This afternoon we prepared for the upcoming '10 days' and prayed and talked through the vision document I prepared for Transformations.NL, the platform of the Dutch prayer movement. We also assessed the potential escalation of the war in Iraq and evaluated the prayer conference with Ana Méndez.

One of my colleagues and a friend were caught by the police when they ministered to house church leaders in a so called 'closed country'. After two days of interrogation they were released, but the 50 house church leaders are still in prison. Take a minute to pray for them, that the Lord will be glorified through their witness. Also pray for protection for their families and the thousands of local churches in the networks they represent.

Just heard from Michele that the youth prayer conference in Milan finished well. After Cindy Jacob's call, 300 young people signed up to join the Italian prayer army. The new core team will get together in April or May to work things out.

Check out XXXchurch.com, the #1 Christian porn site. Compliments for Mike Foster and Craig Gross who started this daring project, an outreach to people who are addicted to internet pornography. Recent research shows that also over 30 percent of men in ministry is to some extent addicted to internet pornography.

Foster and Gross took a road trip to the biggest porn show of the year. They set up their booth and shared with almost 1,000 people about XXXchurch.com. Porn stars and porn producers were interested in what two pastors had to say about God's design for sex. Over the four days they were able to share that there is something even better than porno and big boobs.

Every day we hear of churches, large and small, that are doing something new, something simple that changes people's lives with the power of the gospel. Such churches inspire our spirits, stir our creative juices, and motivate us to take action. Christianity Today published just five examples of churches on the cutting edge, and their ideas aren't copyrighted.

The Blogger's Prayer 1.1 by Andrew Jones

Our Father
who lives above and beyond the dimension of the internet

Give us this day a life worth blogging,
The access to words and images that express our journey with passion and integrity,
And a secure connection to publish your daily mercies.
Your Kingdom come into new spaces today,
As we make known your mysteries,
Posting by posting,
Blog by blog.

Give this day,
The same ability to those less privileged,
Whose lives speak louder than ours,
Whose sacrifice is greater,
Whose stories will last longer.

Forgive us our sins,
For blog-rolling strangers and pretending they are friends,
For counting unique visitors but not noticing unique people,
For delighting in the thousands of hits but ignoring the ONE who returns,
For luring viewers but sending them away empty handed,
For updating daily but repenting weekly.

As we forgive those who trespass on our sites to appropriate our thoughts without reference,
Our images without approval,
Our ideas without linking back to us.

Lead us not into the temptation to sell out our congregation,
To see people as links and not as lives,
To make our blogs look better than our actual story.

But deliver us from the evil of pimping ourselves instead of pointing to you,
From turning our guests into consumers of someone else's products,
From infatuation over the toys of technology,
From idolatry over techology
From fame before our time has come.

For Yours is the power to guide the destinies behind the web logs,
To bring hurting people into the sanctuaries of our sites,
To give us the stickiness to follow you, no matter who is watching or reading.
Yours is the glory that makes people second look our sites and our lives,
Yours is the heavy ambience,

For ever and ever,
Amen

Andrew Jones gives some advice on how to start a weblog. The two most useful tips for me were:

1. Get an extra blog site, make it private (not public) and use it for roadtesting new ideas and new template html. Make all your mistakes in private. Costs no money but saves lots of frustration when you screw up the html.
2. If you want to change the color of the header, use this color table.

Thanks, Andrew. Maybe you can also help me solve my main problem: the fact that Blogger refuses to accept the updates of my template. I haven't been able to update this section now for nearly three weeks.

BTW, did I tell you that Andrew will come to Holland to help us train young churchplanters?

Enjoyed a sunny bicycle trip with David along the sea coast. Karolien caught a flu and has to stay in bed. Unfortunately not much time for prayer and reflection (I'm looking after the kids).

This week is for prayer and reflection. A good starter is the website of Catholic Netherlands where you can find information on monasteries in the Low Lands and do a 'monastery test' to find out which order suits you best. In case you're mailing me this week: don't expect an immediate answer, it might take a few days before I'm online again.

The Italian experience

What are the lessons from Italy:

1. As usual among young people there is great potential and a willingness to step out with God. Sara Alicino’s worship band for instance is excellent. She really has the heart to draw people into the presence of God. The embryonic core team also has potential.

2. The big challenge is servant leadership. I wasn’t really impressed with the charismatic Americans ministering at this conference. They are so presumptious and superficial and very much into up-front ‘positional’ leadership, that they don’t model something radically different for the young folks. I guess I’ve become quite allergic for this stuff.

I believe that the youth prayer movements in Europe should be:
a. led by young people (not older pastors and evangelists);
b. indigenous (European flavour, not American);
c. modelling team leadership (not one man at the top).

Today I encouraged the young people with testimonies of the emerging youth prayer movements in Europe. The prophetic message was: “It’s God’s time to connect Europe and Italy and he is calling you to play your part in that movement.” We worked in small groups by region and Michele shared his vision to start a youth prayer movement in Italy. Tonight and tomorrow Cindy Jacobs will build on that. We also took time this morning to lay the groundwork for a national core team that can carry the movement forward after this conference.

The Italians like ‘position’ and ‘status’. Everyone would like to have his own little factory where he is the boss and can tell others what to do. No doubt this is a serious stronghold in the church as many pastors act like little popes and consider the local church their personal domain. According to Michele (from Milan) the young people are ‘part of the system’ and won’t do anything their pastor doesn’t agree with. But Mirko (from Bari) says that young people in Italy have the boldness to go new ways. Maybe there’s a difference between the south and the north, maybe it’s an issue of personality. Anyway, I believe that if God is really going to release this generation, this movement cannot stay within the perimeters of the local church. The Holy Spirit and control simply don’t go together. True movements of God always ‘break out’.

