It is an overwhelming task to describe to you the impact of the most recent mission trip to Evangelical School of Theology, Wroclaw, Poland from September 3 – 11, 2014. There were 16 participants (14 from White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, NC, and two from Jackson, Mississippi’s First Baptist Church).

WHY DID WE GO TO GERMANY AND POLAND?

To be humbled…

…by the ways that the EWST staff, faculty and leaders serve others.

…by the knowledge of our human potential to hate through visits to Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp, talks from survivors of World War II who hid Jews in their homes, and by evidence of the destruction of homes, churches, cemeteries and human life.

…by encounters with city and university leaders who support the mission of EWST.

To be aware…

…of our own potential for hating and excluding.

…of the subtlety of discrimination and hatred through visits to the site of the Wannsee Conference, where men who were predominantly from faithful Protestant upbringings determined to kill millions of Jews through extermination.

…of the God-led courage of the few by visiting the birthplace and parents’ homes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Edith Stein.

To be inspired…

…by a Lutheran pastor in Berlin who led his church during the Communist era to provide and deliver much-needed supplies to the church in Wroclaw.

…by the worship practices and faithfulness of Pentecostals, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and the Jewish community in Wroclaw by visiting their places of worship and speaking with their leaders.

…by the four denominations – Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Polish Orthodox and Jewish – who have bonded in reconciliation and friendship (District of Mutual Respect) to raise a generation that could never again commit the atrocities of the past.

…by the lives of those who serve and have served through EWST, allowing God to work through them in bold and creative ways.

…by the vision of those Protestants who were told after the Thirty Years War that the only church they could build must be of non-permanent material, outside the city limits, and completed in one year, but who then built a church for 3,000 that still stands as the Church of the Peace in Swidnica.

To serve…

…through humbling ourselves to sit at the feet of servants and scholars.

…by taking eyeglasses for use by EWST-sponsored missionaries in Ukraine.

…the memories of those whose lives were taken by cleaning in the historic Jewish cemetery.

…others through life-changing relationships that bond God’s people together.

By Linda Robinson