Guess what? Karolien and I are on our way to Wales... first time we try Ryanair. If everything goes well we'll be joining a prophetic conference, meet some friends and have a (hopefully dry) romantic time together.

The guys at Soul Survivor asked me to write a two-monthly prophetic column to challenge the 900 youth workers in their network. I just finished the first one. Let's see if they can cope with some unconventional thinking...

24-7 Roundtable

Jeff Fountain gave an excellent, brain-cracking presentation yesterday on Europe's history and hope. Much of his stuff is available at ywameurope.org, where you can also sign up for his Weekly Word. The big question he raised is: what hope has the Body of Christ to offer to post-christians, post-communists, post-moderns and post-migrants? There you go. When these people visit churches, they see a glimpse of the past instead of a vision for the future. The 24-7 folks are eager to change this and get on the cutting edge again.

This 'cutting edge' theme also marked Faith Forster's input. She talked with an incredible speed (though not as fast as Roger) about prophetic prayer, that brings God's life and perspective into situations.

Worship by The Foolings Things was grrreat.

Tall skinny kiwi Andrew Jones moved blog to http://balladofathinman.blogspot.com.

Megachurches

Charisma News Service ran a report on the business tactics that American megachurches use to grow. Megachurch is megabusiness these days - the average net income for a church with 2,000 or more 'worshipers' is 4.8 million dollar. Pastors often act as chief executives and use business tactics to grow their congregations.

What's good: the entrepreneurial (apostolic) approach, a key factor for the explosive growth of megachurches, and the fact that megachurches use new technology.
What's bad: the idea that a successful church is a big church and automatically carries God's blessing - while the success of a church should be measured by her reflection of Christ and her impact on non-Christians.

On a personal note: I wouldn't want a CEO as pastor. If church becomes a business, I will resign today. I prefer the radical band of non-assuming, Jesus-centred no-bodies I read about in Acts: a daring, contageous, organic counter-culture inspired by a living Christ.

Today and tomorrow I'm at 'De Poort' in Amsterdam for the 24-7 Roundtable. Good to meet up with Pete Greig and the wild band of people who pray non-stop. Adriaan van der Hoeven and Maaike Starreveld joined later in the day, so I'm not the only Dutchie in this UK-German enclave. (Because of the partnership of UK-based 24-7prayer with the German 'Jesus Freaks' you get an interesting, highly explosive mixture.)

Heep heep hurray... it's my birthday! Karolien surprised me with sunflowers and David with a beautiful drawing. Because we still have this crazy Summer weather (27 degrees Centigrade), we will have a nice picknick in the forest.

It's pretty embarrassing: a Christian-Democratic prime-minister who follows a harsh, liberal economy campaign is being criticized by the leader of the Socialist Party (insert) for lacking Christian mercy and care for the poor and weak. And a well-known top business guy criticized the PM for not pro-actively investing in high-leverage technological and economic developments.

The problem is of course that both critics are right and although our PM is a professing Christian, his policy is pretty much determined by his liberal coalition partner. The Dutch government needs prophets (who speak out on behalf of the poor and oppressed) and apostles (innovative entrepeneurs who break through the prevailing mindset of short-term maintenance and invest strategically in the future). But perhaps the saying is true that a nation gets the government it deserves, and that this is quite often also a reflection of the state of the Church.

The good thing about the economy campaign (cutting down costs, lower income) is that it creates an opportunity for the Church to bring destiny to the poor and weak, and to rebuild our deteriorating neighborhoods.

PS: Some time ago NRC Handelsblad published a double interview with socialist Jan Marijnissen and reformed Christian Kars Veling, which showed their ideas were pretty similar.

Start-up meetings

It's a busy week with start-up meetings for the Dutch prayer movement and DAWN-related networks. A quick selection from my agenda:

Monday: strategy meeting of the Dutch house church network;
Tuesday: preparation meeting for the first Soul Survivor church planter's training;
Wednesday: combined strategy meeting of the EA Prayer Coalition and Transformations.NL, and a team meeting of the (embryonic) Dutch Lighthouse movement;
Thursday: strategy meeting of the Transformations.NL platform;
Friday: meeting with city-wide leaders in Utrecht;
Saturday: my birthday! (sigh...)

