Morningside Baptist Church, Spartanburg, has a long history of missions involvement at home and throughout the world. For the past nine years, the church has been sending teams to Poland.
This summer, however, for the first time, Morningside sent a youth mission team on an international project. From July 3-13, 30 teenagers and adult chaperones from the church traveled to Warsaw and led a summer camp for teenagers at the Baptist seminary in Poland.
Morningside partnered with the Polish Baptist Union to make the camp a reality. More than 60 teenagers affiliated with Polish Baptist churches from all over the country attended the camp.
Unlike many American church youth ministries, the Polish students come from churches where there are only a handful of other students. The camp gave them the opportunity to connect with and be encouraged by other Polish believers who were their age. The camp included worship services, Bible studies, recreation, and local servant evangelism experiences.
The Morningside team also had the opportunity after camp to travel by train from Warsaw to Krakow to see Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp.
Nathan Neighbors, Morningside’s youth pastor and mission team leader, said, “It’s important to give students the opportunity to be involved in international missions. It allows them to see a more global picture of God’s kingdom work and the chance to be not just the future of the church, but the church on mission today.”