in a world of conflicting values, when questions are more common than answers. God's Word provides everything we need to live a God-centered, truth-driven life. Now, here's the Word for Life broadcast, brought to you by Brookside Baptist Church. Good morning. Thank you for joining us on the Word for Life on this 25th of October. My name's Mark Widmer and I'm joining Pastor Ken Keltner. You are maybe expecting us to continue through the book of Revelation today, but at our recent mission conference here at Brookside, we wanted to introduce you to the missionaries that were here, five of them. Today we have Kurt Lemansky, who is a longtime friend of both Ken and I. I'm so glad to be here, and I've really been blessed by your church. Well, amen, Kurt. Well, we go back. We worked together at Northland. In fact, Willis talked a little bit about Northland, which is no longer a Bible college. It's closed down, but it was up in Dunbar, Wisconsin. Pastor Mark worked there, too. So we have some friendship through all of those ministry opportunities. But Kurt, you and Maria are here, glad that you're with us. You've been pastoring, you're going to be heading to minister South Pacific, Asia area. We'll get to that in a moment, because that's exciting with what God's doing in your life. But why don't you just share with us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, you know, and kind of really what God was doing in your life, even through those years before you came to know Christ. Glad to. So I grew up in Davenport, Iowa, lived just a little ways away from the Mississippi River. My parents were Roman Catholic as I was growing up, so I too went to CCD and the Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church and so forth, and went to confession, got confirmed in second grade, all that thing. I even went to a Roman Catholic high school, Assumption High, in Davenport. my freshman year. And when I was about, I think, seven years old, my dad was losing his balance as he was walking, and he got tested, and they found out that he had multiple sclerosis. And so, my parents, they never fought. I never one time heard them argue or fight in all the years. But one morning, I woke up on a Saturday morning, and my parents sat us down, the three of us kids, and said, we're going to get a divorce. Now, that crushed me. I was nine years old. And I couldn't understand why. Never heard him fight. You know what in the world? I found out years later that my mom wanted to divorce him because he had MS and she wanted to move on. So glad I didn't know that when I was young. But my dad moved. into an apartment in Bettendorf, Iowa, a suburb of Davenport. He had been a plant manager for Uticore Technologies, so they made the brains for robots, so they outfitted like the Alaskan Pipeline for GM. That's what they did there in his plant. But he got to the point where he couldn't hack because of the MS, the stress of that job. So he took basically a secretarial role because he didn't have very much he had to do. And he got to the point where he had to sell his car because he couldn't even drive. And so he called the Catholic priest. Catholic priest said, sure, Don, we'll pick you up. We'll take you to church. My dad waited. Sunday morning, waited, waited. No one ever came for him. So he thought, they don't care about me. Forget it. Okay, now what we found out later is that he found out like six months later, the Catholic priest had had a heart attack. The note to take my dad to church was left on his dresser in his bedroom. No one ever got the note. That's why. Sovereignty of God? That's why. So anyway, I moved from my mom's house after my freshman year to my dad's house, my dad's apartment, one room apartment. We were so broke. We were so poor. My mom had lots of money, two businesses. My dad had nothing. because he was waiting for Medicare to kick in. You have to wait for a full year after you work. It was very hard. So we were in this tiny little one-room apartment. I lived with him to help take care of him because he was starting to fall. I could pick him up and put him in bed and all that kind of thing. And he asked me, probably three weeks in of living with him, he said, Kurt, would you like to go to church with me now? he had become born again. When he was complaining at work, while he was being a secretary before he had to quit, that the Catholics didn't care about him. And again, it's not that they didn't in a way, but he was complaining and a man who went to a great church overheard my dad. He said, Don, I'll be happy to take you to church. So he picked him up. After a few months, my dad kept hearing the gospel. He trusted Christ, changed his life. And so here's my dad. I'm thinking he's a weird nut. Sunday morning and Sunday night, Wednesday night. And I was, you know, the quote, good Catholic. I mean, I'd go sometimes and go to confession, but anyway, so I'm thinking he's nuts. Well, he asked, do you want to go to church? I'm like, no, thanks dad. I'm thinking boring. So my dad was clever and we didn't have any money, but we didn't have a car. So two, you know, about two weeks later, he said, Kurt, I'd like to talk with you. Yeah, Dan, what's up? I'm gonna make you a deal. I will buy you a car. Now, in the state of Iowa, you can drive with a parent with a permit from the age of 14. Okay, so you can't do that here in Wisconsin, but you can do that in Iowa. So he says, I'll buy you a car if you will take me to church on Sunday morning. Took me about three seconds to say deal. We're not out of a car. Bobby was a Plymouth Velary, 1976, piece of junk. They had done body work. I think it was awful. It stalled on me the first time I took off, but hey, a deal's a deal. So, you know, when our car was running, I was taking Dad to church. So, I'm sitting in church, you know, and the pastor's preaching, giving the gospel, and it's kind of like Charlie Brown, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. I have a hangover because I was partying on Friday nights, Saturday nights, if I could, typical American teenager, you know, drinking. And so, I'm there with a hangover most of the Sunday. It's just like, ugh. But the gospel's a powerful thing. And I was in the hospital. And after over a year, so I'm 16 now. I'm able to drive by myself. But after a year then, a friend of my dad's was over at our one-room apartment. They were talking. I wasn't part of the conversation. He turned and looked at me, and he said, Kurt, Out of the blue, he said, what do you think your sin does to God? And I, what a weird question. I