12.04.2013

Quiz on infants, baptism and the Church

Test yourself and others. The answers below. You can choose more than one. Good luck and enjoy! 

1. According to God’s Word children of Christians are:
a) small pagans
b) small disciples of Christ
c) spiritually homeless
d) atheists
e) Muslims
f) we-don’t-know-who
g) children are children, we shouldn’t ask such questions, I’m a little nervous when I hear such kind of questions
h) it’s a good question, it comes back to me very often, especially since I have my kids

2. According to the Bible children in the Church are:
a) guests
b) households
c) friends of Jesus’ family
d) intruders
e) our Brothers in Christ
f) for “invitation Jesus to their heart” in future
g) a small problem
h) Sunday School disciples
i) a little bit too loud

3. God in the Scripture calls them:
a) unbelievers
b) unbelievers with huge potential to be Christians
c) believers
d) pagans
e) participants of God’s Kingdom
f) participants of Kingdom of Darkness
g) Saints
h) neutral
i) God’s seed
j) God’s people
k) not God’s people
l) well-wishers of God’s Kingdom
m) His enemies
n) we don’t know, the Bible says nothing about that

4. God communicates with them, strengthens and ensures by:
a) Gospel music
b) Organ music
c) His Word and Sacraments
d) exorcisms
e) holy water
f) loudspeakers
g) God doesn’t communicate with somebody who can’t speak
h) just parents can speak to infants, God understands it doesn’t make sense
i) latin mass

5. According to Jesus’s words:
a) such is the kingdom of God
b) to such maybe will be Kingdom of God
c) whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it
d) whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as an adult will by no means enter it
e) we should make public ritual of dedication once in their life

6. God:
a) waits for conversion of children from Christian families at a Camp or Church evangelism
b) out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants has ordained strength
c) doesn’t understand anything from infants’ mouths
d) thinks kids disturb Him focus
e) treats words and songs of Christian kids as insincere
f) doesn’t treat small kids’ faith seriously
g) treats faith of Christian kids as example for adults
h) lets into His Kingdom only people in “conscious age”

7. In the New Testament we have description:
a) baptism of adults who were never baptized (in the name of Triune God) before 
b) baptism of adults who were baptized before as infants
c) rebaptism
d) baptism only regenerated and saved people
e) baptism of households
f) baptism of a child from Christian family on confession of his faith
g) telling testimony of conversion as a condition of baptism
h) voting of members of the Church before baptism

8. According to Lord Jesus’ words we should make disciples by:
a) leading our interlocutor to “pray of sinner”
b) street evangelism
c) baptism and teaching obedience of Jesus’ commandments
d) teaching obedience of Jesus’ commandments and baptism
e) raising up hand
f) participation in Christian meetings
g) reading theological books

9. Membership in the Church is:
a) permitted from the age of 12
b) permitted from the age of 7
c) just for conscious people
d) just for adult believers and teenagers
e) for adult believers and their household
f) not for infants and disabled people
g) for anybody who wants
h) engrafting to God’s family, body of Christ
i) engrafting to childless God’s family
j) signing up to the club of Jesus’ fans

Answers:

ad. 1.

b) small disciples of Christ - Mt 28:18-20, Lk 18:16, Eph 6:1, Col 3:20, Gal 3:27
h) it’s a good question, it comes back to me very often, especially since I have my kids

ad. 2. 

b) households – Eph 1:1; Eph 6:1  
e) our Brothers in Christ - Col 1:1-2; Col 3:20

ad. 3. 

c) believers - Eph 1:1,
e) participants of God’s Kingdom - Mk 10:14
g) Saints – 1 Cor 7:14  
i) God’s seed - Mal 2:15  
j) God’s people -  Lev 26:13

ad. 4. 

c) His Word and Sacraments – Mt 28:18-20; Acts 16:30-31, Gal 3:27-29;

ad. 5. 

a)
such is the kingdom of God - Mk 10:14
c)
whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it - Lk 18:17, Mk 10:15

ad. 6. 

b)
out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants has ordained strength – Ps 8:2
g) treats faith of Christian kids as example for adults - Lk 18:16-17

ad. 7.

a) baptism of adults who were never baptized before in the name of Triune God - Acts 8:12; Acts 8:38
e) baptism of households - Acts 16:15

ad. 8.

c) baptism and teaching obedience of Jesus’ commandments - Mt 28:19-20

ad.9. 

e) for adult believers and their household - Gen 17:7, Acts 2:38-39; Eph 6:1-4
h) engrafting to God’s family, body of Christ – 1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:27-29; Eph 6:1-4

Pawel Bartosik

Open letter to popular Polish weekly magazine

At the beginning of September one of the most popular conservative weekly magazines in Poland published an article about homeschooling as an alternative for educational revolution in Polish public schools. We have debate about sexual education, promotion of gender ideology in Polish school, books and that article encouraged to thinking about homeschooling as a serious alternative for public education.

