Kościół jako wspólnota pastoralna

The Synod of the Lutheran Church in Poland has proclaimed the year 2011-year of the Pastoral Care. That is the reason why the article focuses on the pastoral care one of the most important missions of the Protestant Church. The author shows first the place of the ecclesiological approach in current Polish theological discussion among protestants, and then discusses the subject in the light of the Symbolical Books of Lutheranism, i.e. the Book of Concordia from 1580, especially the Augsburg Confession. The understanding of the Church is one of the most important subject of the early Reformation theology, but the pastoral care is almost absent in the records of confessional books of the 16th century. The author concludes that the pastoral dimension of the Church is rather more of practical than a theoretical nature. In fact the pastoral care is a particularly challenging task of the whole Christianity.