Marc's Messages

Get yourself a good book

There were many comments on our unconventional cleaning up house project. And we are making good progress, though we didn't manage to select more than 25% of our books, cds and videos. Still, we ended up with a pile of 200 titles that I now use for some fundraising for our ministry with Connect Europe. Everyone who helps us with a donation this month, gets a product for free - have a look at the extensive list (English titles here). You can also donate through PayPal here. Not every book is 'spiritual', we also have some great stuff on breast feeding, cooking, World War 2 and how to grow in assertivity.

Going to Geneva

Today Lammert Vrieling popped in for a cuppa coffee. He's the former European director of Christian Associates, who is on his way to Geneva with his family to become involved in a new missional community project called 'Shema'. We talked about leadership development and areas in the church that might need a reformation. As he's moving to John Calvin's city, and even will organize meetings in his chapel, that's a good place to start. We were there two years ago with Connect. And did you know that John Calvin was the first reformer who introduced the tongue piercing? Everyone who sang too loud would get it for free. He was way beyond his time... :-)

Those prayer types

A few days ago a friend, who's more an apostolic type, asked me this question: "What do you see as the advantage of being part of prayer initiatives, as most prayer people I know seem to be quite narrow-sighted and spiritualistic in their approach." Challenging question. Just a little background: since 1994 I've been working with various prayer initiatives and prophetic groups, locally, nationally and internationally. This involvement has decreased over the past few years, for various reasons, but I still value being connected to the prophetic segments of the prayer movement.

Fellowships of the heart

There needs to be a degree of commitment by individuals who form a community, says Andrew Black on his weblog. Laissez-faire is not a great recipe for the Body of Christ. But how to go about it? He links to an interesting post on contract versus covenant. Also helpful is this excellent chapter from John Eldredge's Waking the Dead, titled 'Fellowships of the heart'. Read it, you will love it. He describes a commitment to fight for each other, that's rare to say the least, and that's for instance modelled in the story of Lord of the Rings (or David's army if you prefer a biblical narrative). More Eldrege materials at Epic Reality and Ransomed Heart.

Connect and OMS wikis

Thanks to Andreas and emRG we now have a Connect Europe Community wiki, where we will explore ideas related to the forming of (dispersed) communities. Interestingly in the same week that we got started, Phil Anderson also launched a wiki platform for the Order of the Mustard Seed, a covenant community around Zinzendorf's vow to be "true to Christ, kind to people and to bring the Gospel to the nations". Niina wrote an inspiring post about this order, and Phil is about to publish his new book 'The Lord of the Ring' (about Zinzendorf's ring and his amazing spiritual inheritance).

Corporate organizational chart

When cleaning up some paperwork, Karolien found this funny corporate organizational chart (pdf). It reminds me of the time I still worked in such a company structure. The corporate communications department where I was employed was situated directly under the General Director, but of course as I was not in a senior leadership position my name did not even show up in the chart. On several occasions, partly out of naivity, partly out of intentional disregard, I crossed the 'boundaries' of the chart and got myself into trouble. I quickly discovered that I was not born for company politics.

Meetings this week

This week several people spontaneouly popped in. On Tuesday Anthon told me about his involvement in the house church movement in Asia and a training for young leaders he's setting up. Yesterday Lucas introduced me to his friend Martijn who trained young gypsies in Romania to start house churches and was looking for some ideas to bring that further. Today I had lunch with Jan Bernard, Carol and Peter (insert) of the Utrecht team. My last get-together, because I'm down-sizing my responsibilities in Utrecht.

A spicy exchange of views

Sometime ago I had a long but interesting e-mail discussion with an 'established' Evangelical leader in the Netherlands on the emerging and organic church phenomenon. He basically said most of it was rubbish, which kick-started a strong exchange of views. After 18 pages we decided to call it a day. Still our correspondence offers interesting perspectives from both sides that I'm sure the Dutch speaking readers of my blog might enjoy (or get terribly irritated about ;-).

Download correspondentietheo695.pdf

Raining go(o)d ideas

Is it possible to combine a solid business concept with keen social and ecological development of a region? Yes, says Kerstin Hack from Berlin, who pointed me to Futuro Forestal, a reforestry investment project in Panama. I checked out their website and must say I'm impressed with how they set it up. Watching the various project movies, I also learnt a lot about all the elements and conditions that have to come together to make a tropical tree grow. I asked Kerstin half-jokingly: "How come non-Christians have all the great ideas? One would assume that Christians, because they understand God's principles, have a greater redemptive capacity."

Late mover advantage

Does the term late mover advantage ring some bells? That's the competitive advantage held by firms that are late in entering a market. Late movers often imitate the technological advances of other firms or reduce risks by waiting until a new market is established. Well, I have some suspicion that that's Karolien's strategy too. Since half a year or so she's been connected to the internet, working on my former notebook. But today she suddenly overtook me. Peter had accidently kicked her already aging notebook into the grave, which resulted in Rob fixing Karolien a much faster and more fancy Acer Aspire, which gives her a tool with which she can seriously compete - if not beat - me. Life is not fair.