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.''

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.

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.