Marc's Messages 3.0

Family trip - week one

The highlights of this week:
- We saw a whole series of rainbows, one after the other, when we drove through Saxony on our way to Herrnhut. Beautiful.
- Revisiting Herrnhut. Something that unintentionally happens once a year. This town holds a special place in God's story. We caught up with pastor Frank, and I was encouraged to read in the history of the Jesus Haus (the house of prayer) that God used Dutch missionaries to ignite the youth revival that touched Herrnhut in the Seventies.
- We looked at several houses in East Germany and prayerfully asked God and ourselves: could we live in this part of Europe?
- A fresh walk in the wetlands area of the Spreewald, where we saw a toilet being used as garden decoration.
- Reconnecting with friends Kerstin in Berlin, and Andreas & Christine in Magdeburg.
- A two-day DAWN team meeting in a hotel in East Berlin with an interesting view on the typical socialist-realist architecture of the Commie times.
- Meeting the wonderful Eichler family, who offered us a bed in the Christian Center in Reichenbach, and shared some of their experiences with ministry in East Germany.

On the road again

The next four weeks I'll be travelling with my family through Germany and Switzerland (and a little bit of France). We'll be visiting various friends, meetings and places, and have some holiday time as well in the Black Forest and Geneva. Will catch up when I'm back, or maybe halfway.

Watching the innovators

There are several business innovators and trendwatchers that I keep an eye on, because they're often ahead of the rest of us and offer keen insight in how to play on the ball in fast changing times. To name a few: Michael Katz (e-communication), Phil Cooke (faith and media), Seth Godin (marketing and ideas), Guy Kawasaki (business and innovation) and Tom Peters (leadership and strategy). And of course I should also mention Wolfgang Simson here, but some people are so forward-thinking that they don't bother to make a proper website here and now. ;-) Btw, I just found this quote from George Bernard Shaw in Lammert Vrieling's newsletter that describes this type of people quite well:

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.
All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

Doing or singing love songs?

Steve Hill, a simple church planter who - if he's not 'out there' - lives in the Netherlands, loves to provoke. Today he mailed me: "What if John 15 read like this - 'Jesus looked at the disciples, sighed deeply and said, 'I can hardly wait for my marriage supper when we will be united as bride and groom! I can hardly wait to behold you in your beautiful wedding dress and call you my beloved! From now on I am not calling you servants but 'My Bride' because my Father is uniting us in marriage.''

I think Peter and John would have begun to look for an exit strategy! Time to go back to fishing! Things are getting weird around here! NO! Jesus looked at his men and said to them, 'You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.' No obedience, no friendship! The dominant relational metaphor of John 15 is father/son and friends - the band of brothers. Love is demonstrated by doing, not by singing love songs!

Why does the metaphor of the bride (which we also need, but which has much more to do with the future!) have so much more air time in some parts of the church than the metaphor of a band of brothers fulfilling a mission? Why the bridal imagery so much more than that of the army on white horses? Maybe we love the bridal stuff of Jesus the lover because it is romantic, pretty and indoors rather than the messy, challenging and outdoor life of Jesus the servant? Maybe that is why worship conferences sell out, but few of us have little evidence to accuse us of being friends of sinners?

Paul (II Timothy 2) did not tell Timothy to work on his new romantic worship CD! He told him to fight like a soldier, compete like an athlete, work like a farmer and suffer like a prisoner. Nothing romantic or nice there. Nothing you can sing your way through. You either do it or you do not. Jesus did not promise to make His disciples romantic lovers. He promised to make them 'fishers of men' and promised them persecution and suffering as they did it. When does private 'seeking His face' become an obedience avoidance mechanism? He has placed His face on the least and said that to serve them is to serve Him!"

If I were a king...

What if you would be a king or queen and could advise the prime minister? What would you do? Interesting challenge for the kids in 'group 2' of reformed primary school 'De Wissel' in Utrecht. Our Peter (5) drew himself (click to enlarge) and said: "When I become king I will eat a lot of icecream." And talking to a friend whose mum just became director of the school: "If your mum isn't good enough, then perhaps my mum could become the director."

The amazing Rob

Today we threw a party for Rob Piket, who has been our Joel Ministries office manager for the past five years. As Karolien said in her speech, Rob has been the most dedicated colleague we could wish. He runs the subscriptions for Joel News, the financial administration and all our computers and software. In fact, we don't use Microsoft Windows, we have Rob as operating system. And the secret of his brightness is pure quality whiskey, one little nip a week.

New life in Overvecht

After having lived in Overvecht, one of the Dutch government's 40 'social hotspots' or 'problem areas', for 13 years, we sense it's time for us to move on. At first we were a bit hesitant - why leave an area without seeing a Christian community planted as we envisioned? - but two recent developments give us more peace about this decision.

First of all we realize that our prayers and initial steps (though sometimes it felt more like stumbling our way forward) to see Kingdom come to this area are paying off. Over the past year God led a new generation, a group of around 20-30 recently graduated students in their twenties, to intentionally move to Overvecht with the vision to start communities and provide social care. Today we had a picknick with a number of them, and it was encouraging to hear about their plans, contacts and ideas.

Secondly, what happened to my office a few months ago, is now also happening to our apartment: we are more or less being kicked out. Plans for a large-scale renovation are currently being discussed, and if this takes place, we have to move out by 2008. The good thing is that we know God has new things prepared for us, and we can look back on a period in which we were able to sow destiny into our city and neighborhood. I guess in God's Kingdom the sowers are not necessarily also the harvesters. We all have our role to play. And if we leave and 20-30 others emerge to take our place, that's a pretty good deal.

Floyd on simple church

Floyc McClung, who pioneered YWAM in Amsterdam, and currently trains simple church planters in Cape Town, South Africa, returned to the Netherlands for a seminar on 'the future of the church'. He did a pretty good job in pointing out the paradigm shifts we need to become a truly missional Kingdom movement. He quoted a lot from Hirsch and Frost's 'The Shaping of Things to Come', illustrated with stories from his own experience.

Not sure though whether the evangelical leaders who turned up got the real reformation message. Floyd is so kind and generously embracing (which is why we all love him), that he tends to just rub the surface.

The most striking example though came in reply to a question asked: "How did you turn a prophetic megachurch like Metro Christian Fellowship in Kansas City to a missional movement?" The answer was clear: in the five years that he pastored this church he wasn't able to really change the set-up or DNA, apart from impacting a few individuals. He said most Christians didn't want their kids to go into missions (too dangerous), and one lady remarked: "Are you serious about inviting non-Christians into our house and thus defiling our home that we just dedicated in prayer to the Lord?"