The Utrecht project begins tomorrow!

Just a quick note: tomorrow night is the first evening of the Utrecht church planting project! I am busy preparing. It is exciting, but I am also quite nervous!

Last Sunday I presented the plans in the Jacobikerk. That was an event in itself: a large formal church building (dating back to 1600!) filled with people (really full) with a broad ange-range - but many younger than 40! The sun was streaming through the windows, and the missional pastor who spoke, amde a nice connection to the church planting project. Than I was introduced and I talked for five minutes. Response was really positive.

I think this project is a God-project. There are so many reasons why this project should have died an early death already — and yet every time something happens to make it sail through and go to the next phase. It's not mem honestly: I just sit back and watch (usually in amazement).

Jesus uses the mustard-seed as an illustration for the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:18-19). I have been thinking about that a lot. The mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds — yet it becomes a large plant/tree. This project feels a little buit like that: it starts small and the question has already been asked a lot: is this viable? But almost every day in the last few weeks that I've started talking to a new person about the project, their response has been "Oh, I've heard about this already!" Everywhere I go I see little tiny roots, branches, shoots forming.

I am not sure how many people will come tomorrow night. Because of scheduling problems (one of the problems we had to deal with) we were late in communicating the time and place of our first meeting. Quite a few people have already said they can't make it — people I was hoping would come. But I also keep getting emails from people I have never heard of that they are coming.

I appreciate your prayers!