by Doug Kutilek
Modern Poland is a country of 40 million souls, including, at present, something over a million resident Ukrainians, many being refugees from the war in Eastern Ukraine. During a recent teaching trip for International Baptist Bible College (led by BBFI missionary Ron Minton), I spent two weeks in Gdansk (formerly Danzig) on the shores of the Baltic Sea, where the famous Solidarity labor strike against the communist government occurred in 1980 (it is easy to tell how that turned out — the Gdansk airport is named in honor of the strike leader Lech Walesa). A visit to the gates of the shipyards and the memorial there was a rather emotional experience for me.
Someone well said that the Poles made the strategic geographical mistake of settling between the Russians and the Germans, both commonly bellicose. As a consequence, over the past several centuries the borders of Poland have been in a nearly constant state of change — sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting (and even for a time completely disappearing), and at times shifting notably to the east or to the west (this latter the present condition). As recently as World War I, much of today’s western and northeastern Poland was part of Germany, Gdansk being then known as Danzig (and actually a German city until after World War II). With post-war relocation of populations, the vast majority of Poland’s residents today are ethnically and linguistically Polish.
After the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989-1990, Poland re-oriented itself toward the West, joining NATO and later the European Economic Community (they still have their own currency, the zloty). While still much behind the more prosperous nations of Europe in per capita income, Poland is decidedly far ahead of Ukraine and several other nations formerly part of the Soviet bloc.
A common perception of Poland is it is among the most Catholic of Catholic-dominated nations. A Baptist pastor informed me that while the great majority of Poles are Catholic by virtue of involuntary infant baptism, most are very largely secularized with the Catholic Church having little practical importance or influence in their lives. With such a large percentage of the population being Catholic, evangelism in Poland might be compared, as it was by that pastor, to evangelism in Utah, where anyone who is not part of the dominant religion is looked upon as on the fringe, almost a non-entity.
First Baptist Church of Gdansk was formed in 1946 (celebrating 70 years of existence in February this year). Their property formerly belonged to a German congregation. Under communism (1948-1989), the church, as with other Baptist congregations, endured periodic persecution from the dominant Roman Catholic Church and the atheistic communist government, though frequently these two entities were more commonly at each other’s throats, leaving Baptists alone. Or, as one man said to me, “When the dog and the cat are fighting, the mice may dance.” Over its seven decades, the church has grown, and has served as the mother church for about half a dozen church plants. With more than 200 members, it is one of Poland’s largest Baptist congregations.
During the communist era, Bibles were not commonplace, but they were available to some degree, though the version used of necessity up until 1975 was an archaic, Reformation-era translation. A more recent translation into current Polish is used today.
There are about 7,000 members among 90 Baptist churches in Poland today (by contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim over 100,000 adherents). Most of the churches are quite small — less than 50 members; the work of church planting is ongoing. I was privileged to visit a family in a village near Gdansk that is working toward beginning a new church there. Some 40 of the churches are without pastors, in part due to the difficulty of simultaneously working a secular job and leading a congregation, most of the churches being too small to financially support a full-time pastor. There is a seminary in Warsaw with 50 to 60 students, so something is being done to cover the pastor shortage, though it will be years before the present need is met, to say nothing about providing leaders for new churches.
What is needed for Baptists of Poland? Of course more called and trained men to lead the existing churches, and also a continuing and expanding process of church planting in the cities and towns that have no churches yet. The pastor in Gdansk told me what is needed is persecution, a seemingly odd statement, though his meaning was that such opposition compels believers to examine and strengthen their level of commitment to Christ and the spread of the Gospel. Like water, Biblical Christianity, when put under pressure, expands. We, too, have a great need to be more serious about our service to God.