First Dutch Emergent Weekend

I have just come back from a brilliant weekend with young church planters and theologians and thinkers and artists — all Dutch folk interested in what we call Emergent.

Emergent is a movement that seeks to think about church, faith and practice in the world of the 21st century. As we discussed this weekend, we find ourselves in three interesting transitions.

• The transition from the modern world to the postmodern world
• The transition from the era of christendom (in which the church was a dominant force in the world) to the era of post-Christendom (where the church has to learn to operate in the margin of society).
• We have become post-denominational: we look over the walls of our denominations and visit left and right. We respect each other as Christians, borrow ideas and insights from each other and seek to bless each other.

In Holland more and more people are waking up to these realities. It was exciting to be together with like-minded people who are not afraid to ask questions, share frustrations, hopes and dreams. We met together in a lovely Catholic monastery where we prayed together, read scripture, looked at nature, shared personal questions, allowed nature to inspire us and talked theology. My personal highlight: a 3 hour discussion with 8-10 people of Andrew Perriman’s latest book Re:Mission. Here are some pictures.

pic 1: We are praying in the crypt of the monastery. The peace of wood in the middle is a peace of for reflection's sake - not an idol to pray too... Just thought I'd explain (before you draw the wrong conclusion).
pic 2: left: Rick Jansen from Villa Klarendal (a missional project in Arnhem; left, Johan Ter Beek of Oase (an Emergent Church in Soest)
pic 3: talking and praing together on a nature walk
pic4: Dave and Eef Hund, just a cool couple that I like a lot... Dave and Eef would like to start a new monastic centre - a vision I find very attractive!

Much thanks to the people who organized this (Dave and Eef, Martijn and Rosalie, Nico-Dirk van Loo and Rick Jansen. We plan to do more weekends like this, so if you want to join - let me know!

Comments

[Erik]

Thanks for sharing these pics. It was a great weekend!

[peTer]

thanx for the pictures. i hope this is the beginning of a wide and emergent movement in the Netherlands. as for me, Rotterdam is ready for `geen woorden maar daden' (just do it!)

peTer