The big challenge for me this season is to limit my operational responsibilities, pray move and expect God to synergize, catalyze and mulptiply.

Just found Ueli Haldemann's website at ministriesofhope.ch. It's encouraging to see that the Swiss prayer movement is uniting in a vision for transformation.

Because quite a number of young prayer leaders are coming to the 24-7 Roundtable in Amsterdam, with cheap flights already booked for these dates, I decided to skip the planned Connect Europe meeting on 19-21 September. Instead, there will be plenty of opportunity to connect during the 24-7 Roundtable.

Vit Skala put a report and some pictures of the Czech Connect Europe event on his website. He said it was very prophetic, like the Finnish event.

Chicken farms in Israel bred a new type of 'kosher' chicken... More weird pictures at worth1000.com.

Had lunch with several leaders at Ed van Setten's place in Houten. We talked about Wim's sudden death, and decided to move boldly forward in the process of prayer and unity in Utrecht.

Had a meeting at the Evangelical Broadcasting Company (EO) this morning to talk about a new news format for their magazine Visie. In the afternoon several international phone calls (Italy, Finland, Germany, UK, Austria, Switzerland) for EPL, DAWN and Connect Europe.

The church service in remembrance of Wim was impressive. Many good words, many friends from a wide range of prayer movements and churches. During the service several intercessors sensed that God was passing on Wim's mantle to others, who will carry it with greater anointing for breakthrough. May it be so.

Published a more extensive 'in memoriam' in the last edition of Joel News.

In memoriam: Wim Bouw

We're back home. This morning Pieter called me on my mobile to tell that Wim Bouw died quite suddenly. He was a partner in the Dutch prayer movement and one of the city-wide leaders in Utrecht. A hard-working, non-assuming bridge builder with a servant heart and a special ministry for the hurt and oppressed. He's at a better place now, but we'll surely miss him. On the picture Wim (right) in a meeting with Pieter Bos, John Mulinde and myself to prepare a conference for local prayer leaders.

Summer returned to Jestetten, so we had a good dive in the local swimming pool. Yesterday we had a BBQ with Patrick and Coco, a couple that works with Wolfgang Simson on a video production of Luke 10, a course for house church planters. This morning I met Ueli's Swiss prayer movement team, and tomorrow we'll catch up with Sürü in Weggis, near Luzern. He has a large property and training centre overseeing the Vierwaldstätter See.

Reading my way through two very prophetic, liberating books: Charisma editor Lee Grady’s ’10 Lies the Church Tells Women. How the Bible has been misused to keep women in spiritual bondage’ and John Eldredge’s ‘Wild at Heart. Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul’. Imagine what could happen if both men and women would be fully reconciled with who they are deep inside and be dramatically released into their calling and ministry in this world…

Grady states that American church leaders who went to South Korea to learn from Yonggi Cho’s fastly growing megachurch, easily accepted two of his principles: prayer and cell groups, but didn’t like the third principle: empowering women to function in every possible church role. In Cho’s 700,000 member church 94% of the cell leaders and 70% of the pastors are women.

Hearing God’s Voice – Lesson Two

Karolien doesn’t give up on teaching David (4) to hear God’s voice. Yesterday’s conversation went like this:

Karolien: “David, do you already know what you want to become later when you’re grown-up? Maybe you want to become a policeman, or a medical doctor, or a farmer, or maybe you want to work on the computer like daddy… But you know, you can also ask Jesus what He has in store for you, because He knows what would fit you best. You can ask Him now, or later when you are a bit older.”

David: “Oh, let’s ask Jesus now. Lord Jesus, what do you want me to become?”

After a short silence…

Karolien: “And, what did Jesus tell you?”

David: “I will become a fire fighter!”