It’s raining, so the Dutch weather finally caught us down here. Glad we already went up to a mountain by cable car and visited the famous Rhine waterfalls of Schaffhausen. For scenery stuff it’s nice to have sunshine. We use our time here also to catch up with friends. Like Ueli Haldemann, our neighbor, who leads the Swiss prayer movement, and Peter & Tjarda Mutsaers in Zürich, whom we know from our university time. Tonight I will teach at a house church meeting in Schaffhausen.

Just heard that our friend Wim Bouw, who leads the House of Prayer in Utrecht, had a brain stroke and is now in hospital. Let's pray for him.

Wolfgang has plenty of good stuff to read on his bookshelf. I started in Charles Kraft’s ‘Confronting Powerless Christianity. Evangelicals and the Missing Dimension’. This missing dimension is of course the power of the Holy Spirit, something many so-called ‘Bible-based’ Christians are afraid for. But as Dutch Reformed pastor Bram Krol likes to state, the Holy Spirit is fully biblical and the Bible is fully charismatic. Karolien is reading Kraft’s ‘Deep Wounds, Deep Healing. Discovering the Vital Link between Spiritual Warfare and Inner Healing’. It’s about casting out demons and at the same time inviting the Holy Spirit to heal and restore people.

We’re on a two-week family holiday in Jestetten, South Germany, taking care of Wolf & Mercy Simson’s place. Jestetten is more or less surrounded by Switzerland, so we’re crossing borders all the time. Yesterday we went to Rheinau, a monastery on an island in the Rhine, just three kilometers from here. Today we visited to Stein am Rhein and the Bodensee. It’s amazing that the water is so cristal clear, and not cold at all. With 28 degrees Celsius it’s still Summer here - or actually nearly Autumn, because due to the draught many trees are already turning yellow and brown.

Wedding

Yesterday we celebrated Gerben & Paulien's wedding in Utrecht. Paulien is Karolien's 11-year younger sister and Gerben is the spontaneous city planner she fell in love with. So we really dressed up nicely for the occasion (one of the rare times you will see me in tie & suit).

A lot of student and graduate friends showed up for the occasion. The city hall official's speach was junk, but the church service (in a historic lutheran church building) was sweet, the food was abundant, the performances humoristic, the flowers gorgeous, and the party wild.

Ross Rohde from Spain mailed me an interesting article on 'evangelism by invitation', about sharing Jesus with postmoderns. He also gave Kerstin from Berlin some good suggestions for building bridges between pastors of traditional churches and the postmodern expressions of church (the more relational, arty, organic stuff).

Becoming like children

One of the things I have a hard time getting used to are leaders who ambitiously go for status, or want to do 'their own thing' while others are pursuing unity. I'm not talking about pursuing a genuine calling from God, but about unwillingness or inability to serve others and seek a godly synergy.

Jesus had a simple remedy for status seekers: "You have to CHANGE and become like children. Only if you humble yourself like this you will be ready for the Kingdom of Heaven." There are even important things that God only reveals to children.

In the Summer of 1994 Karolien and I did a leadership course in London. Part of this training was a two-week outreach. I told God: "You can put me anywhere, but not in the children's team." Of course He put me right there. No excuses, I was probably the guy who needed it most. God used it to humble me and I learnt valuable lessons I wouldn't have learnt otherwise. Children so easily receive the Holy Spirit and naturally move in revelation and faith. I still thank God for this experience.

It's funny. Earlier this week I was thinking about God using Christians to speak into the lives of people of influence. This morning Pieter and Helene told me they've been invited by the President of Ivory Coast to consult him. So next week they're flying business class to Africa...

Michael Zimmermann of Pray.de posted a report of The Call Berlin last Saturday.

Andrew blogged some stuff about the WabiSabi event in Sheffield and about Greenbelt, where the pilgrims met this year. Should have been there of course...

Jan Doorn mailed me a nice quote: "The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending and having the two as close together as possible." (George Burns)

And one from Greg Montella, a missionary to Holland from the Brownsville revival: "There's only one temperature of Christian!"

Ministry to 'bad' people

The Gresham family just finished their work on the text of last year's seminars with Wolfgang Simson. Mind you, 30,600 words! They made it into a 'family project' and Jon said they were blessed, so I feel less guilty for asking them to work on this material. ;-) Jon also sent me a few good thoughts by Neil Cole on 'organic church planting':

Multiplying harvest comes from planting in good soil.
1. Bad people make the best soil.
2. Seekers are often found looking for answers in all the wrong places, bad places.
3. We find seekers by going to the bad places.
4. The good news spreads by the former bad people telling their still bad friends good news there in the bad places.

This links in to something I read in my 1994 notes of our time in Ichthus Christian Fellowship: "You need to do things locally (less than one mile away), otherwise the barrier for the lower class people to really connect with Jesus/church is too high." This means if we want to reach the poor and oppressed (like Jesus did), we need to work on a neighborhood level.

Last week a church planter told me that he will have lunch with the biggest criminal in his neighborhood. A kind of bad version of Schwarzenegger, whom everyone knows and fears. I guess the real 'people of peace' are often out of our comfort zone...

