Editor's note: The following text is the transcript of the video posted below. Read through or scroll to the bottom to watch the video.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” -- Isaiah 6:8
This Isaiah passage has been a tremendous inspiration to me since becoming a follower of Jesus many years ago. My entrance into the kingdom in the 1980s was the direct result of an “Isaiah-type” response to God made by a small group of committed Christians in Lubbock, Texas in 1980. Led by campus ministry leaders Preston and Sandie Shepherd, a team of 11 individuals left their comfortable and familiar Texas surroundings and moved approximately 2,000 miles away to Bellingham, Washington to begin a campus outreach at Western Washington University, where I “just so happened to be” attending college at the time.
About a year later, in the spring of 1981, one of the members of that mission team, Bob Tuerck, met me at his place of employment. And the rest, you might say, is history—my spiritual history, that is! I convinced my girlfriend, Patty, to follow me in learning more about what Bob and his friends were offering. And as we look back on those events some 34 years ago, we are blown away by what God did then to reach out to us and what he has done since then to bless us. Together, we have been enjoying the amazing privilege of being a part God’s kingdom, and it all started with a decision by a group of Christians simply looking to share the gospel with those who hadn’t had the opportunity to hear it.
Their decision to come to Bellingham when they did was largely based upon an eye-opening and sobering statistic revealed to them, listing my state, Washington, as “the most unchurched state in America.” And I definitely fit that statistic to a tee! Without those individuals deciding to come to Washington to begin a campus ministry, and without one of them reaching out to me, who knows where our lives would have ended up today. Their example and missionary spirit has been with Patty and me ever since, and we have worked to make ourselves available to God to help grow his church and give others the same incredible opportunity to find him as we were given.
We have been privileged since that time in 1981 to be used by God to help build and strengthen His church—in nine cities and eight states—from Bellingham in the early '80s to Chicago where we currently live and work in the full-time ministry. During that span of time, we have had the opportunity to lead a mission team of 29 disciples from Denver, Colorado to begin a new church in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1991. We also were involved in overseeing another team of disciples who moved from various cities in the Midwest to begin a church in Des Moines, Iowa in 2012. In addition to those two personal missionary endeavors, we have also been greatly inspired through the years by witnessing many other disciples make radical decisions to step out on faith and be a part of efforts to plant and strengthen churches all around the world, from London to Lagos, from New York to New Delhi, from Miami to Moscow.
Whether it was in our early twenties at the beginning of our Christian adventure, or today in our fifties, we have striven in our hearts to be willing to “go anywhere and do anything” for the sake of God and his kingdom. We still have a passionate desire to be used by God to bring the good news to lost souls—whether that’s here in Chicago or somewhere else. And if there’s a need, and if we’re able to help meet that need, we consider it an honor to respond to God’s call, just as Isaiah did in his day.
Recently, we were approached by the leadership team here in Chicago with an opportunity to meet one of those pressing kingdom needs—this time in Warsaw, Poland—to assume leadership of our church there and to launch an all-out effort to strengthen and grow the ministry in that city of 2.8 million people. Currently, there are only a handful of disciples in our fellowship living in Warsaw, and we believe God wants that to drastically change. In addition to that sobering fact, we discovered there are no other churches in our brotherhood in all of Poland, a nation of nearly 40 million people.
As we tried to process the information that day, and as we considered what God was putting on our hearts at that very moment, we did our best to relate the call God made to Isaiah thousands of years ago to the call God was making to us in the twenty-first century: “Whom shall I send to Warsaw? Who will go to Poland for us?” And we said that day, “Here we are, God. Send us!”
We were thrilled with the possibility of moving to Warsaw, and we immediately put our hearts and minds behind these exciting plans. We saw it as a real privilege to help maximize efforts to spread the gospel in Eastern Europe, a challenging mission field in desperate need of faithful disciples willing to leave the comfort and familiarity of their current lifestyle and teach the word of God in a foreign land.
Since that time in March of 2014, we have been working together with leaders in Boston and Chicago, along with brothers and sisters in the European Missions Society, to finalize these plans. Currently, we are working on a few main areas to prepare us for our journey to Warsaw.
First, Patty and I have been involved in intense language training, doing our best the past six months to learn the Polish language. A few recent studies have voted the Polish language as the most difficult language in the world to learn. And from attending language classes three hours a day, three days a week for the past few months, Patty and I have no reason to argue with those results. But while it has been a big challenge to wrap our brains around the language, we also see it as a tremendous opportunity to show our commitment to the Polish people who very much respect any outsider who is willing to take on this daunting task.
Secondly, we are working to gather a team of disciples who will move to Warsaw with us. We are so thrilled that we already have three other people who have committed themselves to joining the work in Warsaw—JJ Fink from Des Moines, Whitney Lafever from Indianapolis and Alexandra Peets from Chicago. But we need more! And we’re searching for people around the world who are willing to open their hearts and respond to God’s plea for Poland.
We are looking primarily, though not exclusively, for college students, young professionals and empty-nesters who would most likely be in the best position to make this type of move to a foreign country. We are also seeking those who are originally from Poland or who speak the Polish language. We are praying that God will move the hearts of a few brothers and sisters “in the know” and that some will return to their homeland and help us build God’s kingdom throughout all of Poland.
Poland is a incredibly beautiful country. And Warsaw is a truly amazing city, located along the banks of the Vistula River. The economy in Poland is very strong. The universities in Warsaw are excellent, and tuition, in most cases, is very reasonable. But more than anything else, there is a huge need to teach the residents of Poland the truths of God’s word.
Our current plan is to land in Warsaw with our team sometime before the end of the summer. Of course, some of the timing for our departure is dependent upon how quickly we can gather a team and gain the necessary paperwork to live and work in Warsaw for an extended period of time.
We ask you to pray about our Warsaw plans. And if you’re interested in learning more specific information about how you can personally be involved in this effort, we encourage you to visit the Chicago Church website at www.chicagochurch.org where you will find more details and any necessary contact information. There will be a thorough interviewing process for those who are interested, and we will expect any who pursue this opportunity to be fully commended by their local church leadership.
We are very confident that God is behind these plans and that he desperately needs people to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to build a great church in Warsaw. We have decided to answer the same call that disciples have been hearing and responding to for centuries: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Is God calling you?