Tell us more about your family and your childhood years?
I grew up in a small town called Odolanów, which had around 10,000 inhabitants, and we were the only Lutheran family. There were two other elderly Lutherans nearby, but there was no church in our town and everyone else was Roman Catholic, or a very few Jehova’s Witnesses.
But the Lutheran identity of my parents and grandparents was very strong and every second Sunday, we went to the nearby city of Kalisz to attend a Lutheran service. It was complicated during the communist period because people were not allowed to buy gasoline. But my father had a colleague who worked with digging machinery and they did have gasoline, so he secretly sold us some so that we could drive the 45 kilometers to attend our worship services.
What did your parents do for a living?
My father was a technical specialist in a factory for liquid gas installations which is a big industry in the area of central Poland where I grew up. My mother was a tailor who worked in a clothes factory near where my father worked. I have a brother who is eight years older than me and we were both the only Lutherans in our primary school, so people always asked us lots of questions about why we didn’t attend the Roman Catholic church, or religion classes, or preparation for Holy Communion.
You followed in your father’s footsteps before studying theology, didn’t you?
Yes, I went to a technical high school in Kalisz and trained as a car mechanic, this was my first profession. But while I was studying there, I rented a room in the Lutheran parish house and when I finished, I enrolled to study theology. That was really the first time that I actually saw and interacted with many other Lutherans of my own age. And that is how I met my wife who was also studying at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw.
When did you first feel a vocation to become a pastor?
I had attended some Lutheran youth camps and I saw my older brother who studied theology and became a pastor in Lublin in the south of Poland. I was also interested in studying German literature, as my family has some German origins, but I liked what my brother was doing and I thought I would give it a try.
I was not fully convinced, but during the holidays of the first year’s studies, I was obliged to do some practical pastoral work in a house for the elderly and people living with disabilities. I did many jobs: in the kitchen, washing and cleaning, driving the car, but what struck me most was having to accompany an elderly lady during her last days of life. I watched her dying which moved me very much, and it was after all these experiences that I really knew I was called to ministry.
You mentioned the minority situation of Lutherans in Poland – how did that affect you in those early years?
I had a very positive experience with the Roman Catholic church because my neighbors and school friends were curious and very friendly, but also because we had an elderly Catholic priest in my town who visited us. He spent a lot of time talking with us and I loved those discussions with him.
He was a real friend of our family and he encouraged his congregation to be friends with us. When I started studying theology, he came to visit and said, “I am so proud of you, my son, you will be the second pastor from my congregation!” During the communist era, the government wanted us to see the Catholics as our enemies, but at local community level, most people knew they had to be friendly with each other and to cooperate to get ahead.
You’ve identified ecumenism as a priority for your ministry, haven’t you?
Yes, I was very influenced by those first lessons in ecumenism and I now see it as part of my everyday work. I am a pastor in Opole and a bishop of the diocese of Katowice, where we have an Ecumenical Academy. Every month we have a special guest to lecture about different aspects of ecumenical work, and we also widen our circle to include Jewish and Muslim friends working on peace and interfaith dialogue.
We have ecumenical services and prayers and I also work with two local radio stations, one belonging to the state and the other to the Roman Catholic diocese. Together with two Catholic friends who are university professors, we do a program every month on the state-run radio and on the Catholic station I do some programs about theological issues with church leaders, including the local Pentecostal pastor who studied Catholic theology.
How do you encourage others to have a more public voice in society?
This is another priority for me, trying to encourage all our pastors to be present in the local media as we have so many possibilities now with social media. In the diocese, we have a Christian internet TV which is quite popular with about 1,000 followers for our daily reflections or sermons on the Bible readings for the day.
My wife is also a theologian and an English teacher in the primary and high schools here. She is also very good with computers, so she runs the Facebook profile and the web pages of our congregation. We do our best to reach people, to rekindle their faith, but not everyone is interested in religious issues anymore.
