Marc's Messages

Happy birthday Karolien!

Today is Karolien's birthday. I bought her favorite orange-red-yellow roses. And we threw a small family party.

We wanna see Jesus

This morning I visited Frans Horsthuis, a 83-year old Catholic priest, who in 1968 decided to give up his position in the organised church and sell everything he had to follow Jesus. In 1988 he published his book 'The Royal Way', the story of his pilgrimage in Christ and a prophetic message to the Church in Europe that was way beyond his time.

We talked about paganism in the church, how the church as an instituation often blocks the revelation of Christ, and how everything in life bottles down to one thing: do we live for Christ or for men? What a richness to hang out with this older brother.

The cops are coming

To celebrate Karolien's birthday (tomorrow), we took the kids and my parents to the Police and Ambulance Museum in Apeldoorn. Was fun. They demonstrated how to catch a crook with handcuffs, there was an impressive Chevrolet-type ambulance that looked like a hotel on wheels, and we found a bottle with ten fingers that some agent cut off from a victim when they wanted to take fingerprints.

Out of the comfort zone

Hung out with Theo, Maaike and other friends of Soul Survivor at their young leaders' conference. Good to catch up and hear Peter Helms preach prophetically on 'crossing to the other side', leaving the crowds, entering the boat with Jesus, to be pushed out of your comfort zone. Yes, the right message at the right time.

Welcome to new bloggers

Its' time to introduce a few new bloggers to you, fresh entries on my bloglist. First the Dutchies. Mr. Time to Turn Frank Mulder and his companion Freek keep a duo-blog on justice issues, smoking cigars and more. Holy bean Mirjam Verhage is a multi-media designer with a typical girls-feel weblog.

Then we go east, to revolutionary Markus Laegel, who heads up the 24-7 team in Germany. I already introduced Alexander Campbell of Simple Church in the UK. DAWN buddy Andreas Wolf also entered the blogosphere to offer his perspective on the world. Jan Inge Saltskar from Connect Norway started zealously, but suddently stopped blogging, hopefully he wakes up again from his nordic winter sleep. Finally there's Mark Lane from Rivertribe in Australia.

It's also time to say farewell to my friend Ronald van der Molen who found out that blogging is actually a very boring activity, and called it a day. Good news for his wife, for sure.

God among the indigenous

Met with a group of prophetic people today, and heard some crazy stories. Two guys went to Australia and witnessed a revival among the Aboriginals, where a new stream of the prophetic is coming from. I think God is up to something with the indigenous people. My friend Niina from Finland is connecting with the Sami in the north, and mailed me this website of a World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People.

Keeping appointments

Last week a trainee of youth movement Soul Survivor called me to ask for my cooperation in a project she's working on: a review of Soul Survivor's communication outlets. Does the movement communicate effectively with its audience? How about charismatic jargon like 'ministry', 'outreach' and 'stepping out in faith'? Are there better alternatives?

I told her I had a tight schedule this week, so we agreed that she would call me in my office this afternoon to go through the questionnaire. She didn't call, but somehow it didn't surprise me.

Joel News restyling

Just finished the restyling of the international section of the Joel News website. The video-cd 'Globalizing Prayer, Transforming Our World' is now also available for our international readers and supporters.

And if you're looking for a good investment opportunity: together with the DAWN International Network we partner in a funding project that gives you a revenue of 50-100% on donations for leadership development and church planting.

House of prayer in Utrecht

Caught up with the team of the house of prayer in Utrecht. It's encouraging to discover that God is speaking to different people about the same topics. Also heard an encouraging story about older intercessors teaming up with young evangelists in the city, creating open doors to minister among muslims and prostitutes.

Talking about Utrecht, I just put Teus Schep's moving story 'A taxi ride through Utrecht' online. Dutch (extensive) version here.

Cappucino IKEA-style

Met up in the IKEA restaurant with Dirk-Jan Horjus to discuss our book project on 'streams of living water in Dutch church history'. Yes, a theologian and a historian working on what you could label a 'prophetic identity project', sounds interesting, right?

BTW, we found out that between 9 and 10 am IKEA serves free coffee, tea and cappucino, without the obligation to walk out with a Billy under your arm. Swedish hospitality.