It was good to have Steve Hill, David Schäfer, Alexander Campbell and Nico-Dirk van Loo over for one and a half day to process the development of simple church networks in Europe. It was a fruitful time in which we prayed and talked through issues related to team building, cockpit research (research as a steering instrument), communication and training.
Btw, if you need a personal prophetic word for 2008, look here.
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.
In this week's edition of Joel News International I focused on the question: how many people in Europe follow Jesus? Three different studies, using different definitions of 'committed Christian' and varying methodologies, came up with multiple indications: 1.1% (GEM), 3.5% (OW) and 4.2% (emRG). My colleague Andreas Wolf from Germany says he has most confidence in the higher percentage, and suggests that in God's Book of Life it might well be 10%. Wolfgang Simson disagrees with him and stresses that the issue is not about what people profess, but whether they really live surrendered lives and take their orders from Christ the King. He estimates the number of 'real Jesus followers' at just 0.1%. What is certainly clear though is that Europe is probably one of the most needy places in the world today.
The emRG wizards regularly come up with innovative new ways to apply research to missions and church planting. Paul Dzubinski from Spain developed a quite interesting approach to prioritize which area(s) in a region offer(s) the best opportunity for church planting. It recognizes the need to be led by the Spirit with intelligent leadership. Check out his post here and his Powerpoint explanation here. Yes, God even uses mathematicians. ;-)
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.
Caught up by skype with DAWN colleague Alexander Campbell, who just published a progress report on organic church planting in the UK, and returned from a trip to Denver. In his view the situation in Europe is quite similar to the States. Several years ago Mike Steele of 'Organic DAWN' looked to Europe "to discover where things would head in America," but now simple church is already becoming a grassroots movement over there, while Europe is still in the beginning stages.
While we were in Germany for the Connect communities weekend, Alexander joined Steve Hill's training on simple church and apostolic ministry in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He told me that at the time they were there, God led two of the Bible school students into a divine encounter with the President of Romania, who just got suspended, to speak prophetically into his life. That's walking in things prepared, hey?
Btw, talking about simple church, Guy Muse from Guayaquil, Ecuador, posted some useful church planting lessons learned along the way.
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).
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 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.
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.
Lots of emerging and organic traffic between Australia, Europe and America these days. Ozzies Alan and Debra Hirsch are throwing a big farewell party in their hometown Melbourne before lauching out to chase their 'American dream'. Alan won't be off the radar though, as from April through to June we (DAWN Europe) are facilitating an experimental online training with 15 Europeans on Alan's book 'The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church'.
The training includes interative sessions with Alan and fellow church planters in a high-tech virtual 'classroom' on the web. We're running this pilot to find out to what extent this kind of 'education-by-extension' software could help us train and coach church planters in Europe. For a peek into the content of 'The Forgotten Ways', see my earlier posts titled 'The apostolic genius' and 'Quotes from the fringes'.
