MINISTERING TO IMMIGRANTS

IN POLAND By Maksym Sliazin

Baptist youth in Nazareth, Israel, distributing water and sweets at the end of each fast day during Ramadan,

observed by Muslims worldwide (Photo courtesy of Association of Baptist Churches in Israel)

YOUTH IN ISRAEL DISTRIBUTE WATER

DURING RAMADAN By Bader Mansour

The youth group at the Nazareth Baptist Church in Israel, was looking for an opportunity to do outreach in their community. They knew they needed to begin by showing interest in the needs of the people. Since most people in Nazareth are Muslim who were observing the 30-day Ramadan feast (June 5-July 5), the church youth decided to show the love of Christ in a creative way to those who were fasting.

While Muslims were rushing to their homes around sunset after a long day of

fasting in the heat of the summer, the church youth were waiting for them near the Nazareth city center with cool bottles of water and some sweets. The gesture was very well received by the community, and a video of the distribution went viral on social media. The Baptist community in Nazareth, one of the smallest Christian groups in town, was praised by both local Christians and Muslims. More than 80,000 people live in Nazareth, the largest Arab town in Israel. Around 70 percent of the population is Muslim, and the rest are Christian. Relations between both groups have been good in recent years. However, a few meters away from the same spot where the youth distributed the water and the sweets, a big dispute occurred between Christians and Muslims in the year 2000. Muslims wanted to erect a large mosque in front of the Church of the Annunciation, while the Christians opposed it. The dispute became violent, resulting in the two communities boycotting each other’s businesses for some time. The mosque building project was halted after government intervention, but it has taken several years for the community to heal. Many people saw the youth group’s act of kindness as one more step toward building trust between Christians and Muslims in Nazareth. Bader Mansour is development officer for the Association of Baptist Churches

in Israel.

The Slavic Centre of Mission and Integration (SCMI) of the Baptist Union of Poland (BUP) prepares missionaries to serve in Polish churches and to reach out to immigrants. It creates Russian-speaking communities within BUP churches and engages in integration and evangelism projects. Two years ago I moved to Poland because of the war in Eastern Ukraine. There are more than 1.5 million Ukrainians in Poland and the number is growing. My family has come through a lot of diffi- culties during adaptation to new circumstances. Therefore, the matter of integration is not a theory for me. I’m experiencing its necessity every single day of my life. The Lord put a pas- sion for integration ministry in my heart. That passion turned into an actual ministry. At the beginning of 2015 we created a Russian- speaking community within the First Baptist Church of Gdansk. This year we started the work of SCMI under the BUP and the supervision of its president, Mateusz Wichary. Our goal is to help both Polish churches and immigrants to build relationships. We believe that those mutual efforts will bear incredible fruit for the Kingdom of God. We made some achievements. We trained

the first set of missionaries, organized the First Ukrainian Mission Conference in Warsaw, and published a book called Gdansk Project of Integration, among other things. We understand the huge number of things we need to do. We would like to see the growth of Polish Baptist churches and fulfill God’s will of spreading the gospel. We want to be good instruments in God’s hand. We believe that the Lord Jesus sets specific tasks before us. We hope to be fully faithful to His will. Maksym Sliazin is coordi- nator of Ukrainian Ministry in the Baptist Union of Poland and director of the Slavic Cen- tre of Mission and Integra- tion.

Left: Members of the Ukrainian community attending the 2016 Easter celebration at First Baptist Church, Gdansk, Poland

(Photo courtesy of FBC, Gdansk) 25