David and Renate Sörensen opened a website on witchcraft and magic. Great stuff.

Happy birthday!

Tomorrow (28 February) is Karolien's birthday, so I better go now and buy her a nice present. If you want to call her, the best time is in the evening, after 20.00h.

This weekend the Connect Europe team will gather in The Hague to pray and talk about the emerging youth prayer movements in Europe. How can we bless what God is doing? For your information: of the 47 nations in Europe 7 have a national youth prayer movement, 27 have local/regional youth prayer initiatives and 13 have no youth prayer initiative at all.

John White, a house church coach from Denver, writes:

"There will be hundreds of varieties of simple church (also called house church, organic church, etc.). Perhaps the most important and foundational variety is that of one family meeting together as church with perhaps a few friends and neighbors.

From a qualitative perspective, the implications are huge. Imagine a family truly functioning as a church (in the best sense of the word). Imagine a church truly functioning as a family (in the best sense of the word). From a quantitative perspective, the implications are also huge. Imagine if every Christian family in the United States (or the UK) decided that they were a church ("Wherever two or three...") and that they were going to begin to function that way. A million new churches birthed on that day!"

Every believer a church planter.
Every home a church.
Every church building a training center.

There's an interesting discussion going on at The Ooze: 'Does the Institutionalized Church (IC) do more harm than good?'

In memoriam: Dutch traveller

Ronald decided to close his weblog. Too bad! At least there's one person mourning... But I guess God is happy, because He didn't like Ronald's blog anyway and wanted him to quit and spend more time praying. And of course for new things to be born old things have to die. Let's celebrate nearly a year of blogging from The Hague, here is some last good stuff from Dutch traveller: the Prayer of Community:

Lord, we come before you not alone,
But in the company of one another
We share our happiness with each other,
And it becomes greater
We share our troubles with each other,
And they become smaller
May we never be too mean to give,
Nor too proud to receive
For in giving and receiving, We learn to be loved
We encounter the meaning of life, And discover You.

(From: Be our Freedom, by: Terry Falla)

These days I'm working on a overview of what's happening in the youth prayer scene in Europe. This will take me two days work, but at least we will be well informed when we have our Connect Europe team meeting in The Hague next weekend.

The post-evangelical crisis

Last Saturday Bram Flippo organised a day for people 'who don't know it anymore, but still want to move on with God.' It's interesting that more and more evangelical Christians go through a kind of identity crisis, leave the 'church system' and become post-evangelicals. In the afternoon I led a focus group on 'what is God doing worldwide', to give people some perspective on what's going on. We talked about these five trends:

1. The prayer movement has been growing explosively over the last 20 years.
2. The growth of post-evangelicals raises the existential question to what exactly is church as Jesus intended it?
3. There seems to be more revival outside the church than inside.
4. Prophets say that God will 'shake' the church in the West, but what does this mean?
5. We live in an urgent time: revival is not an option anymore, but the only way out.

Portraits of the Pope have long been popular as an aid to devotions in Catholic homes. But now Anglicans can catch up with the inspirational and cuddly Rowan Bear, modelled on His Hairiness the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to be enthroned this Thursday. More kitchy Christian stuff (like WWJD boxer shorts, Time-to-repent watches, Holy Soil sandals, Born Again creme and Prophecy cars) at Ship of Fools.

Here is some information if you want to get ready for a terrorist attack.

Lifty rescues 'Bob the Builder' fans

It was a sunny day. But on our way to the zoo in Arnhem our faithful 14 year old Nissan Sunny Florida broke down (or actually deceased). I had promised the boys a surprise and a real surprise it was. The little 'Bob the Builder' fans watched how the yellow 'Lifty' truck picked up our car and drove the whole family home again. No elephants and monkeys this time. Actually the last time we tried to go to the zoo we got involved in an accident and didn't reach the doors of the park either. Hm... what's up? It looks like we have to buy another car, a bit less old and a bit more spacy. I'll pray for this one. Or how about this one?

Karolien and I decided to pray our way through my projects and agenda, to make sure I keep my priorities for this year (sabbatical, strengthening our operational base, and some key assignments).

