Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

singing. People of different ages, languages and cultures worshipped God together. The foreign names of the participants demonstrate the variety of nationalities in this Polish church in Lédz: Lesik, Petreniow, Burchartéwna and Kowalski. Choir music experienced a second revival in 1930-1940. A Christian Singing Club sang in four voices, rehearsing once or twice a week. It also organised and delivered materials for others to sing in churches. Choirs, playing an important role in Baptist worship services, supported and some- times even led mission work in eastern Poland.” Choirs accepted the task of proclaiming the Gospel, which tended to draw people to the church. In addition, according to Stowo Prawdy, “quiet work and a clean life brought all people to the Lord”.”’ In small villages everybody knew each other, and “life-witness” was valued as much as preaching. The sincere witness of the believers drew others to Christ. For example, in 1924, eighty-nine people were baptised in the small village of Rudka. The Rudka church became a place of rest for the poor and homeless, and the believers helped the needy with all they had.” 17 Waldemar Gutsche, “Poczatek pracy w Polsce”; cited in Kluttig, Geschichte der deutschen Baptisten, pp. 17-18. 18 “Sprawozdania’, Stowo Prawdy, no. 2 (March 1925), p. 16. '? Letter from youth in Baptist churches in Katowice and Warsaw, printed in Stowo Prawdy, no. 4 (May 1925), p. 32. 0 “Czterdziestolecie chéru bialostockiego’, Slowo Prawdy, no. 3 (March 1963), p. 9. 21 Aleksander Huryn, “Dzieje zboru i budowy w Rudce’;.Stowo Prawdy, no. 11 (November 1990), p. 15. 2 Huryn, “Dzieje zboru i budowy w Rudce’, p. 16. 170 Because many church members lived in surrounding villages, rather than cities, sometimes even several kilometres away, work was needed in these locations as well. Preachers tried to hold regular services in the villages (usually in one of the members’ homes) and led Sunday Schools for children.” For special events like baptism and ordination, people came on foot even twenty to forty kilometres.” It became necessary to appoint missionaries and preachers to travel from village to village visiting the churches. They preached and ensured there was no heresy in the church.” Baptism as Testimony For outsiders, a conspicuous element in Baptist worship and identity was baptism by immersion. The ordinance of baptism took different forms. Baptism provided an opportunity to give testimony of one’s faith in Christ. However, the Baptists focused upon honest conversion, required before a person could be baptised, rather than on the act of baptism itself. Chil- dren were blessed, not baptised.** Most baptisms took place in lakes and rivers. Sometimes, as a contemporary recalled, “we had to go without shoes two kilometres to reach the river, through swamps and with mud reaching our knees’.”” At times, baptisms could not take place as planned due to interference by local