Future technology

Some historians say Christianity was the first 'religion' to be 'technologically adaptive', reaping the rewards technology brings. Paul used this to the fullest: the 'connecting points' of his journeys were the major hubs in the Roman road system. Whether or not Paul planned it, or even understood it, God was using a principle every good technologist understands: connect people as quickly as possible to information and allow that information to move freely to others. These roads helped Christianity spread quickly.

Jarel 'JP' Pittman of Global Resources for Computing, Joel News' provider in the States, wrote an article about our technology future. It's not about the internet (that's old technology), but about nanotechnology, microengines, satellite technology and the growing Open Source community. The question he asks is: 'How can we position our ministries to take advantage of existing and future technologies, so we can communicate the message of the Gospel more effectively?'

Paul, a friend of mine who is a missionary to France, launched the French G12 (cell church) website.

Working my way through 400+ e-mails (yuk), but also found a few jewels on the web, like the pictures of the worship times at Freakstock, an annual music festival for German 'Jesus Freaks'. They also had a big swimming pool on site where young people could be baptized during the event.

Summer Time

Some pictures of the last three weeks. During my prayer retreat I made a new photo series on Twente, without doubt the most beautiful area of the Netherlands (I have to admit I'm a bit patriotic).

With 37 degrees in the shade we spent most of our time in the garden or the inflatable kids swimming pool. The little 'Bob the Builders' played with Lego. David discovered that you can use the garden-hose to piddle over the grass.

We celebrated Peter's second birthday with an outing to the 'Hoge Boekel' playground. The distorting mirrors made us way taller than we are. The bouncy castle is my favorite, I'm pretty sure we will all be jumping in heaven.

When asked where he would want to live, David was very clear: in a little house on the beach. After hours of playing with sand and water, we continued the North Sea cycling route and finished it in Vlissingen.

Prayer news from Europe

Got a few interesting e-mails today, related to the prayer movement in Europe.

Anne Maria Langmoen from Norway sent me an encouraging report about the recent Connect Europe meeting in Finland, where young people were released in prophetic worship and dance.

Heidi Plympton from England is up for something new: a prophetic travel agency, directed by the Holy Spirit. "My heart is for a sort of pilgrim people to come from the UK and the nations of Europe who will journey in prayer and who will be mobile enough to go I believe within days or even hours to prophesy and pray into cities and situations across the continent, who as they journey together will see incredible signs and wonders following them." And you thought you had seen it all...

Päivi Heikkilä from Finland writes: "I felt God's Spirit saying that the European prayer movement has to transform from old Moses to young Joshua to lead Europe into the promised land, and the key is not to depart from the tabernacle." Brian Mills, a kind of Moses figure himself, reponded saying: "This is what God is saying just now to many others as well. Be in my Presence, wait before Me, seek my face. This is more important than answering e-mails."

Just returned from a cycling trip with David through Zeeland. Pretty busy with tourists, but very nice landscapes.

Compliments to the guys of Church Unseen, who compiled a huge list of 'the best Jesus-infused sites you never knew about'. Yes, Joel News is there too.

We're back in town. This morning I met up with an international team of intercessors from YWAM Scotland who've come to pray for three days in Utrecht. Jan Willem Bakker gave them a guided tour through the old city.

Uitdaging, the Dutch Evangelical monthly, asked me to write an article about my bike pilgrimage from Egmond to Echternach. Hope I find some inspiration with 30+ degrees Celsius in the shade. We're at my parents' place in Enschede - their house is cool and they have a big garden, so it's not too bad.

The truth according to charismatic evangelists

Got an e-mail from one of our readers in the USA stating that a recently published report in Joel News about thousands of conversions and healings in Mongolia is inaccurate. He is right. The truth is that most reports we receive from evangelists or evangelistic ministries are too optimistic (or should I say presumptious) about numbers of conversions and healings. It's save to take 30% off, and 50% if they are charismatic, 70% if they are charismatic Americans, and 100% if they are from Nigeria and promise you 20 million dollar as a donation for your ministry. Maybe next time we should just cut down the numbers for them. Or even better: we'll develop a lie detector for incoming reports. And any e-mail which mentions the name of the evangelist more often than the name of Jesus will not be considered for publication anymore. How about that?

Glad to see that my blogging friends are online again. Andrew and his family finished their pilgrimage on the Spanish 'Camino' and ended up in England. On the picture the Giraffe (Andrew) and the Hippo (Wolf Simson) have a picnic. Reinhold just returned from a bike trip from Berlin to Rostock. Kerstin mailed me she's looking forward to meeting up in September. On her website (Where else Would Jesus Surf?) I found a link to the Automatic Flatterer. If no-one gave you a compliment today, check it out. Great invention, I knew I was special, but it's great to have some piece of software tell me.

Prayer retreat

Had a good prayer retreat. I asked God two questions:

1. What do You want to change in me?
2. What are Your ministry priorities for the next season?

I got only one answer: "Don't run from my presence into activism (or so-called 'ministry'), but continually seek Me. You cannot afford your love for Me to grow cold or become satisfied. I'm the One who feeds you, molds you, sends you and provides for you. And remember: My ways are higher than yours. Seek Me and I will lead you into these higher ways."