Friday Fax published a summary of our report on city reaching in the Netherlands. The full report in English is available on the website of the DAWN European Network, together with a report of the 2003 consultation in Switzerland and some nice team pictures.

Talked vision and strategy with Willem de Vink, Agape's new director. How can we effectively reach the whole nation with the gospel? And how could that be translated into a combined prayer-and-mission saturation strategy? Who are the key emerging leaders who can synergize and catalyze a new grassroots movement? It was encouraging to see that our vision is so similar.

Blogger just got purchased by Google.

Presence of Christ

I'm reading quite a lot these days. Last week I read Bram Krol's account on the revival in Congo, yesterday Kees Neeteson's book on extatic experiences in the Spirit throughout history, and today Tony and Felicity Dale's booklet 'Simply Church'. The quote that sums it all up comes from the latest one: "It is neither the building, nor the pastor, that makes a church legitimate. It is the presence of Christ among his people."

Time for some reflection and accountability: the Joel Ministries' board met this morning. Little apostle Peter was also present, but got bored pretty quickly. Playing with dad is of course much more fun than talking strategy.

In the afternoon I went for a sunny walk around the Jutphaas fortification, answered some e-mails and called Warren Carter to talk about recent EPL developments.

Finished the restyling of the Joel News pages. More innovations will follow...

My dad phoned that he's home again. The hospital released him saying that the tumor had been removed completely and that he needs no further treatment. That's good news!

Wiccans, New Agers and Jesus

Got a lot of response on my article on 'Wiccans, New Agers and Jesus' in the Dutch edition of Joel News. Should get it translated.

Postmission.com is an international forum on mission in postmodernity.
Andrew Jones and Sasha Flek started 'Suddenly Seminary' in Prague, a postmodern training for emerging churchplanters in the Czech Republic.

A lot of things are moving...

... the Dutch Transformations team decided to have a new '10 Days for Holland' between Ascension and Pentecost, 29 May to 7 June 2003.
... the United Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches (VPE) in Holland are actively casting the vision for churchplanting.
... the Caleb Project works on a prayer guide for unreached people groups in Europe.

Prayer Zone in Finland

Maarit Alm of the Finnish youth prayer movement Prayer Zone mailed me that there are now more than 50 prayer groups at schools in Finland and a prayer information sheet is sent out twice a year to 8,000 young people. They're also working on a Christian youth magazine once a month. This movement has the potential to explode. Let's pray for a release of workers and finances.

Also check out Creative Arts Europe, a movement of creative people who seek to find new and innovative strategies to reach their generation with the Gospel.

The growing divide

The division between America and Europe over the Iraq issue is growing. Comparisons are being made between WW2 and a second Gulf War. But there are also big differences. Nazi-Germany had occupied other nations and thus clearly violated international law. The planned war against Iraq would be pre-emptive, and the whole question is: is a pre-emptive war a just war or is it mainly motivated by power?

And there's another aspect to it: if Saddam's power is sustained by the demonic powers behind old Babylon, then it will be hard to win this war without prayer. And to be able to pray with faith, the Church should at least discern prophetically whether it is God's will to have Saddam removed at this specific point in history... What do you think?

Over the weekend a little mouse broke into my office and worked his way through a box of biscuits, leaving crumbs everywhere. I might put this mouse in a neat little box and send it to Reinhold, as he has some experience with these animals.

BTW, Regula, Reinhold's wife, is reaching out to traditional, rural Swiss folks who love Yodel music. This is one of the largest unreached people groups in Switzerland.

A special website has been launched which offers seeking Muslims the possibility to share their dreams and visions online. The website registers 1.3 million hits per day. Muslims seeking Jesus receive biblical and culturally sensitive answers to their questions. Check it out.

The return of the 'Jesus groups'

This morning Jon visited me, who is involved in reaching Iranian refugees in Holland. We talked about starting 'Jesus groups' among immigrants and agreed that these groups should have a very simple dna. It's about what Mike Lyons wrote last week in the House2House Weekly:

1. Simplify the way you do church. Yes, that includes the teaching/interaction time. Guiding rule: If it can't be done by a (spiritually) one week old Christian, it's too complicated. Chew on that one for a while, it's been hard for me to swallow too. The cost for not following this rule... you will never become a church planting movement.

