honor and his glory on this earth!