Marc's Messages

Reformation Day 2006

It's Reformation Day, and I was moved by this special report from Belarus, where in the midst of oppression, the believers take hold of God's call to reformation today. The battle for justice continues in Europe's last dictatorial regime. New Life Church, one of the actors for a new reformation in the country, was ordered by a court to sell its building of 1400 square metres to the state for one percent of its value - the price of a one-room apartment - in a further attempt to stifle church activities. Around 100 Christians entered their fourth week of hunger strike, supported in their protest by believers of all denominations. They realise that religious liberty in their country is at stake. Updates at New Life Church and The Big Orange.

Teach2gether in Aalsmeer

Tonight I taught on prophetic prayer for a group of organically wired people in Aalsmeer. Their initiative was called Teach2gether, which means the 'speaker' only gets 20 minutes, then there's a break-out in small groups and everyone comes up with relevant questions. These questions are processed plenary, followed by a time of practice. I liked it, it's quite relaxing to have only 20 minutes, and Gijs who was with me even took part of that.

Mushroom time

The forest is beautiful this time of the year. We made walks near Leersum and Ede, and I came across a wide variety of mushrooms.

Blackbook the movie

Karolien and I went to see Paul Verhoeven's new thriller war movie 'Blackbook'. It's about a young Jewish woman, Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), who tries to survive in Nazi-occupied Holland. As part of her work for the Dutch resistance she starts a relationship with German SD officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch, who also played Albert Speer), to spy out and bug the Nazi headquarters in The Hague, but then really falls in love with him. The movie is less black and white then 'Soldier of Orange', Verhoeven's first war movie that brought him international recognition. The good guys can be bad, and the bad guys good. Interesting detail: the 'Christians' in the movie all have quite distorted personalities. It's an intriguing, fast moving, high quality movie that keeps you glued to the screen from beginning to end.

Change of plans

The boys are spending a week with my parents in Enschede, while Karolien and I planned to head to south Germany to walk the forests and visit some friends. Unfortunately the generator of our car broke down just after we crossed the border, so we decided to return to Utrecht to have it repaired and 'relax a bit' at home. But this morning Rob called that the rain was coming through the roof of our office, because the building contractors who work there didn't cover it properly.



I was quite irritated, as I double-checked with them beforehand to make sure there would be no damage. We cleaned up the mess and decided to move office already this week instead of 8 November. The downside, apart from the extra work, is that I will be less online over the next few weeks, as our telephone and internet connection is not yet activated in the new office.

In search of a miracle

Novapres sent me a review copy of Gerry Velema's book 'Behind the Scenes. Another story about the EO television program In Search of a Miracle'. Recently Evangelical broadcasting company EO produced a reality series in which they took seven chronically ill people on a journey around the world to visit seven prayer healers. Their search for a miracle, including all the emotions that surfaced, were filmed and broadcasted nationally. None of the participants got healed. Perhaps God wasn't too eager with all these cameras around, pressing in to record a miracle.

Velema was invited to join the journey as a pastoral worker and write a book about it, but was hindered in her work and asked to leave halfway. In her book Velema questions a number of decisions made by the producers, for instance to put the final editing in the hands of a secular lesbian film maker who also produced an earlier documentary on a healing pilgrimage to Nigeria. Velema said most of the biblical understanding of divine healing was kept out of the program, and it turned into an emotion- and viewers' statistics-driven series that could have been broadcasted by any company. I believe that's a fair statement, to which I already commented in-part here. As a reality series it was probably quite successful, but it didn't help the cause of Christ, nor people in search for healing.

A better attempt to make an inspiring reality series was 'A Better Neighborhood' by Eric Velu Productions, in which seven young people who just graduated in different fields of study competed to develop projects to improve a disadvantaged neighborhood in Rotterdam. The series aimed to give people more compassion for the poor areas in their city, and the message was clear: you can do something about it. Of course the series also showed the enormous gap between seven naive students and real life in a neighborhood like this, the prejudice people have against 'churchy projects' and camera teams descending on their turf, and the apparent inability of Christians to approach problems strategically and holistically (all projects were on a tactical level). Still this series was a much better learning experience in which the participants quickly grew in their role.

Sometime ago Mark de Boer suggested on his weblog to have a Christian version of Peking Express, a series in which couples hitchhike long distance (the last trip was from Thailand to Nepal) while living on a shoestring. "How about a Luke 10 reality series?" Mark suggested. "Christians travelling and bringing the Kingdom, while cameras capture what's happening." I replied that I'm quite hesitant, as cameras tend to distort, manipulate and hype up. Perhaps a light version in which the teams keep a raw daily video journal and vlog it themselves, so it doesn't intrude too much with the mission, might work.

