John Brand’s latest guest Preacher on Preaching is EBC Graduate, Adam Urban, a Pastor in his native Poland.
The Gospel In The Centre
In the earlier post about the Polish School for Preachers, Pastor Ben Layer made mention in his video of the online ministry of The Gospel in the Centre. We warmly commend this ministry to you and thought you might be interested in this article written by the European Mission Fellowship back in 2021 and taken from their website.
Just over one year ago a website was launched by the leaders of the evangelical church in Siedlce, Poland – Ben Layer (American missionary), Jan Stefanoff (church elder) and Adam Urban (EMF missionary). Its purpose is to supply trustworthy biblical teaching in the Polish language which exalts the glory and grace of God and equips the church for Christian discipleship and gospel outreach.
The website is called ‘The Gospel in the Centre’ and can be found here: https://www.ewangeliawcentrum.pl/ .
So why is such a resource required? Well, Christians in Poland are in great need. In a country of 38 million people, there are fewer than 600 evangelical churches, the majority of which tend to be decidedly charismatic, and there are very few trustworthy resources available to help the church. This means that there is an ongoing susceptibility of Christians falling prey to the prosperity gospel, the word of faith movement and other forms of shallow, unhealthy theology. Put simply, in Poland there is an enormous need for theologically sound and culturally relevant materials and resources.
The website contains articles from Charles Spurgeon, AW Pink, Mark Dever, DA Carson, John Piper, Paul Tripp, Kevin DeYoung, Stephen Nichols, David Mathis, Thomas Schreiner, and others, with every resource translated into the Polish language. The two largest video curricula are “The God Who is There” by DA Carson and “9 Marks of a Healthy Church.” Two weekly podcasts are also being published – “Ask Pastor John” and “New Morning Mercies” by Paul Tripp. Desiring God, Crossway, and 9Marks ministries have offered lots of support enabling nearly 100 articles to be published in Polish.
In total, since February 2020, 215 different resources have been published with new content coming out on average four times a week. We now have almost 2,500 followers on Facebook and over 15,600 people used the website in its first year!
The feedback being received is also very encouraging. Here is one recent example:
“Thankyou for the effort and work in creating the gospel in the centre website. I’m not fluent in English myself so reading these edifying articles in Polish is a great joy for me. I know that this is a lot of work, so I just wanted to say thank you…”
It is clear that God has richly blessed this initiative since its commencement, and we are excited to see what is in store for the future. One of the next major developments will be adding Polish authors who are faithful Bible teachers to the American and British authors already on the website.
Polish School For Preachers
At the end of June, EBC’s Principal, Pastor John Brand, will be in Warsaw, Poland, for an exciting and strategic new venture. The Polish School For Preachers is the result of the vision and burden of Polish EBC Graduate, Pastor Adam Urban. Working with Adam and other national church leaders, John will be leading a three day conference which is the beginning of a three year training programme for Polish preachers and Bible teachers.
The current plan is that this event will be the first of three such annual gatherings, and in the intervening weeks and months there will be online seminars and individual mentoring.
Poland has a population of 37.5 million but there are only about 700 evangelical churches and roughly 60,000 evangelical believers – that’s just 0.17% of the population – with about the same number of liberal Lutherans. The need for strong Bible churches led by gifted and trained preachers is immense and we are privileged to play even a small part in meeting that need.
Listen to Pastor Ben Layer of the Evangelical Church in Siedlce, Poland, where Adam Urban also serves as he explains the need for this ministry and its potential fruit for the Church in Poland.
This first training conference takes place on Thursday – Saturday, 27th – 29th June, at Zagorna 10 Evangelical Church in Warsaw where John has had the privilege of speaking in the past and we greatly value the prayers of God’s people that this venture would be mightily blessed by him for the growth of the church in Poland. Please pray for Adam and his team in Poland as they make all the arrangements at their end and for John as he is currently busy writing the course material.