There was just one sentence which I didn’t like. The author, who is a Catholic activist, wrote that the biggest group in Poland that educate their children at home because of their  faith and worldview are “fundamentalist protestant cults”. So you can see why a lot Catholics in Poland think that we are cults.


In reaction to that, I wrote an Open Letter to that Magazine and the author of the article, I expressed my gratitude for seeing positive aspect of that education but as a pastor and a parent I had to correct that mistake. I was surprised when magazine published my letter which wasn’t short and the author wrote a public apology under that letter.

Homeschooling in Bartosiks family

We homeschool Zuzia (the 4th grade) Janek (the 2nd) and Maja (the 0 class). The challenge is getting bigger and bigger not only because of the difficulty of working on three different levels, but also planning their time for developing their gifts and talents. Lack of curriculums for homeschoolers as well as schools experimenting on pioneers make homeschooling more time consuming and a bit stressful for Jola. We have no Christian School in Gdansk and formally our children are students of Christian Primary School in Poznan. It’s 200 miles away and they have to pass exams in the School in order to move to the next level. In January Zuzia is going to take three of five exams that she is obliged to take this school year.

Although it is a challenge for us we can see good fruits of it: knowledge and character of our kids and in our character. Besides teaching our children at home Jola gives English lessons 2 afternoons a week after my work. The news of the month is that we’ve got a dog! Children were very consistent asking us for it for years (about 4 years!) so we gave up. Nala sleeps in the hall and everybody at home has a duty to walk her out at least once a day. It seems we are going to get fit :) 

8.26.2013

We started with our Mission Station 2013

We started with our Mission Station 2013 in the center of Gdansk.
On the picture: "What is the way to heaven?" 
"Bibles for free!"


8.02.2013

Church-News

I’m finishing sermon series from the Sermon on the Mount. It is a wonderful refreshing for my mind and heart. I’ve learnt more what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I hope it is good spiritual food for people. I am also encouraged because I see that our people show more passion in liturgy. We still learn how to worship corporately, loudly, joyfully and I feel it is getting better and better every Service, although we have no crowds (18-22 people). Although we are a reformed church we have no doctrinal statement that our churches shouldn’t be bigger than 40 souls :-)  and we expect God will be glorified by more souls. 

We regularly pray for our town and as John Knox (Scottish reformer) we want to see Poland and Gdansk changed by the power of the Gospel. One of our families which started the Church with us some years ago enlarged. Their 4th kid (a daughter) was born in April. They also faithfully practice homeschooling.








"Worldviews among us”

We continue our regular meetings in a Coffee Shop in Gdansk to discuss apologetic topics “Worldviews among us”. So far we have had meetings about basic religious (Buddhism, Islam, Mormons, Jehowah Witnesses) or secular philosophies (postmodernism, evolutionism, atheism, agnosticism) and we commented it from Christian perspective which was a very helpful tool in discussion with people around us. Sometimes non-Christians visited our meetings. This year we started  to discuss about connections between worldview, religion, culture and art. As the basis for the discussion I would like to use the series of Francis Schaeffer’s movies: “How should we then live?”.

Catholic Monk from Gdansk

Famous Catholic monk Jacek Krzysztofowicz resigned from his calling and left Dominican Monastery. He had led popular evening Masses every Sunday at 9 pm. A few years ago my friends from Roman Catholic Church invited me there. He preached about commandments of the Decalogue. I published my remarks from that visit on my blog (“Dominikan Monk on the Second Commandment”): http://tiny.pl/h21pf (you can use Google Transtation :) 

So, his leaving was very broadly commented on, not only in Gdansk. Of course Roman Catholic journalists and priests condemned him. I wrote to him an email with words of encouragement and promise of prayer for his new life outside Roman Catholic Church. I offered a meeting and praying together. I also wrote two articles about that situation on my blog and almost 1.800 daily visitors read it . I could see good fruit of that ministry. Thanks to the blog and our Church website we have a few new regular visitors. Here are two notes about that situation: http://tiny.pl/h21pc and http://tiny.pl/h21pd

5.27.2013

“Mystery of sex” in Gdansk

24th of May as Biblical Creational Association we made (with my friend from Baptist Church) a conference “Mystery of sex”. The speaker was dr. Geoff Barnard (University in Cambridge, microbiologist). In the lecture he proved impossibility of spontaneous appearance of the two sexes. 

After the lecture we had discussion (Q & A). Frequency was over our expectations. We had 150 people. A lot of them took of our biulletins and filled in surveys and left contact. We want to start with them Bible Study "In the beginning..." (from Genesis 1-3). dr Barnard finished his lecture with the sentence:  "Charles Darwin is almost dead".  It looks he's right, especially in sceintific circles. 



We thank for that opportunity and good fruits of that work.










3.12.2013

"Homeschooling as alternative for contemporary school" in Gdansk




On Saturday (9th of March) we had the conference "Homeschooling as alternative for contemporary school" in Gdansk. It was great time. 35-40 people participated in that but  150 people also listened and watched it online thanks live transmission.