Hey, perhaps the main point is this: should we want to make reality programs on stuff that we're not yet doing in real-life. Why play with the Kingdom, try to make a good movie out of it to boost our own image, instead of living it unseen and uncaptured. After all most miracles happen out of sight, far from the mainstream entertainment circus, and I suspect God has a good reason for that.

Reformation of finances

It's not sure whether our planned Connect consultation on 'financing reformation', scheduled for 10-12 November in Prague, will take place. The business guys pulled out, leaving us with just the non-profit types, while the original idea was to have a shared think-tank. You might be interested to check out our initial conversation on this topic. Today Phil Anderson mailed around his contribution, that I really like, and therefore quote integrally:

Some brief thoughts which I would have put into the discussion if I could have been there in Prague:

1) Ronald Sider's challenge that "if just the church, in just America, just tithed, global poverty could be eliminated in a decade and there would still be ample resources for global mission". In other words, God has already given all the money we need for justice and mission to the church (primarily in the affluent West), but we have spent it on new cars and new kitchens... This may mean that financing reformation is primarily a repentance issue rather than an innovation or structural issue.

2) The role of intentional, missional communities, where every member is a minister and the work of mission, mercy, prayer, home-making, hospitality, and financing is divided up among the whole. This means seeing people who go out to earn money and people who stay at home most days as equally valuable, equally called, and equally eligible for leadership recognition as those involved in traditional expressions of so-called ministry. An example is the early Moravian community in North America (Bethlehem PA etc).

3) The importance of tentmaking ministry. No other model of ministry is as simple, flexible, and repeatable, and no other model is as incarnational in being both engaged and mutually dependant on the world it seeks to serve and save. This has a big effect on how we model ministry (no more "full time supported work is the ultimate goal") and how we train leaders (we currently give them a set of skills which may be relevant for some aspects of ministry, but leave them incapable of earning a living in the marketplace or truly identifying with those who do). This causes a dysfunctional and un-Christlike power relationship between leaders and led ("I have positional authority or status over you - but I fear your power to cut off my money supply so I exercise control over you").

4) If God really calls and gifts people to be "stewards", we should leave the financial resources of the kingdom in their hands. Normally we tell the wealthy that their role is to give to ministries (and maybe to do the accounts for us). A few years down the line, there are rarely any tangible assets left to show. If those gifted with wealth and ability kept control of the assets (buildings, revenue streams, reserve funds, etc) but gave free use of them to projects and individuals for a period of time, then they could be easily redeployed across geographical and ministry boundaries as the needs changed. Also a lot of the bureaucracy and politically correct constraints that ministry charities suffer from could be eliminated!

5) Structural issues embedded deep in our economic systems. Monetary systems based on interest (ie all modern capitalist economies) have the effect of taking from the poor and concentrating wealth in the hands of the rich (this is what the english bible calls usury). The turning of more and more types of resources (buildings, land, natural resources) into own-able property has the same effect. These economic systems vastly favour top-down hierarchies rather than bottom-up reformation structures. To allow reformation structures to thrive may require (or cause) economic & political reformation too.

6) Although as God's people we do not even manage to collectively give 10%, the challenge of Jesus is far more radical even than a tithe. When I look at sayings like "love your neighbour as much as yourself" and "if you have two, give one away", I find it hard to imagine that Christ is suggesting anything less than 50% as the amount of finance that Christians should release to purposes other than self. In parts of the world not affected by genuine poverty, this is a realistic possibility for many more people than we have ever dared to admit. OK it would mean a radical move to a simpler lifestyle (and radical revelation on how to wisely use the finances released) - but it would be incredibly powerful and counter-cultural.

Joel is moving office

Sometime ago Rob said: "I think we'll be out of this office by the end of the year." It's dangerous to have prophetic colleagues who say things like this. And my prayer to God to help me move out of my comfort-zone didn't appease things either. So - surprise - last month we were asked to leave 'De Bazuin', where we held office for more than five years, before the end of the year. First I didn't like it, because we have a cool office, then I thought: "OK, so this must be God, and likely He'll have something better." I looked at Marktplaats (kinda eBay) for temporal office space, and found a more spacy place close-by for half of the price. It's anti-kraak, but hey, we can't afford commercial rates and long-term renting contracts, so it's good for the time being. Today I got confirmation that we can move there, and so I made arrangements for mid-November. For pure nostalgia a few pictures of our 'old' office.

Could you listen with us?

