Marc's Short Messages

Steve came over for a spontaneous coffee. He just returned from a trip where he and his wife visited simple church planters in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and France.

Over the past months I contributed a bit to the development process of the Overvecht Network, the community of Christians in our area. We now formulated a concise vision/mission, created an Overvecht Ning (a social network tool that combines the strength of personal profiles with a group blog, agenda and more), agreed to organize a kick-off day in September to focus on our common mission for the year, plan the monthly fellowship nights more intentionally, and open a common bank account to provide practical help to people who need it. On the picture below one of the regular Eat & Greet meetings for the neighborhood.

Father's day. David made a nice picture of me on his DSI. This afternoon we'll go to the playground and get some icecream.

Andrew reports from Portugal that he will take a longer time-out from blogging about the global emerging church, and instead plans to launch a new family blog to chronicle their journey through Europe, North Africa and Asia. He also posted a pic of Nuno and his family, whom I visited a few weeks ago in Lisbon. The picture is taken in front the tipi the Joneses carry around.

Went to an 'emerging church' meet-up where Boele Ytsma presented his book 'Off the map. Manifest of a passionate doubter' about faith crises. There were folks from a wide church spectrum: firmly orthodox to theologically liberal. I'm currently half-way his book and processing some of the deeper questions. I might write a bit more about it later.

Jesús called in this morning from Spain. He doublecharged my creditcard and will return the money. Is this a prophetic sign? ;-) This reminds me: today are the European Elections. A good time to call on Jesus too.

We had Steve & Marilyn and Alexander & Joanne over for fellowship and a SimpleChurch.eu team meeting. It was good to catch up and discuss the status of our project. Jonathan & Christine are now in Spain to 'spy the land' for their next simple church planting assignment.

A sunny day, a good book and a white beer. What more to wish?

Playing soccer with the Morroccan kids in our neighborhood is always a balancing act between coaching and being a policeman. Lack of identity, healthy parenting and respect are serious issues for this 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. Out of the roughly 25 kids that play on the square outside our apartment, our two boys are the only 'white ones'. No surprise there's a rising populist voice in the Netherlands and Mr. Wilders might even win the elections. It's complicated matter. (No worries, we're not populist voters.)

Uploaded some pics to my Flickr account that I made while en route in SW Spain (wide Seville area) and South Portugal (Algarve up to Cascais).