THE JOURNEY

Holland has a new church planting network!

Today I attended a seminar on the subject of church planting in The Hague. The seminar, given by Stuart Murray, was put on by Urban Expressions, the organisation that Stuart heads up.

The seminar today also marked the start of Urban Expression Holland. Fellow-church planters Matthijs and Lindsey Vlaardingebroek and ther friend Oeds Blok head this up. The vision of Urban Expression is to encourage church planting in urban areas among the poor and marginalized. In this they are quite different from Christian Associates, of which Sophie and I are part. CA seeks to also reach people in the urban aras of Europe, but our vision is to rach the young and upwardly mobile people. Our belief is that these are tomorrow’s leaders, and impacting them will mean we get to impact Europe. Having said all that, Sophie and I (and others within CA) love Matthijs and Lindsey and applaud the work they do! We are excited that Urban Expression is here and look forward to working together with them. Most of all, we look forward to journeying together.

The challenge of Stuart Murray... ehhh, I mean Post Christendom!

I attended a national meeting of pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church today. Stuart Murray was the speaker for the day. As far as I am concerned; Stuart is the authority on church planting; his book ‘church planting’ is pretty much the standard work on the thing that I have chosen to make my profession.

But the Dutch Reformed Church asked Stuart to speak about another subject, ‘The End of Christendom.’ He argues that the era of Christendom has now come to an end - and this, in his view, is a good thing!

I love the quiet British demeanor with which Stuart delivers that message to a group of 400 (mostly very traditional) Dutch reformed pastors! His two speeches contained some real pointed remarks. No surprise then that the response was quite critical. The organisation had asked two people to respond; both responses were not very helpful (in my view). 

I think Stuart is right. We live in a new world and it is terribly confusing. I think it confuses all of us; and yes, it really confuses me too. 

One thing Stuart said that really struck a cord with me was this: he asked if it would be helpful to look at ourselves in this new world through the same eyes as the people of Israel  during the time of the exile to Babylon. Like the children of Israel who were longing for their homeland and sad about its demise (Ps 137) we often can long back for the time when the church was large and strong, and faith was relatively simple. Like the children of Israel, we can try to get back to that era, back to that understanding of the world. But an interesting thing happens to the exiles in Babylon: while they are making every effort to go home, back to where they came from and the life they knew, the prophet Jeremiah tells them to stay and to engage with the city. “You are going to be here a while,” he says, “get involved and get used to it.”

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Hmmm... that keeps going through my mind again and again. Seek the peace... Build houses... Plant gardens.... Seek the prosperity of the city... If it prospers, so will you. 

Tony Blair's faith

You may want to read this excellent article on Tony Blair's faith. It describes how he came to faith in his college-days, how he has been searching spiritually all his life, how his faith has influenced and motivated his career and how he now tries to 'be a blessing' in his role as UN-envoy to the Middle East. Very impressive and insightful!

A couple of observations from my side:

• It is popular to accuse politicians of wanting to be in office for selfish reasons only. While I also suspect that some run for office out of selfish ambition, I think many seek office because they want to make a difference in this world. I think Mr. Blair is a good example.
• There are more and more politicians and artists for whom faith is important, but who do not use their faith as a means to political gain. In my perception, their faith is sincere and deep and motivational to them, yet they refuse to make it an issue of their politics, their choices or their public perception. I find their faith 'postmodern,' in that they don't fight for absolutes but rather welcome the conversation; I find their faith mature in that it does not become a selling-point and they refuse to become entrenched; yet their faith continually motivates them to keep going on in their efforts for a better world.

A family does Serve The City

Sophie, the boys and I have been working with Serve The City Amsterdam for the past three days. Today will be the last day. Yesterday the boys were part of the basketball clinic; Sophie cooked all day and I shot video all day. Today is the last day: Serve The City is participating in a large festival with live music, lots of fun and free food and games. Sorry, I’ve been shooting video and that will appear on Youtube no doubt in the future. For right now, no media…

An important night in Utrecht!

I came back from Holiday and dove straight into the Utrecht project. Tonight was an important night! We are just past the half-way point in the process and it now looks like the project is going to result not in on, but in two church plants!

Here’s what has happened so far:

• We talked about ‘missional church planting’: what it is and how you do it.
• We then spent three evenings looking at inspiring examples of church planting: Matthijs and Lindsey’s work in The Hague; Redeemer in New York and Amsterdam, and Crossroads Rotterdam.
• All the while we have been talking about vision and trying to specify what it is that we want to see.

As I have interacted the 35-or so participants in the process it became clear there were really two visions that were emerging: one group of people have a vision for a church of 30-somethings (well-educated, tomorrow’s leaders, our friends and neighbors); the other group wants to see a church community come into existence in a specific neighborhood with lots of Turks and Moroccans.

Tonight we divided the whole group into these subgroups for the first time. For the rest of our time together they will work on vision, target-audience and strategy. By the end pf June this should result in two church planting proposals that will then be brought to the denomination for consideration.

I am excited about this process. Is it fragile? Yes, it is: very fragile. But I see lots of good things; I see passion and commitment; I see wisdom growing and insight being sought. I think these two projects have a real chance of both becoming a reality!

Back from Holiday

Well, we are back from 10 days of holiday in England. After the week we spent together in Porlock on Exmoor as a family we all went to Exeter, where Sophie’s mom and sister live. From there we went to Crackington — the place on the northern Cornish coast where Sophie spent all her summers growing up. It is a tiny beach place, absolutely beautiful that never seems to change. The weather was amazing; the boys had a great time climbing rocks, building fortresses and fishing for crabs. I did some really wonderful photography and finally managed to empty my head of all my worries and fears. Here are some pictures.

We drove back to Holland on Thursday. The next project evening for the Utrecht project was that evening and I was really scared I would miss the boat again (as we did on the way to England due to traffic). So we left really early and I drove very fast (Exeter-Dover: departure 5:11 AM; arrival in Dover 9:34 AM!). We did not miss the ferry: in fact, we caught an earlier ferry (the 10 AM instead of the 12 AM).