Last Monday we mailed some of our friends: "We are halfway a week of prayer and fasting to seek God's direction for the coming time, and would like to ask you to listen with us, and in case you receive any (prophetic or practical) impressions or insights for our situation, share them - preferably this week. We sense we are on a threshold, a door into a new phase and dimension of ministry, that might include a geographic move as well, in- or outside the Netherlands. We have a rough indication of where things are heading, but it's important that we hear specifically from God where to move next, whom to link up with, our specific assigment, etc."

It's an interesting experiment, this kind of corporate listening. Is God saying the same things to our friends as we sense He's saying to us? Or is He perhaps giving a little snippet to everyone, and put together this might paint an interesting picture? If you want, you can still join the experiment and mail us what you sense God is saying to you about us. Don't worry whether it makes sense or not, we can handle that. We're not in a hurry, and will come back to it later.

Diving in the water

Gijs, one of the younger guys I'm coaching, asked me last month if I would be willing to baptize him. I told him jokingly that I would wait till mid-Winter when it's freezing, just to test his commitment. But today he told me he just couldn't wait that long. Last Sunday he dived in the local swimming pool during a baptismal service, to get it done. Cool. Go Gijs, go!

On the road to Bethsetera

Peter has his own way of combining Bible stories, and it's always hard to tell whether he didn't listen properly or just wants to make fun of it. Today I told him the well-known story of Joseph and Mary on their way to... "Jerusalem", Peter says. "No, it's not Jerusalem. It's the town where Jesus was born. Do you remember?" He thinks for while and answers: "Jericho!" "No, that was the story of Joshua. Try again." Peter: "Babel?" "No, Peter, but you're right that it starts with a B." "Ah, I know," says Peter. "It's Beseret!" "No, let me help you. It starts with Beth..." Grinning all over his face: "You mean Bethsetera!"

First SHIFT training

We just finished the first episode of our SHIFT training in the Egberts farmhouse in Westbroek, outside Utrecht. It's cool to journey with a group of 12 (wannabee) pioneers. Evert-Jan facilitated the talks, and the focus was 'renewal of thinking', shifting our paradigms from church-as-we-know-it to following Jesus wherever He leads and let church happen on the way.

Meetings this week

Had several interesting meetings this week. Last Wednesday we caught up with Gijs & Geralda Rohaan, who duo-pastor a Protestant church in the Betuwe. In the nineties we were involved in a group of theology students in Utrecht that experienced a move of the Holy Spirit, and they're now applying some of that experience in a quite traditional church context. On Thursday we met with Christine de Groot in Rhenen, to hear about developments of a (still embryonic) leaders retreat center. And today I interviewed blogger Mark de Boer in his new role as national director of Agape. The topic: what shifts are taking place in leadership when a new generation emerges? If you're interested in the answers, sign up for the Dutch edition of Joel News.

Moving to the country

So many people are moving to the country... Why? To start Jesus-centered communities. Like Markus Laegel and the band of brothers of 24-7prayer. They moved into an old school building in Ramsdorf, a village near Leipzig, Germany, to start a modern-day monastery called 'Convers'. Fast Freddi Felson, one of their team members, made a small, groovy movie. More information on this community here.

Simsons new book

Wolfgang Simson mailed me the concept version of his new book 'Prophetic Intelligence for Apostolic Architecture. Towards a Reformation of Life on the Planet'. Quite a mouthful, but he said he quoted me, so let's have a look... hm... here it is: "My Dutch friend Marc van der Woude once told about an experience he had in Holland..." and then he quotes my blog post of Dec. 2, 2005. This is going to get me in trouble with the religious establishment in my nation. The final book will come out as an e-book by Nov. 10., so I still have 30 days to move out of the country. ;-)

Our great leader

In the run-up to the elections, GeenStijl weblog published a photoshopped picture of our Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende as a Mao-style 'great leader', while youthful Christian-Democrats printed T-shirts with their hero Che Balkenende. Does this express a latent longing for revolutionaries?

A seed of prayer

This afternoon I met two brothers from another part of the world who started a prayer house in Istanbul, as part of a vision to see intercession raised up in 12 different power centers of the world. The coordinator of the initiative told me that every time they pray for the M. world, God leads them to repent for the Constaninian legacy first. He said he believed that in order for the church to be effective in reaching M. people, we have to 'clean house' first and turn away from Constantinian models of church. Interesting.

Btw, I uploaded some pictures of the Connect gathering in Istanbul.

Writing or making history?