wasn't even talking with him at all. I was looking at a magazine. And he's like, what do you think your sin? And I didn't answer. I didn't even look at him. And he probably thought I was just purposely ignoring him. But what he didn't know is that I was frozen by that question. I couldn't even answer. And it wasn't long after. That question, God used that somewhat strange question to finally now, to reel me and the rest away, to bring me to Himself. And so shortly thereafter on a Tuesday when I was 16, I prayed and asked God to save me. I didn't tell my parents, didn't tell anyone. I went to one more party that Friday night. And football season was over, so I could go on a Friday. I went to one more party, walked up, I still remember the house, walked upstairs, it was a split foyer, went down the hallway to the living room where the party was at, and I, whole time I'm walking down the hallway, no one's told me this, I'm just, I'm walking thinking, Why am I here? It's like the Holy Spirit was saying, Kurt, what are you doing? Why are you here? I stopped at the opening to that living room, turned around, walked back out of the house, got in my car, drove home, and... I sat down in my recliner, and I picked up the Bible. I had never read the Bible outside of having to read it at church. And I read the Bible that night for about three hours. That then started a habit, unless I was in football or had something else going on a Friday or Saturday night. Every Friday or Saturday night, I would read the Bible for at least two hours, if not three. And so that became just something I loved to do. My mom had offered one of her businesses to me. Now I'm looking toward, you know, do I do business or college? And my pastor graduated from a university called Bob Jones University. And so that's the only Christian school I'd ever even heard of. Because I mean, I've got the old mullet, you know, the longer hair in the back, part in the middle. I mean, I'm all, I know you can't see the muscles anymore. I mean, I'm all buffed from, you know, football workouts and all tan and tight as shirts as you could possibly get, you know, to show off the muscles. So, you try to get the picture to you. So, no, I don't look the part of the preacher, right? Definitely not. But God was at work in my heart in a huge way. And so, I ended up calling them and got enrolled for Bible. And from then on, you know, we just, education. Hey, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Kurt Lemanski. He's part of our missions conference here at Brookside this week. And just listening to what God's been doing, I mean, it was the question that your dad asked you out of the clear blue, what do you think your sin does to God? It was my dad's friend who asked that. Oh, it was your dad's friend that asked you that. Wow. Incredible. So, great how God was working your life through those high school years before you went to college. You went to Bob Jones, which is located in South Carolina, Greenville. Still is there, I think, over a hundred years now. They've been a Bible college. What happened to you after your time at Bible college there at Bob Jones? So, did an undergrad in Bible, went on for, a master's in pastoral studies, then was gonna go to the mission field. Some friends had talked to me about helping them teach at a seminary in Warsaw, Poland, International Baptist Seminary of Warsaw. I went there in 1995 with Dr. Ken Frederick. Anyway, the two of us went. So I taught there. We traveled around Poland preaching in churches, did conferences for a full month. And when I was there, I just, I saw some things, And I was like, I don't know if this is really where I want to go. And we had another offer out in the western part of the United States. But then in February of the year 1997, I got a phone call out of the blue. So I'm sitting at home, and I pick up. I say, hello, this is Kurt. And the voice on the other end says, hey, Kurt, this is Sam Horn. Don't say no. I'm like, what do you want, Sam? Because we're good friends. He's like, listen. He said, we have a Bible faculty position opening up at Northland Baptist Bible College. I want to fly you and Maria up to our college in middle of nowhere, northern Wisconsin, and I'd like for you to interview with all of our administration, and I want you to sit in chapel and go to classes and meet students, because we would like for you to consider coming and being a Bible faculty member." So I said, well, you said, don't say no. All right, so we'll come. So anyway, we wanted to go and see it. So Maria and I flew up, and honestly, we got on campus and it was a different place. And I mean, different not as in weird, but I mean different as in the atmosphere was amazing, spiritually, challenging. You see students sitting at park benches praying together. A lot of the students would say hi, you know, and even introduce themselves on the sidewalk. It's just not normal at most universities. In other words, the students cared about people and you could see it wasn't just the students, it was faculty, staff, administration. It was an amazing place and we realized that so ultimately we told Sam yes and we went up. So that was towards the, and how many years were you there at Northland? 17 years, I taught and then I was in administration there as a dean for 12 years. And then during those 17 years, I also served as a pastor in two churches, two smaller churches, just to help out. So for 10 years as a pastor as well. And we're going to have you join us in our next broadcast, because we want to talk about, you know, how God led you there from pastoring to what you're getting ready to go out and do here. And you've been doing here over the last few months, maybe even in the last year. So Kurt, thank you. And Pastor Mark, thank you again for all your work to set up this missions conference. You've done a great job. It's a privilege. And the missions committee. So we look forward to what God has in store for you, Kurt. And we're thankful that you're with us here for this conference. We hope you enjoyed today's program. If you have a question we can answer, or would like information on the Word for Life, would like to donate to continue to produce this broadcast, or need resources for your Christian walk, contact us at Brookside Baptist Church, 4470 North Pilgrim Road, Brookfield, Wisconsin, 53005. You can also visit us at brooksidebc.org. That's brooksidebc.org. or call us at 262-783-6180. That's 262-783-6180. Thanks for listening today, and please tune in again as we bring the Word of God to your life.