Marc's Messages 3.0

Prophets and power structures

Today Margreet Bouw of the house of prayer in Utrecht and I taught at Time to Turn's Prophets Training in Nieuwegein. Time To Turn is a youth organisation for social justice, fair trade and ecologic sustainability. It was interesting to see that in this group the areas of social action (horizonal prophetic dimension) and hearing/seeing from God (vertical prophetic dimension) hadn't really touched yet. So I guess it was good that we could challenge them to act out of revelation (hearing/seeing from God) instead of just a good idea, and combine the creativity in which they already excell with sensitivity for God's timing, connections and focused prayer. Especially when confronting power structures (be it religious, social or politcal) it's important to realize that it's demonic (not just human) power that upholds injustice. Anyway, illustrated with movie clips from The Matrix, Monty Python and Luther I gave eight characteristics of a prophetic calling:

1. Prophets focus on destiny in Christ and issues of the heart.
2. Prophets are door-openers.
3. Prophets are sensitive to God's Spirit and timing.
4. Prophets are called to not just 'give words', but live a prophetic lifestyle.
5. Prophets always face head-on opposition from religious spirits of control, manipulation, human religiosity and political correctness; it's important that they stay free from 'fear of man'.
6. Prophets expect God to break in, and think and act out of the box.
7. Prophets function as God's GPS system, they move intuitively and know the times.
8. Prophets are called to tear out and to plant (Jer. 1); deconstruction of human or demonic strongholds and construction based on God's design go hand in hand.

Virtual island hopping

Blogger and colleague publisher Paul Abspoel, who last month granted me a Thinking Blogger Award that I haven't collected yet, started a virtual island hopping journey. He already visited many exotic islands, like Pathmos, and now arrived on Lindisfarne. Last year I visited this former Celtic missions base in Northumbria, and Paul asked me to write a contribution on why the Celtic missionaries operated from monasteries that were so much off the beaten track.

Going takes away our fear

Brother Andrew is a Dutch pioneer evangelist (and I'd say also a prophet) who boldly goes to places where most people wouldn't be eager to go. In an interview with Christianity Today he challenges Christians to pray for bin Laden. "That question shocks a lot of us. Of course we haven't prayed for him! That is why he is what he is. We have an evangelical black list of people we don't want to see in heaven and put bin Laden on top. Saddam Hussein is probably second. In my 50 years of ministry, my biggest meetings have been always in the Muslim world. Why are we so timid? Why are we so afraid? They barely let me speak at my own evangelical church in Holland! I'm being sarcastic, but it is the truth. I find it easier to get speaking engagements with the Taliban than with my own evangelical church."

Addressing Western militaristic policy: "We in the West are following or believing in the God of revenge as much as every Muslim does. We have to come down to the foot of the Cross and learn from Jesus. He came to forgive, and he came to die. I have seen this attitude in many Christians in Gaza. It gives me hope for the future. We should be flocking to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and seek the Christians and help them. And then, please, for God's sake, listen to what they say. They have something to say. This should be the driving force in our lives. It's not solving political or economic problems. It's being Christian."

The Muslim world is not closed, but needs to be challenged on the right issues: "You can still go to any place in the Muslim world and preach Christ. Any place. I want to challenge the whole world with that statement. And if that is true, then why are we resorting to other weapons that, according to the Bible, are not weapons of our warfare? When are we going to be people of the Book? They claim to be people of the book. I challenge them at the Hamas university on dialogue - and I hate the word dialogue - I'm a proclaimer, a Calvinist at heart. I believe that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. I told them openly, 'I'm not interested in dialogue with you guys. But I'm always willing any place, any time, with any group of you, to have a dialogue on this one question: What kind of person does the book produce - your book, my Book?' You come back to Jesus' words: You must be born again. And they appreciate that. Because I want to challenge them on that issue."

We need to move from a defensive to an offensive approach: "I'm an evangelist. I'm a missionary. If I'm saying things that are politically not correct, I know the Lord will forgive me. We have a message that God changes people. Going takes away our fear. We are fearful because we stay home and prepare for the worst to come, because we think that's what they are planning. That may be true, but it's because of our inactivity. The moment we take the offensive and plan to go there, we lose our fear. That's very Scriptural. I'm not a bit afraid of them. I feel completely at home."

