THE JOURNEY

End of an era: closing the office

This summer it will be 10 years ago that we came back to The Netherlands after living in the U.S. We had joined Christian Associates and came to The Hague, where our friend and then-Europe Director had just secured an office space on Bezuidenhoutseweg. Sophie and I helped Brian decorate the office, together with our other staff members.

Last Tuesday we closed the office. CA is doing well: 10 years ago there were maybe 7 projects in Europe; these days there are 42 projects world-wide, mostly in Europe. But in wanting to become a movement we are pushing the ministry out to the edge and are trying to minimize our operational cost.

Linus Morris (founder and president) was here and with our current staff we had a time of thanksgiving for what has happened and prayer for the future.

For me it was bitter-sweet. There are a lot of good memories attached to this building. I think mostly of the CA staff who served there: Dan & Ann Steigerwald, Paul & Lori Hart, Tom Boeger, Lammert Vrieling, Al and Deela and later Elisabeth Dyck, Eric and Jeannie Folbrecht, Tessa, Caroline, Bernhard — I am sure I am forgetting a few.
The bitter part is that this summer many CA people will leave Holland for different locations. That's another reason we are closing this office now: after the summer there will be less need for it.

My hope is that the work of CA will continue and that in a few years we will need office-space in a number of European cities.

SCO - Staff Candidate Orientation

Wow — can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted last. So here are three posts in a row. We had a fantastic SCO two weekends ago. SCO is short for Staff Candidate Orientation: a four-day training weekend for people with an interest in joining Christian Associates.

What made it so good?

• the participants: 4 Dutch people from Holland (good friends of mine); 2 Dutch people living in Belgium; a Dutch/Canadian couple living in Holland but with an interest of doing ministry in France; and an American guy from Dallas, living in Munich, Germany and working with our Citychurch project there. A wonderful crowd!
• Working with Al and Elisabeth Dyck, Phil and Laina Graf and Jeannie Folbrecht. Great teamwork. Oh… and of course Sophie too!

On Sunday we visited the Graf’s in Amsterdam. Phil and Laina taught on missional living (pictured above). They did a great job — nice to have them do this before they move to Portugal (their house is for sale here | pictures by yours truly here)

After it was all over I thought it would be a whole year before we would have another SCO. But already we have a number of people who want to go through one sooner than that. Right now we are planning for one in the fall.

Had an interesting thought about the SCO during the weekend. We should not think about the SCO as a giant sales-pitch, but rather as a time during which we talk about the mission we are on – and for which we are looking for fellow mountain-climbers. Our desire is to see a new church planting movement spread all over Europe. That’s a bit like climbing a really tall and somewhat dangerous mountain. Not everyone can participate in that: it’s sometimes dangerous, requires skill and it certainly is difficult. So during SCO we talk about ‘our mountain’ and this effort — and then we carefully select who we want to work with. Sounds exclusive? Well, it is a little bit. I’ve never done any physical mountain-climbing, but I’m told accidents do happen. As they do in church planting. Better we protect ourselves and each other by moving forward carefully and strategically.

Brilliant weekend away with journey-friends

Sophie and I were away this weekend. We attended the Emerging Network Retreat. 'Emerging Church' in all its forms has been a growing phenomenon in the US and the UK for over a decade now, but in The Netherlands this conversation is just getting going. I believe this conversation is asking the right questions about church and faith. I know that some of the answers that are being proposed are outside of the evangelical box and may feel to liberal — but trust me when I say that the people who attended this weekend love Jesus, have a passion for his kingdom and are devoting their lives to worshipping God. All in all deeply refreshing.

I attended this weekend last year as well and blogged about it here. That was such a good weekend that I made a commitment to bring Sophie along this year. It took some doing, but in the end it all worked out (thanks to Jason Cutshall!). We had a great time.

Highlights:

• Meeting together for evening-prayer in a small catholic chapel (picture above)
• Experiencing Rick van Zutphen's worship lab. Very meaningful experience for me.
• Nature-walk through one of the most beautiful forests in Holland. We meditated and prayed as we pondered the beauty of God's creation (picture below).
• Deepening friendship with some amazing pioneers, deep thinkers, and lovable characters.

[Picture-gallery]

Introducing: Sam Lee

Let me introduce you to a really interesting person. I met Sam today at a seminar that was held at his church (with author & philosopher Carl Raschke). Samuel Lee (pictured standing up) is an Iranian post-pentecostal pastor who leads a church of 70% Africans and 30% Asians in Amsterdam. He and I are the same age and grew up in the same part of Amsterdam, De Bijlmer (less than a kilometer from where we lived), but we did not know each other.
In April Sam will receive his doctorate in Sociology from a university in Switzerland. The subject is: ‘the history of the church in Japan.’ His main thesis: Christianity did not come to Japan through Catholic missionaries in the 16th century but through Persian missionaries in the 5th and 6th century. Just thought that was interesting...

Sam used to lead a church of 500-600 people in The Bijlmer. But when he became a post-pentecostal many people left. Th church is now about 200, 70% African and 30 Asian and 1% Dutch. Then he became not only post-pentecostal, but also emergent and missional.

The community Sam leads exists for the sake of mission. Their mission: to help migrants and undocumented aliens as a center for political activism on their behalf.

