Our Church in Szczecin, Poland.
Oct 6th, 2007 by lorenozanne
Ask people to list countries that are “unreached” and you would likely hear China, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and other “creative access” countries where the gospel is not allowed legally, but you wouldn’t even expect to hear “Poland”.
This is our church in Szczecin, Poland. We lease classrooms and an auditorium from the Music Academy in Szczecin. Szczecin, Poland(formerly Stettin, Germany before the war) has a population of about 400,000 people, and there are about 10-12 Evangelical Protestant churches in the entire city. In sharp contrast, there are over 400 Protestant churches in the Knoxville Metropolitan Area. One street in Knoxville, Middle Brook Pike has more churches than the entire city of Szczecin on both sides of the Odra River.
Poland is 99% Catholic, but according to the Catholic church, less than 30% attend mass once a month.
According to Operation World, a country that is less than 1% Evangelical Christian is considered “unreached” in terms of the Gospel. In Poland, about 1/5 of 1 percent, or 2 out of 1000 people are Evangelical Christians. To put that in perspective, that would be like 600 Evangelical Christian believers in all of Knoxville, Tennessee.
In terms of percentage of the population, China is 25 times more evangelized than Poland, and there are four times more Christians per capita in Saudi Arabia than in Poland.
Many estimates say that the unemployment rate in Poland is 22% country wide. Thousands of Poles go to England, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and other countries to work, so it is hard to obtain accurate numbers.
In addition to the unemployment, sales tax is 23% on everything in the country except books. Poland has a literacy rate of 99% –higher than that of the United States.