City Links in Poland! Polska Miasto Wiez!

Rick Ashton writes "In 2005 God gave me a dream about Poland. I started to pray for the nation: from this, connections were made with Polish people in the UK and in Poland. God has been, and is, answering my prayers for Poland in unexpected ways!"

Rick Ashton has begun to work as part of the City Links team in Poland, working to link churches and cities across the country to promote prayer and partnerships. His vision to do this began in 2005, with a dream from God about reaching out to people in Poland. After Rick began praying in to this, he saw God answer prayer in different ways. Rick was introduced to a Polish man living in England, who became Rick's lodger in June 2006. This enabled Rick to gain some understanding of Poland, and Rick was also able to start learning some Polish language!

In September 2006 Manchester was host to the Student Alpha Conference, and Rick felt the need to rearrange his plans at the last minute in order to attend the weekend. Several people from churches in Poland had travelled to attend the event, and Rick was able to exchange contact details, and this formed the basis of Rick's contacts in Poland. After further prayer, and through talking to the contacts in Poland, an opportunity arose for Rick to travel to Poland. In April 2007, Rick and Alan Taylor (another member of the City Links team) took a four day trip to Wroclaw.

From this trip, further contacts arose, and Rick has travelled to Poland a further three times. More details of these trips can be found by clicking here.

Rick's vision and work in Poland has been centred around the promotion of prayer and partnerships amongst the churches of the nation, to equip churches for reaching out to their communities. 95% of people in Poland have a Catholic background, although not all of these are involved in the church. There are other denominations present in Poland, including Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and House churches. Churches in Poland have begun to run Alpha courses. There has been a call to foster unity between churches of all denominations in Poland, and Rick has felt priveleged to play a part in this process. Following a trip to Krakow in November 2007, there was testimony of churches working together for the first time to deliver Christmas presents to the poor in the city! In January this year, an inter-denominational communion was held to pray for unity, and in April this year a large-scale Evangelistic event will be held in Katowice, and broadcast to the nation!! (click here for more details of upcoming events)

Rick is currently living and working in Manchester, praying into ways to continue the work in Poland. Anyone interested in praying for Poland, or wanting more information about future trips etc is invited to e-mail
Rick is also interested in developing ways to reach the Polish community living in the UK, and would like to hear from anyone currently running projects in this area, those looking to start projects, or anyone who would like to pray for these communities! The contact e-mail is

 Z Bogiem (Polish for God Bless!)