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-Written by Craig Waddell. Posted 6/15/2023. Updated 10/12/2023
“Rather than hoarding the grace He’s shown us, we want to bless our community with it.” Part of the mission statement of Eastville Baptist Church, this vision stretches beyond their Eastern Shore. Pastor Andrew Juliot and the church felt led to be a be a blessing not only to their own community at home, but also to invest in God’s work in a specific international setting. That’s why Eastville embarked on a partnership with Pastor Samuel Skrzypowski in Poland. Pastor Samuel and his team are planting Logos Baptist Church in Bydgoszcz, Poland, a city with about 380,000 inhabitants. Several partners make up Pastor Samuel’s team, including his home church in Warsaw. Eastville is now part of that team, and provides a critical portion of the support Samuel needs for his family and ministry. This makes it possible for him to concentrate consistently on the work he needs to do to help the church plant move forward.
The relationship goes beyond financial support. As the two churches interact during this five-year partnership, they are learning about each other’s situation, and how to pray for each other. Technology makes frequent interaction possible, and provides the opportunity for the entire congregation to be involved. There are also plans afoot for visiting each other and doing ministry together, both in Poland and in Virginia. One of the greatest benefits of such a partnership is mutual encouragement. It is also beneficial to compare experiences from different cultural contexts – sometimes that helps us understand better how to live out our faith in our own community.
Virginia Baptists have been part of the European Baptist Federation’s (EBF) Mission Partnerships from the beginning, supporting over 25 of its indigenous church planters in 15 countries, since 2003. These count among the 230 churches which have been started through this effort, gathering over 7,500 new believers. Currently we sponsor five indigenous church planters in Poland, Macedonia, and Lebanon. Our newest planter is Mikola Glavik, who is planting a Ukrainian speaking church in Bydgoszcz, Poland. This is the same city where Eastville is sponsoring Samuel Skrzypowski. In fact they are colleagues and friends, and their churches are helping each other!
The EBF, with the generous help of its partners, developed Mission Partnerships (MP) to facilitate evangelism and the planting of new Baptist churches in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The MP arrange funding for suitably gifted people to work as evangelists and church planters in their own countries. The overall goal of MP is to unite Baptists in making Christ known among the diverse nations of Europe and the Middle East. The EBF organizes the MP in cooperation with its member Unions, and experience confirms that indigenous missionaries are the most effective in this church planting ministry. They know their people, culture, and language, and that contributes to their success. MP is seeing significant fruit in changed lives and transformed communities, and this has been an effective way for Virginia Baptists together to participate in church planting around the world.
If your church would like to plant a church in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, we would love to help you establish a partnership with an EBF church planter!