Marc's Messages 3.0

Sigur Ros returns home

Simon Turner pointed me Sigur Ros' new CD-DVD 'Heima' (at home, homeland), which is also their first road movie, in which the band after a two-year concert tour across the globe starts a journey through Iceland. Beautiful images of the most north-western part or Europe with the typical Sigur Ros sound. Ian Nicholson just reported on a trip to Reykjavik for 24-7prayer, where Eric & Katie St. Clair are starting a 'boilerroom', a place of non-stop prayer, and Petra Karilainen and Krister & Resa are currently preparing for a trip up there in December. At the beginning of 2007 I sensed God speak about Iceland and this nation's ministry to Europe, so these cold lands have my warm attention and I hope to make a trip up there myself.

Peter and Baloo

Peter joined a drawing competition at the local supermarket and received a call today that he won the first prize: a gigantic Baloo bear (from the Disney movie Jungle Book). He was overjoyed. Hard to imagine that Karolien transported the bear by bicycle and that he even fits in our apartment. I told Peter: "Now you have Baloo, he can cuddle you, and Mum and Dad can have a week off." He didn't buy that argument of course. :-) Click to enlarge the picture.

Walking Lieske

The boys enjoyed a walk with their little niece Lieske, but of course the real fun was in pushing the baby stroller through the forest.

24-7prayer in the Netherlands

It has been eight years since the 24-7prayer movement started in England, and nine years since Karolien and I ran the first European 24-7prayer room at the Mission '99 congress. Since that time there have been a number of local one-week 24-7prayer initiatives in the Netherlands (one was started at Opwekking conference by my former Joel News colleague Adriaan), but no one assumed a central coordination role or took the initiative for a more permanent non-stop prayer base.

Earlier this week I met with Johan den Hartogh who set up a Dutch 24-7prayer website, with the vision to encourage 24-7prayer in the Netherlands. And last week Jan Wolsheimer paid me a visit, who is opening the first 'prayer shop', a permanent place of prayer and missional hospitality in the centre of Woerden, just west of Utrecht. Another friend, Johan Doornenbal, told me that he's involved in an initiative to start a 24-7prayer house Kansas City-style in Harderwijk, in which my brother also participates. So it seems the Netherlands are getting up to speed prayer-wise. An update in Dutch is available at the Shiftzine website.

God sends revival

This week in Joel News International a clip of the revival in Meghalaya, India, where the churches are experiencing a move of God among the children and young people.

We are the church

Last weekend I taught at Soul Survivor's Mini Festival. I used a loop of Joshua Longbrake's photo series 'I Am The Church' and started with a new presentation I'm currently developing on what God is doing in Europe. In this presentation we base jump from Rio's Christ statue and then hoover over several nations in Europe. Because we had only one hour, I sticked to North-West Europe, but of course there are also exciting developments in the South and East of our continent. The weekend was also good to reconnect with the Soul Survivor board and team, and with Jim Yost from Indonesia who taught on simple church, Luke 10 and out-of-the-box organic ministry among the poor, prisoners, prostitutes, Muslims, and what else.

Btw, today I found the 'I Am The Church' series on YouTube, put on a Sigur Ros track. Check it out. And here's another version.

New expressions of community

A new generation of church planting pioneers is taking the lead in the Netherlands. On 19 January 2008 Ronald van der Molen, Stefan Paas and others will facilitate a national day for church planters, pulling a wide spectrum of the Church together. The topic is 'reproduction in church planting'. In the meanwhile Martijn Vellekoop coordinates a research project to find out how many churches have been planted in the Netherlands over the past ten years.

Together with five other pioneers Martijn is preparing a weekend in April 2008 on 'emerging church', while Matthijs Vlaardingerbroek will launch a Dutch version of the (British) Urban Expression network that focuses on church planting in a city context. His vision is to help the Church in the Netherlands start new communities in the top-40 'problem areas'.

Talking about this top-40, The 'urban mission' branch of Youth for Christ in the Netherlands was awarded the European HOPE Prize for their innovative pioneering work in these disadvantaged areas. Two church planting projects recently got national TV coverage in a program called 'The Third Testament', which features how people still actively practise their faith in postmodern Europe. The clip of 'In de Prakijk' in The Hague can be viewed here, and 'Villa Klarendal' in Arnhem here. And as I blogged in July this year, things are also moving in Overvecht, the area where we live ourselves.

Next weekend I'm off to a national conference for young people where I will present a helicopter view of what's happening with simple and radical communities in Europe.

Less blogging these days

If you're a regular reader of this blog you surely noticed that I'm blogging much less these days. After a quite intense and rich blogging journey of five years, during which I processed a lot of issues related to emerging church, reformation, global prayer and innovation in missions, I decided to take a slower pace of life and reflection at my blog 3.0. While other - mostly younger - friends go through their own journey of 'rediscovering church and ministry as Jesus intended it', I feel more the need to chill out for a while and hear God afresh for myself.

Most of the active discussions I see on the web feel like repetitions to me. At the moment I'm trying to simplify my life and focus on the assignments God gave me. This might at some point in the future lead to a new, fresh season of blogging (or whatever platform is 'hot' at that moment), who knows.

If you want to draw inspiration from my five-year journey, check out the archives of my blog 1.0, my blog 2.0 (the most interesting period, where you can click on 'ministry' and 'emerging church' for the hot stuff) or the full text search option for all blogs.

Why Europe, Why Now?

A bit over two years ago a video team of The Caleb Project visited me for a long interview on the state of the Church in Europe and the missional challenges of our continent. It's always interesting to see that out of such a lengthy interview only a few spicy quotes make it to the ultimate DVD. But the good thing is that they did the same with the interviews of around fifty other pioneers all over Europe, generating a rich and inspiring picture of what's happening in our continent. The DVD covers both the huge transition/reformation the church in Europe is going through, and the real stories of real people praying and planting churches. This Fall we're distributing this unique DVD, and you can order your copy here.