Currently Poland is 0.2% evangelical with almost 90% of the counties void of an evangelical church.
The small population of evangelicals that does exist works independently of each other with few collaborative efforts and no collective vision.
This has led the church to have little impact or influence on the greater population with most of the Polish population unaware of and misinformed about the evangelical church.
Looking at evangelical Christianity in Poland, it exists on a microscale level. There are over a dozen denominations, each having a few thousand people. The whole population of evangelicals in Poland is around 50-100 thousand people. An average Polish town doesn’t have an evangelical church, and even if there is one, it’s most likely a small group. For example, Baptist churches have an average of 70 people in a congregation. Evangelical Christianity definitely faces the challenge of social awareness, because at this microscale level, it’s a marginal matter. An average Pole, when thinking about Christianity, sees the Catholic Church. They may remember something about the Orthodox Church from history class, and some may know that there was somebody named Luther, but people generally don’t associate evangelical Christianity with anything.
We are responding by helping to catalyze collaborative efforts among pastors, churches and various ministry organizations for Kingdom impact.
Listen to what heads of Polish denominations say about Evangelical Poland:
In Poland there are around 700 towns, not to mention villages, in which there are no evangelical churches. Evangelical Christianity (stressing the need for being born again and a conscious faith) makes up only 0.2% of the Polish population, which gives us around 60-80 thousand people. If we got them all together in one town, it would be the size of Wodzisław Śląski or Jastrzębie Zdrój. It really is a desert. In big cities there are churches. For example, in Warsaw, there are tens of churches of different denominations. However, in many places, there’s a lack of such local groups.
6 Core Areas of Polish Church Development
Every Christian is called to share the Good News about Jesus! The power of the Gospel changes people’s hearts and uplifts our communities. However, it turns out that for many of us, sharing our faith is quite a challenge. To meet this challenge, we worked collaboratively with ministry leaders, churches, and organizations to create resources and strategic evangelistic opportunities that would promote a culture of evangelism. Thanks to the good teamwork of the evangelical community in Poland, we have developed both national and local evangelistic projects as well as produced a free ebook, “Review of 100 Evangelistic Tools”. Christians from all over Poland were involved in developing these projects, meeting regularly online to develop new resources, and praying together that God would strengthen believers and entire churches in the field of evangelization.
Evangelism Development Team
The team consists of volunteers from various evangelical backgrounds, who share a common desire to reach our fellow countrymen with the Good News even more effectively. They also desire to equip believers with simple and effective tools for evangelization.
Do you want to influence the development of evangelical leadership in Poland?
Is it important to you that there be a vision of cooperation between leaders from different evangelical backgrounds?
Let’s do this together! By acting jointly, we can do more!
The Leadership Development team
As part of the Evangelical Poland movement, in 2019 a leadership development team was established. It is made up of people whose passion is to strengthen leaders, based on the example that the Lord Jesus and other heroes of the Bible left us. During meetings and workshop discussions, which are attended by leaders from various churches and Christian organizations, we defined the three most important areas for development.
The need to change awareness
Together, we want to build a leadership support culture based on a positive image of leadership. We want to encourage leaders to make heroes of others and to celebrate their successes. We believe in the necessity of intentionally investing in the next generation and creating successors.
Relationship building
We see a significant need to promote spiritual fatherhood, expressed through the natural transfer of knowledge and skills from more experienced to less experienced leaders. It requires a certain amount of time, practical action and observation of a personal example. Equally important are partnering relationships between leaders, focused on the sharing of experiences and developing together.
Servant leadership
We want to encourage leaders to learn continuously, engage in teamwork based on humility and partnership, as well as to work across the lines of affiliation. We are committed to promoting the style and methods of Christ like leadership.
None of us are born a disciple of Jesus, but every believer is called to make disciples. For this to be possible, it is necessary to equip believers for discipleship, so that the next generations of Christians may grow and be shaped through intimate discipleship relationships with other believers.
During the meetings of Evangelical Poland, it turned out that discipleship development is one of the most urgent needs of the Church today. At the same time, it became clear that we needed to understand discipleship differently and there was a necessity to work out a common, biblical definition of discipleship. This task was accomplished by the discipleship development team.
Discipleship Development Team
The team consists of practical disciple-makers who have been involved in making disciples for years and want to share their knowledge and experience with other believers. Since 2019, both during the plenary meetings of Evangelical Poland, and in a smaller group, this team works on issues related to discipleship, supports the development of discipleship in Poland and communicates about discipleship with others, encouraging us to follow the example that the Lord Jesus and his followers left us.
Does the average Pole know that evangelical churches exist in our country? If so, what are his or her first impressions?
If the statistics are correct, we constitute only 0.2% of the Polish population, and most Poles do not even know that we exist. At the same time, evangelical Christians are some of the most active social groups in our country. We organize large festivals, run kindergartens, schools and universities, support charities and undertake many other activities to show God’s love for people in practical ways.
Even with all the activities and involvement throughout the country, much of the work functions under the umbrella of associations or foundations that are not known as evangelical. We would like that to be different. Let’s give the Polish people a chance to know us!
Promotional Team
The “Media” team of Gospel Poland (EP Media) is a group of volunteers who combine their experiences in communication, media, marketing and Public Relations. They have a passion to tell Poles about evangelical Christianity and to promote unity among evangelical believers, regardless of their denominational affiliation.
Foundation
As evangelical Christians, we believe that the most important commandment is to love God and your neighbor (Mark 12:30-31). We want this to have a practical expression in our activities, therefore one of the priority areas of the activities of Evangelical Poland is charity and humanitarian work and the proclamation of the Gospel. By doing good to those in need, we become doers of God’s Word.
We build together
Among evangelical Christians there are many people who work for the needy (children, youth, sick, homeless, addicted, etc.) associated in foundations, associations, churches, or not affiliated to anyone. However, we do not know each other, and with such potential and resources, we could do more and better together. Therefore, as part of Evangelical Poland, we are building a platform to get to know each other and be able to act together. By sharing our knowledge and experience, we can strengthen ourselves in doing God’s work here on earth.
Construction has started
The first step – getting to know each other. This has already started, more organizations and people are joining the movement. We are getting to know each other, we have already had several online meetings and we are ready for more.
The second step – defining the areas of cooperation. We are preparing the first conference to decide together how we want to cooperate and learn from each other.
The third step – nationwide cooperation (establishing contacts, seminars and conferences, nationwide activities, wide impact on Poland).
Join
HUMANITARIAN WORK OF EVANGELICAL POLAND is an initiative in which a group of humanitarianly engaged people started activities integrating the environment of evangelical Christians working for the needy in Poland.
We invite people who conduct broadly understood humanitarian activities as part of church and non-profit organizations, foundations, associations, missions, clubs, etc. to cooperate.
This area is still under preliminary discussions.
Donate
Every mission that is sent, every soul that is won, every life that is changed can be traced back to a moment when someone sacrificed in order to give. To respond to the Spirit's leading. To make a difference, just like you're about to do.
One day, Jesus will look into your eyes, point to the lives changed through your gift and say with a smile, “Well done, good and faithful servant, well done.”
Our gratitude for your support is great, but nothing can compare to the sweetness of that moment: not earthy recognition, fame or esteem, no human accolades or thank-yous, no material possessions or gifts. But we still want to say it.
Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for enabling us to impact people’s lives in Poland.
We're so grateful for you.
Thank you for your interest in Evangelical Poland!
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Andrew
Coordinator of Evangelical Poland
If you’d like to get in touch please contact us.