It's becoming a tradition: the five postings on this weblog that provoked most comments in 2006. This time they're quite diverse. Earlier episodes: 2005, 2004.
1. My unpublished April 1 report
My fake Joel News report on the spreading of a 'judgement virus' in the Netherlands stirred a lot of response, especially from Dutch readers, and proved once again that in John Calvin's own country pagans tend to have a better sense of humor than Christians.
I've been interacting with various friends in the Netherlands about a possible new 'hub' for innovation and reformation. It also came up today when we met with a number of Shift'ers at the local Chinese restaurant. If there is a growing momentum for change, how can we create synergy and steward it well?
Had lunch with Steve Hill, who just returned from Central Asia. Assessing the organic church landscape in Europe and the need to train 'simple church' planters, we came to the conclusion that those 'simple church' networks that seem to thrive all have a missional DNA, and this is mainly imparted when the person who carries the vision is an apostle or an evangelist. So when aiming to train 'simple church' planters, it's likely most effective to select those that are clearly apostolic or evangelistic in their calling or ministry, and already see the fruit of that in their lives. These people create the missional 'flow' that others (prophets, teachers, pastors) can hook up with.
Do you hear 'clicks' when visiting this website, then drop me a quick e-mail to let me know. Somehow it started when I changed the pictures in my Flickr badge in the left menu bar. If it irritates you, you could turn the volume of your speakers down. To get rid of it all together, see this solution in the Flickr help section.
I already mentioned that Joel News now has RSS feeds for the international and Dutch editions. You can pick these feeds up in your RSS reader, but also use them to automatically include the headlines and/or an introduction to the main news report in your own website or weblog. It's a cool feature, and there are two ways to apply it:
1. In Typepad go to 'Edit Design', then 'Change Content Selections', then (on the right) 'Feeds'. Click on 'Add a new feed'. Give in the feed's rss/xml address. Then in 'Change Ordering' you can position the headlines in the right place of your weblog. For an example of how it might look like see the left bar of this weblog (refresh page if the headlines don't show up). Other blog providers might have similar features in the admin menu.
Had an interesting phone conversation with David Orton, a prophet from Melbourne. We met up last September in Canberra, and he plans to come to the Netherlands in March 07 to connect with people in our Shift network. David sees a connection in God's plans for reformation between the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia.
In the afternoon Matt Helland, an American missionary/organic church planter to Amsterdam, paid me a visit. When I asked him how long he will stay in the Netherlands, he replied: "I will stay here for fifty years." I was taken aback a bit, but he was serious. He believes the Netherlands is a beachhead for a new move of God in Europe, and wants to be in for the long run. Cool.
You've probably heard about the 80/20 rule: 20% of church-goers does the work of 80%. It's a variation of the Pareto Principle. But how is that on the internet? I've been interacting with Niina and some other friends about forming online communities, and as communities in which most people don't participate tend to be quite boring, it's relevant to know.
Peter Freeke of Ellel Ministries paid me a visit. Ellel is a UK based ministry for (training in)discipelship, healing and deliverance, and Peter set up the Dutch branch earlier this year. It was interesting to hear that they're quite holistic in their approach, and thanks to the connection with Alistair Petrie (Transformations) even have courses on bringing restoration to the land and launching out in the marketplace. Peter told me he just signed the contract to buy castle De Baak near Zutphen from the Focolare movement. So Ellel is coming up to speed quite fast.
I've been messing around a bit with various websites. Last night my weblog was suddenly cut in half and appeared in quite interesting colours. Happily I was able to repair the problem, some glitch in Typepad. Today I finally set up a simple no-thrills website for Joel Ministries (was still in development). I also repaired a Frontpage error in the Joel News main site which made Mozilla see tables where they weren't planned. I also reworked (or rather referred) Gebedsbeweging.nl and Transformations.nl, domains I hosted at the time I was more involved in the Dutch prayer and transformations scene, but that now refer to the Joel News resource site in development. In the meantime Rob is trying to arrest a trojan that is intervening with some processes on my notebook.
Realising I have so many good and more or less unused pictures, I decided to make a few wallpapers for Joel News. If you like them, you can download them for free on my Flickr page. Once there, click on the picture you like, go to 'all sizes' and select the original, then click your right mouse botton and select 'use as wallpaper/background'. That's it, can't make it much easier.
