Marc's Messages 3.0

Grandma's birthday

Today my grandmother turned 85 and threw a party for the Van der Woude branch in her old people's home in Enschede. It was a good opportunity to catch up with family members you only see once in a while. My sister made an impressive slide presentation with pictures covering the period from 1922 till now. There's not much chance that my grandmother will ever read my blog, or even touch a computer, but at least she is now on the web.

Paul Donders on leadership

Today Paul Donders of xpand provided pastors in Utrecht with some handles on leadership in a city-reaching context. I found his holistic and strategic approach highly refreshing after the past few "let's fellowship for the fellowship" sessions. Paul has his roots in the Jesus movement, moved to Germany after his studies to start a community, but didn't want to live in two worlds: the Christian subculture and society. So he started a company that aims to empower leaders in church, business and society with Kingdom leadership principles. Here are some of my notes:

- In the time of the Jesus People you were supposed to lead a group by the time you were 17 or 18. And people who asked difficult questions were sent out as missionaries to start new groups in other places.
- Leadership is providing hope, not exercising criticism.
- Everyone has the God-given potential to be a leader, at least to manage himself (first level). If you can manage yourself, you can grow into leading projects (second level), people (third level), and organisations (fourth level).
- A Kingdom leader is lion and lamb, king and priest, at the same time.
- Virtues are a main theme in business and science at the moment (see Harvard Business Review January 2007).
- Power is neutral, but the heart can corrupt it.
- The Netherlands still benefits from the reformation inheritance of Abraham Kuyper and the fact that (unlike surrounding nations that were more directly involved in the two world wars) we have no fatherless generation.
- There are not many effective models for 'discipling a whole nation', but Zinzendorf's approach comes very close. To really disciple a nation we need a revival of the heart, a renewal of thinking, and a reformation (or transformation) of structures. This implies a synergy of different kinds of leaders with different anointings.
- It takes 5% of the population (and 0.5% leaders in different sections of society) to start a revolution, and 20% to forge a reformation or transformation. For a city like Utrecht this means raising up 1,500 healthy leaders in the various mindmolding areas: church, business, healthcare, government, education, media, sports and family.
- Paul currently works in Rotterdam and Vienna with an experimental grid that can be applied to a city to identify the key areas of influence, the key leaders of influence, and the opportunities for leverage.
- Healthy leaders develop character and competence, and a good balance between people and results. This means we have to train people in four areas: discipline, servanthood, management and communication.
- Together with the CHE (higher education) xpand is developing a coaching program that aims to raise up Christian 'leaders of influence' in society.

Download Paul's Powerpoint slides (Dutch)

Life outside the church box

The Lord of the Church seems to be leading more and more of His followers out of the church box. As my friend Andreas describes in his post 'A prophet's dilemma', this transition phase from Church As We Know It to Church As God Wants It (Simson terminology) can be challenging. Steve Hill describes the same dillema in his latest newsletter from a more apostolic point of view. He states that our church system has become an idol and is turning more and more young people in East Europe away from Christ. Often we preach a gospel of the church instead of a gospel of the Kingdom that is truly good news to the poor. Pete Greig also gives words to this in 'The Vision', a moving prayer that speaks to the heart of a whole generation. C'mon!

Worship by numbers

Lots of good connections and inspiration over the past few days. Wednesday afternoon we took a cable car up to Mürren, a car-less village built on a steep mountain overlooking the Jungfrau range (pictures here). In the evening Andrew Jones led us in an alternative 'worship by numbers' session, followed by an improvised Connect Europe team meeting in the local pub.

Yesterday afternoon Oivind and I walked one kilometer into the Niederhorn mountain to look for Saint Beatus (the Celtic apostle who brought the gospel to this part of Switzerland), but we found only stalagmites, tites, and a wild mountain river. In the evening Reinhold threw a Caribbean party at his house for the DAWN team and some friends, blogged about by Mike Bischoff. This morning we did some planning for a strategy meeting with younger DAWN leaders from across Europe (to be scheduled for 2008).