2. Future leadership must come from the harvest. That means new Christians. All you long-time Christians, get out of the way. We are a BIG part of what will prevent a movement of churches. We do weird thing like... wanting to reproduce all those funky things we've experienced in the past. Planting movements are vulnerable. Vulnerable to things being imposed from outside their culture. Buildings, procedures... a whole host of extra-biblical stuff.

3. Leadership must be local (indigenous/new believers). The form of church must grow out of the culture. Here in the US American church culture is a very different thing than those we are trying to reach. Take any prechristian 21 year old into any Church and you'll see what I mean.

4. Leadership must be laity. I've learned the hard way that once clergy (or staff) always clergy. No matter how hard I try, my presence in the house churches is more of a hindrance than a help.

5. Churches must plant churches and do so rapidly. The missionary/hired gun may start the first couple, but that function should quickly shift to the laity in the churches. If you're a Christian and not interested in planting another church... please stay in your traditional church. The rule here is: new believers will model what they see you do, no matter what you say. Every person carries the potential of planting another church! Rule: The longer a church has been together past 3-6 months without planting... the greater the chance it will never reproduce!

Informed People Don't Fear Change: "People are not afraid of change. They fear the unknown."
Empower Your People - Turn Them Loose: "Freedom is the greatest when the ground rules are clear. Chalk out the playing field and say, Within those lines, make any decisions you need."

Check out the 25 smartest insights for leaders at Fast Company.

Some people's hardware is plug-and-play, but in Ronald's case it's plug-and-pray.

The Switzerland connection

I had a good time in Switzerland. Sun on the first day and snow and a beer on the other days. The panorama was great as usual. Some highlights of the conference:

1. A closer connection has been established between the European Prayer Link and DAWN. The intention is to partner in developing a missionary strategy for the nations of Europe in which prayer and saturation churchplanting form the key components. Prayer and missions simply cannot be separated - every significant move of God in church history was born in prayer and sustained by missions. The EPL-DAWN connection is an important step forward and needs continuing prayer. We agreed to meet with the two leadership teams in a year's time and work towards a joint consultation in Spring 2005.

2. For both DAWN and EPL research into the status and growth of prayer and churchplanting in Europe is a key priority. Andreas Wolf and Dominique Pfeiffer from Germany presented the research project they will work on for the next two years. I also presented a simple management information tool we could use as a leadership team to effectively monitor the developments in Europe and plan and act pro-actively.

3. The different tracks in the conference (city reaching, strategic leaders, training, research and emerging culture) came up with good ideas and recommendations. I prepared and led the city reaching track. It was good to have Axel Nehlsen and Hans-Peter Pache from 'Together for Berlin' with us, as well as Jörgen Aass from the Oslo city reaching initiative and Sam Williams from CitiReach International (he consults city reaching initiatives in Riga, Kosice and Berlin).

4. Challenging plenary input was given by Brian Mills (the prayer dimension of DAWN), Andrew Jones (how to connect with the emerging culture) and Chris Daza (the implications of a number of prophetic words for the DAWN movement). On Monday we 'went Celtic' and I inspired the attendants to look at their city and nation as their 'promised land', which was received well.

5. Personally I was blessed as well. One person came up to me, gave me 200 dollar, and said he would pray for me every day for a whole year. :-) Also there was a good team dynamic. In June we plan to take the whole leadership team to the States for the international DAWN meeting and for some team building. On the picture from left to right: Reinhold Scharnowski (CH), Andrew Jones (CZ), Andreas Wolf (D), Dominique Pfeiffer (D), myself (NL), Brian Mills (UK), Bob & Mary Hopkins (UK). Missing on the picture: Ueli Haldemann (CH) and Oyvind Augland (N).

The guys from Pray.de put up a nice graphics page.
Also interesting: a comics version of the Bible, of which 18 million copies were printed in 27 languages.

This morning my father had his surgery, and the operation went well. It's encouraging to hear that my parents experience God's peace and that God is somehow 'lifting them up' above the circumstances.