THE JOURNEY

SIMPLYDELISH for you culinary lovers

Sophie has joined forces with a friend she had made here in Rotterdam (Idelet, pictured). Her catering business, SIMPLYDELISH, is back up and running, and it seems orders are starting to come in on a regular basis. Visit their website, download their business card (pdf, 64 Kb). Let me draw special attention to their mission-statement: “bringing together essentials and designing ingredients that promote sensory awakening, enhance community, fun and well-being. Download SimplyDelish_visitekaartje_II.pdf

Making their way to faith

Today was an exciting service again. First of all it was packed—even though many of our regulars weren’t there. It was hard to find a place. But what is even more exciting is that right now there is a number of people at XRR who are ‘making their way to faith.’
It happened like this. Our last Alpha course had a girl in her late 20’s in it. She is very excited about XRR. It seems she has found a place with us to find answers to her questions, and to build a relationship with God. She tells everybody she knows about it: every week she brings friends along.
Two weeks ago she brought four friends, none of them from Rotterdam. Each of them had a great time, they told me. All of them were really touched. But since none of them live in Rotterdam (some live an hour away), I thought we would not see them again.
But they came again this week! Said one of them: I have been looking for God my whole life. That’s my connection with these others: we are all looking for God. Oh you’ll see me here again—and again. I keep wanting to go back into the auditorium and smell the atmosphere one more time.

Strategizing spiritual growth?

Had a great conversation with Jelle today. We talked about ways in which we could give people direction for spiritual growth. It seems to us that when people come to Christ we teach them a few basics, and then leave them to their own devices, without giving them a roadmap for spiritual growth – even though that’s what we want to see take place. The result often is not very impressive – hardly world-changing.
This bugs both of us. Today Jelle proposed an elaborate strategy. It looked great on paper: a beautiful circular model, with colours, lines and circles all over.
Here’s the problem: would a programmed or structured approach to spiritual growth work—given the postmodern environment in which we work. We don’t know. What do you think? How do you grow spiritually? How would you want to see people grow?

Prime Time Weekend

Had the privilege of being the guest-speaker for the annual Prime Time Retreat. Prime Time is the ministry of Crossroads Amsterdam for people in their 20’s and 30’s. A ministry, which—interestingly, Sophie and I led for many years, and which in many ways was our training ground for the work we do now. Also interestingly, the church we now lead mostly consists of people in this age-category.

But back to the weekend. Had a great time. What a great bunch of people. So open, so ready to listen and learn, so welcoming of each other.

On Saturday night they had a party, with a DJ and everything. Everybody danced, and so did I. Danced my heart out!

Meeting my colleagues

Went down to Paris on Sunday to hang with two guys who are rapidly becoming very good friends. We have a lot in common: Frank Wilder is the team leader for the CAI project in Paris, and Darrin Jones is the team leader for Aix-en-Provence. Both of them are in their 30’s, and our kids are the same ages. Our wives also get on really well. We met in a small village an hour outside Paris. We stayed in a cheap hotel with a wonderful restaurant for two nights – and talked about everything that concerned us.
Our conversation went along the following three topics: How is our ministry; how is our family, and how are we doing personally? The last question had three parts to it: how are we doing in the areas of the big three (money-sex-power); where does our sense of identity come from these days, and what do we feel God is speaking to us about? It was a truly fantastic time.
So good to connect. In CA we have what we call a ‘raw spirituality;’ spirituality that has a gut-level honesty about it. That’s what we practised—and I loved every minute of it (even when they gave me a hard time about spending more time with my family ¬but that’s the point of it, isn’t it!)