Apostolic church planting

The main contribution to the conference came yesterday night from Florian Bärtsch, an apostolic evangelist from the Luzern area. There are not many organic church networks that are apostolic in the sense that they incorporate three elements:
1. a supernatural dimension of signs and wonders, and Spirit-led risk-taking (like we read in the book of Acts); 2. strategic focus and planning; and 3. a relaxed team learning attitude. Florian is a zealous speaker, and really got our attention. Alexander Campbell was so good to list the key lessons learnt, and also Andreas and Gabi blogged their reflections.

This morning I joined a focus group on identifying apostles, which was also quite interesting. My take is that most people with an apostolic calling either already left the church, because they don't thrive in a pastor-teacher environment, but rather look for another context to use their entrepreneurial skils, or they are not yet Christians. The people to look for think holistically (see the whole and how the different parts fit together) and act entrepreneurially (explore and take new ground).

DAWN/ECN conference

DAWN Europe, the network for saturation church planting, and Eurochurch, the missional church network, joined forces in a 2-day conference on 'Church Planting and the Missional Mandate', held in our familiar DAWN location, hotel Credo in Wilderswil. It's a good opportunity to meet missional network leaders from all over Europe.

Springtime in Switzerland

Yesterday I went for a long hike in the mountains south of the Wägitalersee. Switzerland is beautiful in any season, but I especially love the Springtime when everything is bursting with new life. Today I drove through the central cantons Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden to Wilderswil (near Interlaken). Click to enlarge the pictures (more here).

 

Swiss connections

I'm visiting several contacts in Switzerland. Met up yesterday with Peter and Evelyne Schäubelin in Thayngen. Peter runs a communications studio (check out his creative website) and he is the distributor of Joel News in Switzerland. In Schaffhausen I reconnected with E., a Turkish simple church planter, who gave input in our Connect Europe gathering in Istanbul. We talked about some aspects of reformation and made a walk along the beautiful Rhine promenade. In the evening I visited Peter & Tjarda Mutsaers, friends from our study time in Utrecht, who just moved house to Hombrechtikon, on the shores of Lake Zürich.

Three revelation milestones

Where is the organic-reformational movement, or in my geeky friend Andreas' words 'church 2.0', heading? On his weblog he draws together three 'revelation milestones': Wolfgang Simson's (to be released) 'Apostolic Architecture', Alan Hirsch's 'The Forgotten Ways' and Simon Mason's 'The Net'. Having interacted with all three guys over a beer, I agree with Andi that these macro, meso and micro approaches make a revolutionary mix of the Kingdom.

Easter 2007

We spent a few days in Twente in the east of the Netherlands, where my family lives. Another weekend of beautiful Spring weather. I went for some nordic walking with my dad. Yes, it's clear that I'm nearing the age of 40. ;-)

Mapping simple church networks

The powerful notion that you can be church anywhere is inspiring more and more Christians in Europe to start and experiment with 'simple' or 'organic' expressions of church. Because most of these developments take place under the surface, we don't really have a good overview of what's happening in this area in Europe. Where are the thriving simple church networks? What is some of the best practice that's being developed? To what extent are they missional and multiplyable? How is leadership being developed, and do apostolic teams emerge?

To get a better overview of the European situation, Nico-Dirk van Loo (insert) is working on a research project, that is being supported by DAWN, Simple Church UK, emRG and several key people in the house church movement. He will try to map the simple church networks in Europe, so that by the end of 2007 we are better informed on the situation in our continent. The main aim is to cross-fertilize, learn and share training and resources, in order to help catalyze this new stream of church.

Shift! webzine launched

This week I'm launching a new publication in Dutch called Shift! webzine, a weblog and newsletter focused on helping young people and (potential) innovators and pioneers to dream and act out-of-the-box, and start a Jesus-centered grassroots movement of prayer, community, missions and justice. There's a growing momentum in the Netherlands for organic church and reformation, and I believe an information/inspiration hub where Dutch writers contribute can help catalyze that process and create indigenous ownership.

Springtime in Baarn

It's beautiful Spring weather in the Netherlands. We made some walks on the premises of castle Groeneveld near Baarn.