Marc's Messages

Annual family picture

This is our annual family picture for friends and intercessors. Happy new year!

Seeking God

Dutch Evangelical Broadcasting Company EO just finished a series of six programs in which well-known showmaster Henny Huisman engaged in a journey to find God. They linked him to Christians who practise their faith in various ways, and in the course of the series God (and especially Jesus' sacrifice on the cross) became more real to him.

What I liked about the series is that it was very authentic and experiential. No pushing towards a 'sinner's prayer' and smooth Evangelical talk, but honest questions, reflections and - yes - even some answers. In the last program he visited two church services: one charismatic Sunday morning service with flags, people stretching out their hands to pray for him and other things that made no sense to a simple seeker. But he liked the youth church with its lively music and stories, and even joined in by playing the drums. He also had a suggestion for the organisers: "Don't call this a youth service, that comes across as boring. It's a party and Jesus is here." Did he talk to Andrew Jones?

At the moment he's being invited to all kinds of TV programs to share how he found God, or rather: how God found him. Actually I'm glad he did not become a 'convert' that we can put in one of our nice Evangelical boxes and show around. He just stayed himself and continues his journey...

Network Church

Steve Collins illustrates Pete Ward's point with his articles Set Theory and Network Church 2. In the Network Church there is no one leader or format or theology. Instead there is a thriving mess of cross-linkage without regard for conventional church structures or channels of communication.

Interestingly, 'out of communion' is meaningless in a network scenario. At worst it disrupts one part of the network, but the traffic flows around. When we left a conventional church (Pete Ward calls it 'solid church') two years ago, some people reacted as if we were 'out of communion' while for us it never felt that way.

'This car is church' and 'this coffee shop is church' states Steve on his map of the St. Pancras area of London. I like this statement, as well as his 'contemporary reimaging of Jesus and his disciples'. Think about it: how would Jesus' company of friends look like in 2004?

Liquid Church

Over the weekend I read the first two chapters of Pete Ward's book 'Liquid Church' and I really love it. Ward states that the Church must be like water - flexible, fluid and changeable, so it can embrace the liquid nature of culture.

He urges us to move away from the traditional notion of church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time to the dynamic notion of church as a series of relationships and communications. In the Liquid Church, membership is determined by participation and involvement. Liquid Church is continually on the move, flowing in response to the Spirit and the gospel of Jesus, the imagination and creativity of its leaders, and the choices and experiences of its worshippers.

Forest walk

It was nice to spend Christmas with my family in Twente, near the border with Germany. David (4) enjoyed a forest walk with my dad.

Day one of my journey with Typepad

Welcome to my new weblog at Typepad. After experimenting a bit with this new service over Christmas, I decided to value it over Blogger for three reasons:

1. Typepad offers more features, like moblogging (posting to your weblog from your mobile phone or by e-mail), online photo albums, different categories for postings, a linking of the reading list with the Amazon database, etc.

2. Typepad is more userfriendly for non-techies. The content management system is easy to use and what you see is what you get.

3. The design templates make it possible to create a good quality weblog.

The only draw-back is that Typepad costs a bit more than Blogger, but the first 30 days are free anyway.