That's something that is increasingly important to me: I don't think Jesus intended for the church to have a mission (supported and carried out by a few), but rather that the mission has a church: community that exists for the sake of mission. Terrific to find that in my old 'neck of the woods' today!

PS. Sam blogs here. Have a look at this post. The issue of refugees and 'undocumented aliens' is really starting to make me think.

Why Church Plants fail...

This friday I will attend a meeting of coordinators of church planting networks in The Netherlands. I will represent Christian Associates. The meeting is put together by Ronald van der Moolen, a really cool guy who is developing as Mr. Church Planting The Netherlands. I am not sure if Ronald and I are ‘friends’, but I like Ronald a lot and always enjoy my interaction with him!

In preparation for the meeting Ronald has asked us to do some advance work. Ronald wants us to talk about the question ‘why do church plants fail?’ It is Ronald’s hope that we learn from failure also - especially as there is a lot of failure in the church planting business!

So today I spent some time thinking about that question. One of the questions we have to answer is ‘make a list of church plants you have seen fail.’ In less than a minute I had compiled a list of more than 10 projects that I have seen fail! That was a little shocking...

So why do church plants fail? I think there are a number of reasons. Here are some of the reasons I see... (not in any order)

• Lack of clarity in the vision. Soon people want to do different things which leads to conflict.
• Disagreement over who does what. A healthy division of roles is helpful.
• A lack of flexibility. Church planting is demanding and throws you all kinds of punches. Roll with them! Every problem also offers you a possibility.
• Theological hot potatoes can not be solved. One church plant I knew blew apart over the question over women in leadership.
• A lack of clarity over how decisions are made - or who makes what decisions.
• A lack of humility. This is huge!
• A lack of willingness to deal with one’s dark sides. (Yes, you have more than one!)
• Strong emphasis on certain behaviour or charismatic expression. It grieves me to have to say it, but the charismatic/pentecostal spirituality easily sets itself up for abuse.

Of course it is always simplistic to say that a church plant failed because of only one reason. Most church plants suffer a confluence of circumstances that contribute to their demise.

There is a lesson in this - one I am always mindful off. Church planting is difficult and those of us who coach church planters need to do everything we can to contribute to health, balance and good leaderhip!

An intentional prophetic act?

Question: can non-Christians perform an act that is full of prophetic significance?

This question has been going through my mind for the past three days. Last Friday Sophie, Joel and I attended an event sponsored by the city of Rotterdam and organized by a collective of artists. Let me describe it to you. I am adding pictures so you get a feel for where I am going with this.

A bunch of artists have created a massive grass carpet (entitled the flying green carpet). Made from artificial grass (astro-turf Americans call it), and full of wonderful patterns, this carpet has been placed in the centre of Rotterdam for a period of two weeks. It is a spot where people can come and sit and picnic and rest and play (that’s five Kingdom-words in a row!). Then the carpet will travel to another destination in the world. And another. And another – hence the title flying green carpet. Of course the carpet is also supposed to make people more aware of the environment.

When we got there, there were a ton of people there already. Then three beautiful girls came out, with dresses made of table-cloth; when representative of the city announced the carpet was now officially opened, they gave out free champagne and strawberries to all (again, I see certain Kingdom parallels). People sat back, enjoyed the sun, company, the kids played, and there was a wonderful atmosphere (there was also a ton of press around with photo and video camera’s).

But this wasn’t all. Nice as this was, most people had come to experience what happened next: at 17:30 a helicopter appeared and 50.000 flowers were dropped from the sky on top of all the people below! The two- or three thousand people below were standing with out-stretched arms as the flowers came down.

Now catch the significance of this: this is Rotterdam. Every year this city remembers that on May 14, 1940, the city was bombed. Rotterdam’s most well-known statute is that of a man without a heart, because Rotterdam lost its city centre that night. His arms, too, are stretched up to the sky, as if to say ‘no more, no more!’

Today I watched as Rotterdammers stood, with their arms up into the sky, to receive this bath of love from above.

Can you understand I was struck by the prophetic significance I wanted desperately to assign to this event? It doesn’t matter that the wind blew many flowers away and made it difficult for the pilot to deliver the flowers correctly (drawing a few laughs from us on the ground). You should have seen the people adorning themselves with flowers.

Sophie and I hung around for two hours enjoying the atmosphere and events. As we left I started wondering if I could think of this as a prophetic event. And I started longing for the coming of God’s Kingdom, hoping and thinking that people would receive it as they did this ‘rain of flowers.’

 

 

 

Some Staff Conference Video

The Staff conference finished today. Here are some video's Jenelle D'Allesandro made of different people talking about our time together. It was a really good conference!

Next year CA will be organizing a regional Connect-conference in your area. You may want to come - these conferences are encouraging, inspiring and life-giving!

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!

Serve The City: The big Freeze!

Serve The City is coming again! Serve The City Amsterdam asked me to video their projects. They did a promotional event on March 29th which was really fun: they brought a group of people together that ‘froze’ for three minutes in specific locations in Amsterdam. Here is a Youtube video that I made of the event.

I have so many videos on Youtube now – I should start my own channel…

Here are the some Serve The City dates. Why not pick one or more projects and participate? Sophie and I plan on participating in Amsterdam and Brussels. We would have participated in Rotterdam too, but we are out of town.

Rotterdam: May 1-4
Amsterdam: May 9-12
Brussels: June 27th – July 8th.

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!