We had 4 lectures:

Pawel Bartosik - "Homeschooling as educational opportunity in Poland"
Andrzej Polaszek - "Homeschooling in Polish law"
dr Agata Hofman - "Homeschooling in practice"
Jaroslaw Pietrzak - "Christian School as place of support for homeschoolers"

After the lectures we had 1,5 hours of discussion (Q & A).

HERE you can see more pictures.

2.27.2013

Three Baptisms

On our Church profile on Facebook you can see the pictures from joyful event which we had last Sunday: three baptisms and membership Magda's household. If you don't have account on Facebook, please click HERE.








2.20.2013

A visit to the hospital

One of men which found us thanks to evangelism with Chorale Gaudete – CREC choir – has been in psychiatric hospital with depression for 2 months. When I visited him two ladies (65 and 35) joined us in discussion and asked a lot of question about our beliefs, the church. During the next visit they invited 2-3 more people and we discussed in a small group in one of their rooms. I am conscious of their emotional problems but they are not disabled people, I would say that their problem is also spiritual and they are spiritual hungry people.

 I visit them twice a week, we talk about their challenges, problems, they promised me to visit our church after leaving but the biggest encouragement is praying with these people at the end of every visit. During the first prayer they asked me how to pray? They heard my prayer and then every person said: Maybe I could try. Now it’s your turn. One of them prayed: “Father, I ask you that I can leave this place so I could do a lot of funny but good things and that I can bring chocolate and cigarettes for my friends here”.

:-)

2.19.2013

2.18.2013

Short Summary of 2012

Last year we had a lot of opportunities for preaching the Gospel, fellowship, witnessing by showing far reaching and practical ramification of the Gospel. The Church is growing slowly but is growing.

Poland is still a very difficult mission field for two reasons:
-         impact of secularism from Western Europe
-         still a strong position of the Roman Catholic Church (95% of Polish people are Catholics)

Summary of 2012

We are grateful to the Lord Jesus for everything which we experienced. Among the many challenges I would like to share with you most important events of last year:

- We continued to homeschool  3 our children (Zuzia 9, Janek 7, Maja 5 years old)
- We changed a few things in our liturgy: lifting up hands during singing Gloria Parti and Lord’s Prayer, singing Doxology after Benediction, three readings instead of two, recitation 1-2 questions and answers from Heidelberg Catechism after Apostle’s (or Nicene) Creed, new melody of singing Psalms in responsive way
- We held regular meetings in Coffee Shops titled “Worldviews among us” (we had a lot of discussions after each presentation)
- Open concerts of our Christian music band
- We held regular open lectures on Reformation and Five Solas at the University of Gdansk
- Summer evangelism at the Old Town where we had our church’s stand ("sketchboard", two tables with free literature, invitations and opportunity for a lot of conversations with people)
- Family Camp in May in the mountains
- Creationism vs Evolutionism Conference (“What Darvin didn’t know?”) with British scientist Andy McIntosh. We had over 80 people attend (besides the people from our church).
- I was involved in an internet public polemic about childrearing with a famous Polish TV star (the program is called: Supernanny). There were almost 600 comments and survey where 65% of people supported necessity of physical discipline (in some situations)
- I wrote an article about homeschooling to a nation wide Polish magazine
- As family we also participate in Royal Rangers ministry. My wife is one of the leaders in Gdansk.
- I was a speaker at the conference for fathers at the Pentecostal Church.
-My blog ministry is bringing a lot of fruit. I have an average of 150 daily readers. It seems that it became one of the more influential “arms” of sharing biblical (reformed) view on reality.

2.16.2013

Public polemic with TV Supernanny


One of the famous Polish TV Show Star: “Supernanny” – Dorota Zawadzka criticized on her Facebook profile an article by  Doug Wilson about spanking which had been published on the website of our quaterly magazine “Reformacja w Polsce” and our church website (translation from Credenda Agenda). I wrote a response to that on my blog. 

The most popular web-service in Gdansk, Sopot, Gdynia (3 cities close to themselfes) published an article on their main page about the debate of “TV supernany and pasor from Gdansk”. I was surprised that most of 520 commentaries supported my view on discipline and childrearing. Alost 1600 people voted in the survey under the articles. 67% of them agreed with biblical view on spanking. Amazing.

I think it was very profitable thing because a lot of people in Poland are afraid to say what they think because of government legislation that’s been issued some months ago which defines spanking as a civil crime (violence). Thanks God it is not illegal to share publicly different worldview than Polish government. This is why that discussion was very important and necessary. 

Here is the link to that article.

Lent CREC Devotions 2013

Uri Brito informs at his blog that through the labors of Pastor Steve Hemmeke, the CREC is making available a Lenten Devotional for personal and family use. The PDF version can be found here: Lent CREC Devotions 2013 

Among contributors you can find Steve Wilkins, Todd Davis, Duane Garner, Randy Booth, Brian L. Penney, Ben House, Gregg Strawbridge.

I also wrote one of the devotionals.

 Each devotional ends with an application and/or prayer, which is often on the following page, after the name of the author. There are three devotionals for each week, and six for holy week.