Poland: What’s our vocation?

Salvation - not for sale

Who are we? What’s our vocation?

Young reformers: Arkadiusz Raszka and Dorota Fenger

Church: Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland

Implementation period: October 2015 to December 2016

How many people were involved? 34

How many people did you reach? 413

Links to the Project : www.facebook.com/wierzewiecjestem/

What did you aim at?

Strengthening Lutheran identity and showing the presence of young Lutherans in Polish society. Martin Luther was moved by the Word of God written in the Scriptures, and then he began the Reformation. His main goal was to show people God’s grace and love. We want to give youth a chance to meet with Martin Luther’s discovery, and to give them space to show God’s love to one another.

For this we aimed

to prepare material which consists of 3 lesson units for youth meetings;
to reach 150 young people with our material;
to inspire at least 7 groups to prepare and implement their own small diaconal project

What did you achieve?

We have reached and engaged over 413 youth in 21 groups all over Poland
The project became a national activity in the church in Poland and has motivated and given importance to youth, church leaders and church members.

What did you do?

We have created and published materials on how to develop a diaconal project.
We have created project t-shirts, prepared promotional video, and advertised our project on the internet, social media and during the national youth gathering.
We have fundraised and received 339,94€ in donations and offerings.

Interview with young reformers

What is the ongoing reformation you want to see in your church?: I want to see more youth engagement in my church and let them discover their Lutheran identity.
What has been the reaction of the project among the youth?: The reaction was great from the youth in our project, the positive and motivating reaction was bigger than we expected in our church.
How has been the participation of the youth in the reformation project?: The participation of the youth was crucial in the project was aiming to have about 80 youth and at the end we reached 400 youth across Poland. The active youth leaders were the key persons to make this outreach successful.
What has been challenging about creating the project?: The whole process in this project was challenging: the team work, the creation of the material for the workshops with the youth, the outreach on national level in Poland.
Did everything go as planned?: We were surprised because our plans surpassed our goals and expectations. Somethings did not work out, but most of the plans turned out better than we ever thought. We are very happy about the great results as this is our first project.
How do you see the continuity of the project?: We don’t have a clear idea how this will continue but we have the material we have created for the workshops. This material can keep spreading and being used from all the parishes in Poland at their youth work. We will try to continue and hopefully we can do more diaconal actions with the youth.