This morning I expressed what we felt as a team during the weekend: Istanbul 2006 was our last Connect Europe gathering in this format. Over the past two years we've provided 'vital space' for reformation-wired people across the continent to build friendship and learn from each other. Now it's time to move on in a different mode. It's like the drummer in the Sigur Ros movie - there was a time to beat the drum and mobilize the tribes, but now it's time to cast the drum aside, run uphill and jump off the cliff. If we're not careful, the good can become the enemy of the best.

We see two development tracks for the coming season: towards a more intentional (dispersed) community, and apostolic teams Luke 10-style visiting places and breaking open new ground for the gospel. Time to leave the safety-zone and live more dangerously. Time to go to Trondheim (this is a code word for unexpected divine assignments, I will explain that in a later post). It's clear that Istanbul was a stepping stone into the M. world, and through the meetings in Australia and Malaysia God is moving Connect even globally. We can choose: do we want to observe what God is doing and thus write history, or do we want to be used by God to make history?

It's scarf Sunday

J. took us on an excursion to Aya Sofia and Yedikule, a fortress were the ambassadors of European nations were emprisoned and tortured by the sultan, and where we prayed for boldness for the church in Europe to proclaim Jesus instead of being intimidated by the forces of isl*misation. We finished at the impressive F*tih mosque, named after Mehmed the Conqueror. Of course the ladies had to wear scarfs here, and they look so cute...

Blaming Constantine

Fair enough, we can't blame Constantine for everything. Ben from the UK even thinks he was a pretty good chap and that it's unfair to judge him based on today's insights. However, the Constantinian legacy is a serious issue in today's church (see my earlier posting here), and this morning we introduced this topic on the terrace of our youth hostel, overlooking the Aya Sofia. We focused especially on the Council of Nicea of 325, that was presided by Constantine. It was the first synod of the early church, at which 300 of the 1800 bishops attended, and three things were decided upon for the whole church:

1. A creed that was explicity anti-Arian, stating that Jesus was fully God and not a created being. Although most of us could easily accept this creed, what made it problematic is that it was being forced on everyone. Whoever disagreed was not only excommunicated from the church, but also exiled from the empire. And in retrospect one could also suggest that the Nicene creed blocked a deeper understanding of the fact that Jesus was also fully man, God incarnated.

2. A new Passover date, intentionally breaking away from the Jewish tradition. Constantine made clear that he wanted to "have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd [...] those parricides and the murderers of our Lord." In my view this detachment from the Jewish roots of Christianity, is the root cause of 1700 years of division in the church.

3. A whole list of canons (church laws) were adopted. Some made sense in the context of that time, but most were unnecessarily prescriptive, limiting the freedom to apply and when useful change forms and regulations. It laid a basis for traditionalistic thinking in the church, of which we suffer up to today.

Although Constantine didn't vote, he presided and clearly dominated the Council, exercising a measure of imperial control over the church, leading the way for further politisation, centralism and forced uniformism (one size fits all). And more foundationally - it brought a double allegiance into the church, challenging the true headship of Christ. It's perhaps more than coincidental that the city of Nicea was built in an exact square, with regular street patterns, silently declaring: "Don't you dare to break out of the box!"

I left the group three foundational questions to process:

1. What unifies the Body of Christ, and what divides?
2. How to recognize empire and politisation in the church, and how to come against it?
3. How to turn the Body of Christ back into a movement?

Following Jesus in the M. world

Today we spent the whole day praying, sharing stories and learning about following and sharing Jesus in the M. world. My T*rkish friend E. shared his remarkable journey, how he found Jesus, how this transformed his life and that of his close friends, and how he introduced hundreds of young people to the Lord, organizing them in small groups. He's currently working on a drama series of 52 episodes about the week-by-week life (the ups and downs) of a house church in the T*rkic world. The series imparts the DNA of following Jesus, the Kingdom of God and real community, including Acts-style miracles and persecution. A more long-term vision is to see thousands of indigenous simple church planters trained for the T*rkish speaking countries along the Silk Road.

R. and M. work with the Ir*nian church, and shared some incredible stories of God's work in this nation, as well as persecution. Ir*n is currently a hotspot for the Kingdom in the M. world, because in this country many are disappointed with the 'real face' of fundamentalist Isl*m, and the underground church is growing strongly. Also in the West there's a revival of Ir*nian refugees turning to Jesus, and this is making the Isl*mic religious leaders quite nervous.

We also learned that the terms 'Christian' and 'Christianity' have so much unhelpful cultural baggage, that it's always better to speak about 'following the teachings of the prophet Isa'. The Camel Track approach for instance starts with what the Q*ran teaches about Jesus, before referring to the New Testament. E. says that the biggest enemy in the Isl*mic world is fear. Where we are able to overcome this, we will see fruit. "The boldness with which we lead people to Jesus, determines the strength of their walk with Christ."