Other Dutch prophetic voices on Islam

Talking about boldness in the face of Islam: CBN News just published this interview with former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is not a Christian, and would probably not side with Brother Andrew, but she certainly is a prophetic voice. Hirsi Ali points out that in its roots Islam is a violent and militant religion that's oppressing women and denying free speech. Therefore it's incompatible with democracy. She calls on governments in the West to take a much stonger stand against the intimidating forces of militant Islam. "Freedom is worth dying and fighting for." Hirsi Ali now lives in America, but already another young prophet stood up to take her place in the Dutch polder: Ehsan Jami, a 22-year old Iranian refugee and Social Democrat who calls for nothing less than a revolution in Islam. Daily newspaper Trouw published a quite interesting interview with him.

A visit to Noah's ark

Over the past decennia hundreds of archeologists worldwide have been searching for Noah's Ark, but today we accidentally found it. It's actually much closer to home than we thought - in Schagen - which proves that Noah didn't get stranded on the Ararat, but on the Dutch North Sea cost. Anyway, the boys really enjoyed it, as well as the add-on outing to the beach in St. Maartenszee. For those interested in details of Noah's Ark: it was built over a two-year period by evangelist-ship builder-creationist Johan Huibers, and is a 20% replica of the original ancient ark. So the original was even five times bigger! Didn't see Steve Carell by the way... More pictures here.

The streets of Stockholm

On Tuesday night we ministered in a church in Vasteras, an experience that I will come back to later in a separate post, as it raised - or rather confirmed - two key issues for me related to the call to reformation. On Wednesday I hang out with my hosts Vello and Ingalill Vaim, a prophetic couple from Örebro with a keen insight in God's dealings with the Church in Sweden and the nations, and also got some publishing work done. On Thursday I quickly debriefed with the team, as there were some communication issues to clear, and headed back to Stockholm to spend the evening with Krister from 24-7prayer. Today I walked the streets of Stockholm, the Venice of the north, enjoying the Midsummer military music parade at the King's palace. Wrapping it up: Sweden and Stockholm carry much potential for the Kingdom, and I was encouraged by what I saw here.

Connecting in Sweden

Having a good time in Sweden, the land of forests, lakes, vikings, knäckebröd and midsummer. At the airport we hooked up with US-based British healing evangelist Paul Bennison, a humorous guy with a big heart for people. He was invited to Sweden, following a report I published in Joel News International about healing miracles that happened in a hospital in Cali, Colombia. Heidi, who sensed God speaking prophetically about Sweden, was invited to join the first trip with Paul three weeks ago. On this second trip Stuart, Tim (a young worship leader and web designer) and myself are joining for a few days. The trip is being coordinated by journalist Per Danielson and publisher Joel Sjöberg from Örebro, two wonderful guys who got us a 'bed and breakfast' with very hospitable Swedish families in their typical woodhouses.

Yesterday we met with the 24-7prayer team in Stockholm, who ignite passion for Jesus in the nation and carry a vision for prayer and mission minded communities. Today we met with seven members and staff of the Swedish Parliament, who are part of a Christian fellowship that connects across the party lines. It was good to get a sense of what's happening in the nation.

Visit from the Plymptons

This weekend Connect friends Heidi and Stuart Plympton are over from England, and it's good to spend some time together. This morning we taught a slot on 'the prophetic and supernatural dimension in church planting' at a DAWN/Shift training for simple church planters, led by Ronald van der Molen. Tomorrow we'll take off to Stockholm for a healing and connection tour through Sweden with British evangelist Paul Bennison. I have no idea how this roadtrip will work out, but let's see what God has in store for us.

The Shawshank Redemption

Two years ago in Finland I met a daring lutheran pastor who compared the routines of organized church with life in prison. A good illustration of his point is the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption' with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Life in prison is so conditioning that when a prisoner is released after 40 years, he is more or less unable to cope with life outside the four walls. He either kills himself or considers committing another crime in order to be sent back to jail. As Morgan says: "I tell you, he's institutionalized." Tim is not buying into that and dreams of going to Mexico. "I guess it comes down to a simple choice: get busy living or get busy dying." His well-planned escape from prison is nothing less than spectacular.

Simple church pioneers

Had lunch with David Schaefer, German simple church planter, author and T-shirt print wizard, and Efraim & Ruben Meulenberg, twin brothers, multimedia innovators and kid's ministry pioneers.

David told me that he's translating some of Neil Cole's material ('Organic Church' and 'Life Transformation Groups') to the German/European context. He differentiates between 'apostolic context' - going to places to establish a beachhead for the Gospel - where the Luke 10 principles (looking for people of peace and kicking the dust off when there's no openness) apply, and an everyday missional organic church lifestyle, where your life is an 'open letter' of God's work, and relationships normally need time and persistence/faithfulness to develop. He sees the Life Transformation Groups as well suited for Jesus followers and 'people of peace' who want to become 'self-feeding', cheer each other on and keep each other accountable to a missional lifestyle.

