[3] Its adherents dominated in the Protestant circles in central Poland, which had formed part of Russia prior to 1918, while the other churches were based in the south and west of the newly established country.

[4] In 1918 the Lutheran parishes of Cieszyn Silesia were incorporated into the structures of the Evangelical-Augsburg church, raising the overall number of its followers by about 100,000, although about half of these parishes left the church in 1920 when a significant section of the area became part of Czechoslovakia following the Polish-Czechoslovak War of January 1919.

[6] The decree affirmed the territorial division of the church into ten dioceses (Warsaw, Płock, Kalisz, Piotrków, Lublin, Łódź, Volhynia, Vilnius, Silesia and Greater Poland) with a total of 117 parishes.

The ranks of pastors, teachers and other church leadership diminished due to persecution, imprisonment, and death.

During the early postwar years, a number of church properties were taken over by the Communist authorities to be used for other purposes, and the connections of Protestant Lutheranism to the German cultural sphere made authorities and Polish locals inimical towards the remaining Lutherans.

That is also where most Polish Lutherans can be found, with c. 47,000 of the church's followers (about three quarters of all adherents) living in Silesian Voivodeship.

[16] The 2011 census data points to a very uneven distribution of the Polish Lutheran population across the country, particularly scarce in the eastern provinces.

[18] Many pastors serve multiple preaching points and are challenged by diverse demands as well as the need for innovation in a rapidly changing society.

As a Lutheran church in a country that is nearly 90 percent Roman Catholic, the church faces challenges in upholding a Protestant education at various levels, whether in Sunday schools, catechetical instruction, or in connection with the public schools, where Catholic religious education is part of the curriculum.