We also heard stories from Lebanon and Jordan, showed a movie about the compelling ministry of a Coptic priest among the poor in 'garbage city', Cairo, and saw an episode from the just released dvd 'More than Dreams', which tells the stories of five M*slims who found Jesus through dreams and visions, a phenomenon that's especially common during the Ramadan season. What stuck with me this day is that God seems to be doing things in this region of the world that we don't see in this measure in the West. This tells us that God loves M*slims and wants us to move where He is moving. We also took time to pray and prophesy over the participants who minister in the M. world.

Living dangerously

J. is wearing his 'Somebody's gonna die' t-shirt. He believes that for any significant Kingdom breakthrough, people have to lay down their lives. Perhaps it's also symbolic that we're literally meeting in an underground space, the kid's playground of a bookshop in Taksim, paved with carpets. The church as a radical, underground Kingdom, accessible for those who want to become like children. Living room spirituality, or as Andi calls it: 'corporate learning around the Head/Jesus', not a conference format.

Tonight we got to know each other, and we introduced the theme of this weekend, 'Out of the safety-zone, living dangerously' (for a rough outline of this theme, see my postings here and here, and Andi's impressions here and here). Several insights were shared. J. said we often ask the wrong questions. We build in safety, which limits our vision. If we decide to let go of security and live from less human resources, suddenly the whole world opens up. And: we cannot allow to focus on anything that can be taken away from us. We have to overcome intimidation and hidden fears, to fully embrace the calling of God on our lives. May God give us a 'forerunner anointing' to break open new ground, whatever the cost.

The oriental city

It's good to be back in Istanbul, a thriving oriental city bridging Europe and Asia, where you can easily spend weeks just wandering the streets without getting bored. It's Ramadan now, the Islamic month of fasting, which means there are a lot of festivities going on until late at night (Muslims fast during day-time and throw a party at night). Around the Blue Mosque there's a fair, with lots of temporal little tea houses and restaurants where they sell kebab, baklava, and other treats.



Yesterday we had our team preparation day and today most people went on an excursion to the Topkapi. Because I've been there already in May, I took a boot trip to one of the Princess Islands in the Sea of Marmara. In the afternoon I paid a quick visit to the Basilica Cistern, also known as the 'Sunken Palace', constructed by Justinian in 532 to supply water to the Byzantine palace.

The issue of sustainability

In chapters 10 and 12 of their book 'The Shaping of Things to Come', Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost state that "pioneered organizations should always be designed as (1) organic, (2) reproducible, and (3) sustainable learning systems." I can understand the first two, but still struggle a bit with the third one, as it seems to imply that things you start should have a structured time-span beyond your own life. Looking at the various churches and ministries that keep going (are sustainable), even when the initial anointing has left, I'm not sure to what extent I would want to pursue this. Isn't sustainability more an issue of leaving a continuing impact in the lives of people, rather than ongoing support structures? Maybe I'm still short-sighted here.

Today, in our team preparation time, Debora Ruppert told me about a church in Germany that applies the biblical concepts of sabbath and jubilee. Every 7th year they have a sabbatical, during which the community refrains from starting new projects. In the 50th year or their existence they shut down the whole church, sell everthing they have (building, music equipment), and release these resources into new start-ups. Cool. Dissolving your own structures is one way to guarantee sustainability and prevent traditionalism.

Connect Europe in Istanbul

Tonight I'll travel to Istanbul for our Connect Europe 2006 gathering. We'll be there with a group of 17 reformation-wired leaders from 7 nations. A Gideon's army. Would appreciate your prayer support.

Turkish plane hijacked

There's always something when Connect Europe meets. The past years we mainly encountered floodings, but the closer we come to the Middle East, the hotter things get. When we came to Istanbul in May, there was a big fire at the airport, delaying many flights. Since then there have been some bombings in the touristic sector, and the whole controversy around the pope's quotes and his planned visit to Turkey. Now the BBC reports that a Turkish airplane was kidnapped en route to Istanbul with on board four beautiful misses who just paraded on the catwalk in an international contest. It's not sure why the hijackers surrendered. I assume they preferred Misses Singapore, Malaysia, India and Philippines within direct reach over the promised virgins in terrorist heaven...

New photo albums

I added three new photo albums - pictures of our family outing to Amerongen, and my ministry trip to Australia and Malaysia. Henk Vink uploaded some pictures of the garden party at his house.