Efraim and Ruben set up the web architecture for Rick Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan and also developed IMPACT DVD's, a tool to equip children in their relationship with God and ministry. Their focus is to help children who know Jesus disciple their non-Christian friends, and even form small groups/teams.

God's Spirit on children

Over the past few months I received remarkable reports of a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit on children. One of these reports is from the Poso district in Indonesia, where 18 months ago three Christian girls were brutally beheaded, and 15,000 houses and shops owned by Christians were razed to the ground. Now in the midst of this persecution three children - an 8-year old boy, an 8-year old girl, and an 11-year old girl - stood up under the anointing of the Holy Spirit and are conducting revival and healing meetings that draw up to 40,000 people, including many Muslims. If you want you can download this edition here. Make sure you sign up for Joel News directly, as we will publish more reports in the coming weeks. To also 'feed' Dutch children with Acts-type stories of what God is doing today in the world and how He is involving children, Karolien is working on a special Joel News Children's Edition.

Come over to Macedonia!

Gabi posted a report and some pictures of the Connect trip to Macedonia two weeks ago. She noted: "Going from Greece to Macedonia is spiritually like moving from a cemetary to a greenhouse." Can imagine that. There has been a strong increase in unity among Christians in the nation, even catalyzed by the sudden death of president Boris Trajkovski three years ago (see this report in Joel News). The guys at Glasnost church have a vision to see a living Christ-centered community in every town in Macedonia. And in three years time they also want to establish a 24-7prayer boilerroom at the shores of Lake Ohrid, a place that used to be a beachhead for the Gospel in the time of Clement and Cyril & Methodius.

Painting the big picture

When pursuing a 'shift' or 'reformation' in the church and society, there are various levels at which we need a renewal of thinking. One level is that of our overall worldview, the relationship between God and men, His foundational purposes with this world. My philosopher friend Evert-Jan Ouweneel, who's part of the Shift and GIDS networks (check out this interesting radio interview with him in Dutch), has the gift of painting a large, holistic perspective of God's restoration plan. At university he's walking his students through world history in just ten hours, which is quite admirable. We talked about how to communicate some of his quite abstract theological-philosophical-reformational megaperspectives to a wider non-academic audience.

One of the concepts we covered is that of salvation, heaven and hell. The Greek and Roman influence in the church turned this into a guilt and judgement issue where based on a revelation of our sinful state we make a one-time decision with eternal consequences. In this view the earth is a temporal dwelling place that will perish, so why invest here and now, except to save souls for eternity? Heaven is a place where we hang out with Jesus and sing songs eternally, while hell is a real place where people who don't 'choose for Jesus' suffer eternally. Is this simplistic and legalistic perspective really consisent with God's character and overall redemption plan? asks Evert-Jan. He wrote an article in Dutch with 40 reasons/arguments for a different view on redemption. Those who follow Christ become here and now part of his Nehemiah-type 'restoration interim government', which is not the same as 'being a Christian' or 'going to church'. He also has good arguments why our Catholic or Evangelical concept of heaven and hell doesn't make sense. We hope to get some of his material translated into English, as I believe it's quite timely input.

The church in transition

Today I taught at a prophetic training in Gorinchem, hosted by Jefferie Lammers, on the topic 'Five marks of the Church in transition'. These are:

1. A revival of prayer, seeking God, abiding in His presence.
2. Getting detached/delivered from 'organized religion', and growing up to maturity.
3. We can be the Church/the Body of Christ anywhere, and as a result we see a myriad of so-called 'new expressions'.
4. A Spirit-led, apostolic lifestyle of breaking open new ground for the Gospel, similar to what we see in the book of Acts; and to move in this dimension God is taking us out of our comfort-zones.
5. A new reformation is taking place, God is challenging us in foundational areas; we need a revival of the heart, a renewal of thinking and a reformation of structures (one cannot do without the other).

Jesus has left the building

In Greece I read Paul Vieira's challenging book 'Jesus Has Left the Building'. Paul relates his own journey out of organized religion, and gives some excellent examples of biblical precendents where God is challenging and even destroying the organized religion of Israel (like the times of the exile). Overall it's a highly prophetic book that speaks to the heart of an emerging generation to really be the church where it matters most: right in society.

The good thing is that Paul is not bashing the existing churches, but paints a picture of how Jesus intended his Body to function, and that's a quite effective reformation message. The book will be published in Dutch by next Autumn, and I will write a little foreword or recommendation. As Paul is covering the basics of what I planned to cover in my own book on shift/reformation, I'm rethinking what would be a good angle to take. There's certainly more to say, and stories to tell from a European edge.