Marc's Messages

The Church is meant to fly

"The Body of Christ is going through a paradigm shift like the caterpillar who turns into a butterfly," says DAWN colleague Reinhold. "Tell a caterpillar that it will be able to fly in two weeks, and it will laugh at you. The Church is meant to fly, not only to creep. And the way is not to develop some more legs that she may creep a bit faster, but to wait patiently. It is in our DNA that we might fly one day, that we might become a movement."

And to church leaders who think it's possible to fly within the structures I would say: this picture is NOT how it will look like. ;-)

Mississippi Squirrel Revival

My unconventional prophetic friend Dolf mailed me this report by Ray Stevens of a spontaneous revival in a little sleepy town in Mississippi that started with a squirrel. Seven deacons and the pastor got saved, 500 people rededicated their lives and got rebaptized, 20,000 dollars got raised and 50 people volunteered for missions in the Congo.

No need to pray endlessly for revival, just order a squirrel and let it loose in church next Sunday morning. ;-)

Apostolic the Russian way

The Russians have always amazed me. When I visited this vast nation for the first time in the Summer of 1999 (Moscow, Togliatti and Irkutsk), and then again in November of that year, and February the year after, I met some incredibly dedicated workers, who wouldn't mind travelling long distances on snowy roads in incomfortable Ladas and unheated trains to bring Jesus to people. Years of economic hardship, bureaucratic pressure, discrimination, stalking by the secret police, and (in the communist times) persecution made them extremely resourceful.

An open letter to Lee Grady

A few weeks ago Charisma editor Lee Grady published a column titled 'Christian Dropouts and the Coming 'Revolution''. Like many other 'established' charismatic leaders he struggles to understand the megashift that's taking place from church-as-we-know-it to church as an organic network or movement (also see his earlier column on Barna here). Because he asked for a response, I wrote him a letter that I publish here as an open letter.

Trends in blogoland (2)

In a second article for Technorati on the state of the blogosphere Dave Sifry reports that most blog postings (37%) are in Japanese, followed by English (31%) and Chinese (25%). The rest of the languages is 3% or lower (Dutch and German each have a 1% market share). I hadn't expected the high percentage of Japanese and Chinese, it might mean we better learn these languages if we want to impact the blogosphere. According to Sifry Japanese bloggers write shorter posts more often, which could be a result of blogging from mobile phones. Also something to take note of is that half of the weblogs use tags or categories, which makes it easier to be found in search engines.

Trends in blogoland

Dave Sifry wrote an interesting article for Technorati about the state of the blogosphere. He points out that there are currently 35.3 million weblogs. The whole blogosphere doubles every six months; it's now over 60 times bigger than it was three years ago. So when I started blogging on February 9, 2002 (4.3 years ago), apparently I was an early adopter. Now the blogosphere gets really crowded, every second a new weblog is being 'birthed'.

Of these new weblogs 45% dies straight after birth, so there's a massive 'digital child starvation' going on, and what's worse - the parents of these babies just leave their 'bodies' on the web for everyone to see. That's quite rude. Realising that many of these are teenagers, I would say: "hey, don't have sex if you're not ready to raise a child."

God is hot, church is not

God is hot, reports (secular) news show Editie NL, especially among young people. They feature 'youth churches', father Roderick's podcasting shows, religious fashion lines, and the annual EO Youth Day. An interesting item, though I would make two side-notes:

1. God may be hot, and there certainly is an increased interest in spirituality, but part of the God-trend is hype. It's often more about personal religious identity or taste than about radically following Jesus. I would love to see a bit more danger here, especially on the EO Youth Day.

2. God may be hot, but the church (or our concept of church) is still a limitation. The youth churches are already on the decline because it's mainly a come-to program for churched youth, not a place where non-Christians show up, and if they show up, they're not very interested to 'move on' to 'real church'. Church should become a go-to movement, but I assume this is too radical for most (youth) churches.

Connecting into the Balcans

Over the past few months God has been drawing my attention to the Balcans. I talked with leaders in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece, and heard about encouraging developments in this needy (most unreached) part of Europe. Coming weekend my Connect friends Alek, Gabi, Laura and Petra will meet in Belgrade, Serbia, for one of the 24-7prayer conversations. The weekend after that I will travel to Istanbul, Turkey, with Jeff, Niina and Gabi to pray and prepare a weekend for emerging leaders.

The Hirsi Ali affair

A new affair in the Netherlands, this time around Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the most outspoken proponents of free speech in the wake of increasing Islam intimidation, and under permanent government protection because of that. Last year she featured on TIME's 2005 list of the '100 most influential leaders and revolutionaries in the world', but a few days ago Dutch TV program Zembla tracked her record and confirmed that she intentionally lied when she applied for her refugee status in the Netherlands.

This is quite embarrassing in the ligth of her liberal party's harsh anti-immigration policy, so Rita Verdonk, our Minister of Immigration and Integration (yes, the same one that wants to send Christians back to 'safe' Iran) decided that she was not entitled to Dutch citizenship. As a result, Hirsi Ali stepped back from her position as MP and announced that she will move to America for her new job with the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank that advices George W.

Integrity and image

Last weekend I watched the excellent German documentary 'Speer und Er' about the life of Albert Speer, Hitler's Third Reich architect and minister of ammunition, and his relationship with 'der Führer'. He spent 20 years in prison in Spandau for his role in the nazi regime. Because he cooperated with the Allies, and acknowledged that he could have known about Auschwitz if only he had pushed for it, he developed the image of 'the only honest nazi'. But the documentary uncovers that Speer played a key role in the persecution of the Jews, and that in fact he was as guilty as the others. What drove him was his ambition to 'make history' and become the architect of the 'new Berlin'. Because of this ambition he decided to ignore certain information, construct and believe in his own view of the truth, and compromised himself morally. Nevertheless his memoirs made big money and he ended his life in the spotlights.