Grzegorz Bednarczyk – Bielsko-Biala
I got out of the taxi under a red board with the inscription “Post-Secondary School of Neuropsychiatric Nursing”. A few weeks earlier I enrolled in historical studies at the Jagiellonian University, but the closer to exams, the more confusion, whether it is the right way. The day before the exams, I withdrew my papers and rode from one post-secondary school to another to find a place and to escape compulsory military service before deciding which way to go.
I found myself in a completely unknown situation. A queue of dozens of patients in the psychiatric ward in Kobierzyn, an open book of injections, and I, giving one injection of fenactil after another, in the buttocks, often so inert, that the needle went to the bone.
Soon I knew what I was dreaming of. Becoming in something really good, in designing, choosing colors, but above all, to be able to really help people (helplessness of doctors in psychiatric and other wards, it caused that it had to be something more than medicine). Soon I knew it would be in the sphere of faith, building a man. Dreams that today are as strong as then: be in something really good, the best in the world, but then pass it on to ten, conventionally, people, successors who spread this thing to the whole world, this ability to build people. It is my biggest dream. To see those whom I helped, how they help the next. Their success is my success.
And it must necessarily be globally. The first book I read in English was the autobiography of the former gang leader from Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, Nicky Cruz. Someone helped him and completely changed his fate. And he helped the next. When you go Broadway today at Times Square towards the Columbus Circle, you pass Times Square Church on the left, a ten thousand church that was created from these events. Someone has changed the world.
Building people – the only thing I want to do. This dream wakes me up before dawn and lets me rush to the evening. From a sense of helplessness to the inert buttocks of psychiatric ward patients to a great passion and watching people who have been helped, who carried it further. This is my dream in a nutshell.
About dreams a bit wider
My favorite activity is to sit somewhere in a public place with a cup of coffee and… two things are fighting then for priority. The first one is to think – make visions, take notes, work on something important. I remember when in Vancouver, many years ago, I was sitting in a café in Canada Place and working on some solutions for our community in Bielsko. After I drank one cup of coffee, the waitress poured another cup without a question. I still remember this taste today. This is even more interesting than sightseeing.
But the second favorite thing when I’m already in a public place is to talk! It starts, as you know, with trivialities. But at some point, the gaze pierces the buildings, the Sukiennice in Cracow or what is there on the way, and flies further. A conversation begins about one’s dreams. A person sitting next to me, usually my wife, Ewa, or some of my friends, sees the change in me … or someone with whom we see each other for the first time. Dreams!
My dream is to create a network of clubs-cafeterias in public space, where we could talk about our dreams, like we want to change the world and … how God’s providence is ready to take part in our life to fulfil good dreams.
There were times and places in history, where from professors at universities to tradeswomen at stalls, everyone talked about the influence of the God’s providence on our life. I would like to contribute to the creation of such a strong alternative today.
So, we will be talking about dreams, but it cannot end here, because, on the other hand, nothing moves me as much as people’s disappointment. It is necessary to build another man, as Jesus of Nazareth built his disciples and said: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations”.
This is a good place to talk about my reference to the Fundamental Plan, that is to what is unique in Christianity. My adventure with Christ began early. I remember, as an early teenager, listening with the flushed face, about the drops of blood dripping from the cross on which He was hanging because of me. It was then that the first impulse to tell others about it appeared.
However, it wasn’t until few years later, in 1975, two months after graduation from high school, when a breakthrough decision of personal trust in Christ and entrusting my life to Him was made. I was going on a holiday adventure, standing in an empty corridor of the Cracow-Vienna train, somewhere between the entanglements of the Polish and the Czechoslovak-Austrian border. An inner struggle, lasting many months, full of dilemmas and reflections, ended with the victory of Christ and a feeling of peace, like an ocean without wrinkle, indescribable joy and a sense of fulfillment.
These personal experience led me towards fulfilling that part of my childhood dream that was related to the Christ’s blood drops (although I also had a lot of other crazy dreams, such as the car racing track around the house in the suburbs of New York City). As it turned out, my vocation was founding a new church. And it started when one day, several months after my experiences in the train I was walking home from school, standing on top of stairs leading down the Zamoyskiego street in Cracow, when I saw in my imagination a glimpse of a future that many years later started to come into being, when I decided with my wife Ewa to start the Mission Community in Bielsko-Biała.
Therefore, my next great dream is to create a series of seminars covering all the issues needed by someone who is the leader of a Christian community or group, within the broadly understood building of another person, with elements of multiplication (some help other, who help the next, etc.). I would like to pass in such a manner the experience gained during several decades of leading the community in Bielsko-Biała since its foundation.
The cycle of seminars was named School of Tyrannos because it is to be based on the actions of Paul the Apostle described in Acts 19, although in the first place it is to be a discovery of the secrets of Jesus’ influence described in the Gospels.
I dream of helping many Christian leaders to experience their full potential, instead of disappointment, and to see fruit in the people who will come out of their care. The cycle is to be accessible to small circle leaders and potential leaders only through a small group formula.
In addition to these seminars some of the world’s best Bible study series of several Bible books for small groups.
I dream that this way of approach and lifestyle will reach a few points of the world and multiply there. Let’s say, somewhere between Bielsko and Melbourne (not bypassing, if possible, the Great Apple).
Let’s dream great dreams to honor God! God is too great to offend Him with the smallness of our dreams!
Ah! One more thing. Coffee in these clubs-cafeterias, pieces of public space, is to cost so that everyone can afford, not just rentiers! Maybe even topped up without asking!
•
Grzegorz Bednarczyk, pastor and consultant of multiplication in the Baptist Church in Bielsko-Biała, studied theology at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, Ph.D. in Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin, Chairman of the Baptist Church Council in Poland in 1995-1998, co-founder of the Christian Education and Culture Center in Bielsko-Biała. Together with his wife Ewa they founded the Christian Mission Community in Bielsko-Biała. They have two sons and four grandchildren.
Reportages
Persons invited by Grzegorz Bednarczyk to the Platform of Dreams
Few more photos for the article
A completely new public space…
…just opened at 432 Park Avenue Tower in Manhattan…
…the highest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, at least at the moment of taking the picture.
Someone had a dream.
And finally, probably the most unique public space in the world – High Line…
…on the old elevated rail line.
Someone had a dream to instead of demolishing it…
…create a park here …
…with many unique corners.
At the northern end of the High Line, the public space of Hudson Yards is created…
…with two unusual installations: The Shed (theshed.org)…
…and The Vessel, we must admit, they are crazy.
I wonder what ideas would have come if it had been possible to sit here and think about… or talk to friends, to God?
These will certainly be dreams that will serve people instead of burdening them, because the pyramids were for pharaohs, and we really want to make the world a better place!