This reminds me of our visit to Assisi several years ago. When God called St. Francis, this young man broke the rules of the system, prophetically took off all his cloths, and started a simple life of contemplation and care for the poor. His father didn’t agree, the church authorities didn’t agree, the local authorities didn’t agree. But he did it in obedience to God, and a renewal movement swept Italy, accompanied by many signs and wonders. Of course the church tried to control this movement. Nowadays when you visit Assisi, you find a small, sober church where St. Francis has been buried. But around this little church they built a huge, expensive cathedral, expressing the glory of Rome. The contrast couldn’t be bigger. St. Francis is now the patron saint of Italy, a national hero of the faith, but how many people are living the radical life of St. Francis?

I believe Italy will only be changed if a generation arises that has the courage of St. Francis to come against status and position in church and society and lives a prophetic lifestyle of Holy Spirit-led servanthood and radical obedience to Christ. Come, Lord, have your way!

“The war is on,” Michele told me at breakfast. As they don’t have CNN here, I’m forced to look at the up-tempo commentators of Rai Uno, Italy’s state television. Here in Milan they don’t seem to like Bush. On the balconies of many houses you see rainbow flags with the words PACE (peace). Last week the biggest anti-war demonstration was held in this city. “I hope Cindy (Jacobs) won’t preach about Iraq at the prayer conference,” Michele said. “The Italians will start throwing chairs at her.” It sure will be an interesting conference. About 300 young people from all over Italy are expected to come ‘for such a time as this’.

Working on a new website for the Dutch prayer movement

This afternoon I will prepare for my trip to Milan, Italy, where the young folks have a vision to launch a national youth prayer movement with a missionary cutting edge. Will return on Saturday.

Springtime!

Spring is in the air, so we have been active outdoors over the weekend. On Saturday I took David to the Railway Museum. Already for the third time, but it's still fun. On Sunday we went cycling with the whole family, along the Vecht, Loosdrechtse plassen and Hilversum airport. Very nice weather.

Halfway Karolien explained David that "mum and dad married several years ago because they love each other." David remarked: "Yes, and David loves Peter, so David will marry Peter." How cute... I suggested David and Peter could use one of the little tea houses along the Vecht to live in after their wedding day. David liked the idea, provided there would be French fries.

Restyled the Joel Ministries website. Still working on the Connect Europe website, which is now hosted under it's own domain.

Last night we hosted a lonely pilgrim who has been prayer walking the Netherlands for over 10 years now. In 1992 God told him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, in order to live a pilgrim's life. He doesn't know today what to eat tomorrow and where he will stay, but every time God provides.

Connect Europe

I compiled a vision and strategy document for Connect Europe, the European young prayer leaders network. A week ago our core team gathered in The Hague for a time of prayer and envisioning. We came up with a rough roll-out plan to connect young leaders with a calling for their nation and/or Europe, on a national, regional and European level. God encouraged us to 'prepare for bigger things' and confidently move forward.

We stayed in the Willibrordus House, a Catholic renewal centre, a place of prayer where they serve excellent Dutch bread and cheese (see picture).

On Saturday afternoon we visited 'In Practice' (a community churchplanting project in one of the poorer neighborhoods of The Hague), Madurodam (Holland's miniature city) and the beach in Scheveningen, where we prayed on the 'black hand' barricades about the Iraq crisis and the International Criminal Court.

The Italians plan to kick-start a national youth prayer movement next week.

Yesterday Karolien and I went to the quarterly meeting of the Dutch housechurch network. Matthijs Vlaardingerbroek from The Hague had an excellent contribution on becoming a mission-minded church in the local community. Bernard Hardick from Venlo drew parallels between the prayer movement and the housechurch movement. A lot of good stuff to think and pray about.

This morning Carla Kwakkel (Lydia Fellowship) and myself paid a visit to Joop Gankema. His ministry Opwekking is preparing for a big annual conference at Pentecost, where they expect up to 30,000 people. We talked about prayer cover for this conference. Because there are a lot of problems in Christian families (divorce and other suffering), this year's focus will be on 'restoration of families'. He quoted a pastoral worker who said "I'm working on the rubbish-dump of the Evangelical Church in Holland." And a Baptist pastor concluded that "the Evangelical movement in Holland is miles wide, but only inches deep." No comment, I'm afraid generally speaking it's true...

Andrew's giving me a hard time with his new blog design. I either have to buy glasses or have to paste my nose to the computer screen. And this guy's writing way to much stuff. I think I'll call him tiny lengthy kiwi... The good thing though is that he is still using capitals. It is quite trendy, especially among the 'mosaics', to boycot capitals, commas and other useful spelling rules. You are allowed to write nologo, but not No Logo. I hate that. It makes it more or less impossible to scan a text quickly.

Idols mania

The Idols mania in Holland has been turned into a real election campaign. I've never seen such a completely hyped up TV program (maybe except for the Parliamentary Elections last January). But what I like - and what churches should learn from - is that Idols is highly EPIC: Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven and Connected.

We just heard that our 14 year old faithful Nissan Sunny cannot be repaired and that we need to buy another 2nd hand car. For this purpose we opened a 'car fund', so anyone who feels sorry for us or for the elephants and the monkeys in the zoo, or just wants to surprise us can send us some cash to help out. Donations are welcome at Postbank account number 8981184 of Joel Ministries in Utrecht, or use our fast and safe donation page.

Young Catholics in the Netherlands set apart a whole year to pray for the Holy Spirit.

I had a good retreat with the Connect Europe team over the weekend. Will report on it later this week.