Many seminary students will return to campus this fall with stories of what they did over the summer. For at least one group of students, their stories will tell of their efforts to spread the gospel overseas.
Seven Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Texas Baptist College students and two faculty traveled to Cologne, Germany, this summer to share the love of Christ with refugees in that city.
Dean Sieberhagen, interim dean of the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions and professor of missions, and TBC Dean and Assistant Professor of Evangelism Carl Bradford led the students in working with refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and Turkey — countries with a high rate of religious persecution. Sieberhagen noted that while there is freedom of religion in Germany, the refugees still may face family and cultural opposition to the Gospel of Christ.
Sieberhagen led training seminars for students on ways to reach refugees and teamed up with Bradford during the second half of the trip to train refugees who had come to Christ.
‘Powerful’
One of the key ways team members performed outreach was setting up volleyball nets in a park. As people in the area joined the games, it gave team members the opportunity to start spiritual conversations with them. Cameron Wormack, a Connellsville, Pennsylvania, native in the 5-year program, said it was the most memorable part of the trip for him.
Wormack said he struck up a conversation with one young man after enjoying a game of volleyball. The man told Wormack he had “been waiting to learn about Christianity because he’d heard a lot of good things about it. And while in the conversation, he was looking around, making sure that his family wasn’t there to hear him saying that. And I thought that was pretty powerful,” Wormack noted.
“God opened doors,” said Ariel Martinez, a Master of Theological Studies in Spanish (MET) student from Dallas. Martinez said he learned a new way of doing evangelism on the trip and is interested in the seminary’s mission trip to Spain scheduled in December.
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*Name changed for security reasons and to protect future mission work.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Karen Garcia and originally published by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
