Marc's Messages

Google's emergent leader

Tallskinnykiwi Andrew googled for an image of an emergent church leader. Guess who popped up at number 1 and 2 on Google's aggregation, leaving guru Brian McLaren behind? He he...

Skinny's comment: "Is this the new face of emergent? What's with the towel on the head? Looks kinda Hindu to me... Its actually another good friend of mine, the Dutchman Marc van der Woude sitting in a Finnish spa. I wonder when the Americans are going to make it into the emergent church picture?"

Well, they probably won't, because when you type in modern church leader in Google, the American senior senior senior Mormon pastor Gordon Hinckley pops up, a few places before the late pope.

South African logic

Some weeks ago someone pointed my attention to a webpage depicting the South African logic. It's very funny. Click on the pictures below to enlarge.

South Africa photo album

Just created a photo album with a selection of my South Africa pictures. If you're interested in the impressions of other bloggers, check out Alexander and Andrew.

My Big Five early at DAWN

Go on a safari early at dawn, and big chance you see the African 'big five' - the elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion and rhino. These are the most dangerous animals to hunt. I didn't have time to go on a real safari in the Kruger Park, but the DAWN meeting had it's own highly dangerous species of saturation church planters. I expected a near death by Powerpoint, but most of the presentations were truly inspiring, and the people simply challenging. I can't reproduce all the stories I heard, but here is my personal Big Five:

1. Those crazy Indians

I hadn't realized India already passed the 1 billion population mark several years ago. A church planting strategist from Uttar Pradesh told me his province has 180 million inhabitants (12 times the Netherlands and a quarter of Europe). He provides leadership to a 'small' network of 'only' 934 house churches. Most other networks are running in the (tens of) thousands. A guy from the south runs a network of 300,000 intercessors that pray for the church planters. They face serious persecution from hindus and muslims, but have an amazing capacity to envision multiplicative church planting movements. What is their DNA? According to one of their leaders it is three things you won't easily find in the West: bold evangelism, intentional discipling of new believers, and casting the vision for pioneer church planting. God seems to like that, because the brother from Uttar Pradesh told me that every new church in his network starts with a miracle. First an Acts-type power encounter, then immediate church planting. The Indians are also very precise in their research, which is impressive. In the past five years they planted 62,698 new churches. In 2006 they envision to train 25,000 men, 6,000 women and 30,000 children in order to reach 20,000 villages. But hey, this is just one network in the north-west. In central India they will plant 200,000 new churches by the year 2010, and in Mumbai 100,000. Yes, those Indians are really crazy, fools for the Kingdom. They deserve the first place in this Big Five.

2. Mapping Africa by GPS

One of the big questions in saturation church planting processes is: how do you measure progress? The DAWN Africa team uses modern technology for that - they train researchers all over the continent to map the total number of churches in cities and nations by GPS (global positioning system). In this way they can map a city of one million inhabitants in just three days. It's also cost-effective; they mapped the whole nation of Sierra Leone for just 2500 dollar. And in Madagascar it's even adventurous: researchers are being dropped in the jungle by helicopter and picked up several weeks later. In this way they mapped hundreds of villages that the Madagascar government didn't even know existed. And in villages where they didn't find Christians, they preached the gospel and planted a church straight away. Talking about a pioneering spirit and efficiency. David Livingstone would be proud.

3. The 'organic' leadership solution

The organic church guys from North America broke the rules again: instead of a Powerpoint with numbers they took a collective time-out to model simple church - basically listening to Jesus and doing what He says. It touched me to see three ex-megapastors, one ex-normalpastor and a seminary professor do just that. No program, just Jesus. John White challenged us with what he calls 'the leadership solution', daily praying the Luke 10:2b prayer for laborers, together with a soul mate. Since he started doing this, and teaching this organic principle to other believers, God sent people on his way, one after the other, asking advice on how to plant churches, and he could simply coach them in doing that. This way, the simple church networks in the States are growing exponentially. While 530 simple churches were planned 'in faith' for 2005, they hit the 6,000 mark. While they intended to train 530 church planters in 2005, they saw 1,000 church planters trained in the first two months of 2006 alone. With this kind exponential growth (the current growth rate is 70%) they could reach their target of 4 million simple churches in North America (400,000 networks, 40,000 network coaches, 4,000 lead coaches) by the year 2018. Then they still have two years left to rest from their labors.

4. Keeping up with God

I already know it's impossible to keep up with God's worldwide wonders, but it's fun to try anyway. Former DAWN president Steve Steele gave a highly encouraging overview of things that were impossible ten years ago, and that are now happening. God is accellerating big time, and more than ever it's important to be informed and disseminate key information to our networks. One way of doing this is through Joel News International. I was able to present my thoughts on this, and talked with the Latin Americans about a translation into Spanish and Portuguese. Often Christian media are not bringing the news that really matters from a Kingdom point of view, and I believe we can and should change this. Who else will hear about half a billion hindus, half a billion buddhists and animists, and a quarter of a million muslims (realistic estimations) coming to Christ in the next ten years?

5. New hope for Europe

I'm glad I pushed the envelope to be in Joburg with our wider European team. We gave a confident presentation of our continent, showing that Europe offers in many ways a unique missional challenge. Reinhold gave the framework, Martin Robinson (Eurochurch) shared a perspective on the transition Europe is going through, Andreas gave the statistics, and I provided a quick overview of the new expressions of church we see popping up. Andrew had a separate presentation on the emerging generation, and David Toth, the new East Europe director, introduced his still embryonic team and priorities for the next five years. Compared to other continents Europe looks a bit bleak, but Reinhold reminded us of the Gideon principle. "When God wants to do something big, He starts with the weak and small. And isn't DAWN the smallest ministry with the biggest vision?" This explains why a relatively high percentage of the DAWN associates are married to a psychologist - you must be quite insane to even try to disciple a whole nation! :-)

At Joburg Airport

I'm at Joburg airport now, waiting for my flight. The past few days were busy with meetings and internet access at the hotel was very slow and expensive, so not a good blogging environment. Feel blessed by the past week, met so many wonderful people, with crazy Kingdom stories. More later, when I'm back in the Netherlands.

Going organic in Pretoria

Flying from Capetown to Johannesburg is the same distance as Amsterdam-Barcelona. South Africa is quite big country with lots of space. The hotel where we meet is 15 mins from the airport, and I arrived just in time for my lunch meeting with Gerda Leithgöb, one of the researchers and prayer leaders in South Africa, who also ministers a lot in Europe. I met Gerda in 1997 in the house of prayer in Utrecht, and she taught me the basics of spiritual mapping, also known as prophetic research. It was good to catch up.

After lunch I went for a nap. Johannesburg is at an altitude of 1750 meters above sea level, which means less oxygen, and initial tiredness. In the evening Andrew, Alexander and I met up with the organic church planting guys from the States - John White, Tim Pynes, Greg Strand and Kent Smith. It’s really good to get to know each other, as we’re working in the same stream of ministry. Yesterday I organized an excursion for them to Pretoria, where we visited the Voortrekkersmonument (Pioneer settlers monument), an impressive building depicting the history of the great trek of the Dutch-Reformed Boers from Cape province to the north, and the Union Buildings, an enormous park with flowers and palm trees in front of the government buildings. We also had a beer on Church Square, with a free sermon from the waitress on the importance of day and night intercession.



This morning we continued the conversation on the essence of church, church planting approaches, training, and more. Also met Gene Davis, a veterinarian doctor who works in India. He shared some typically God stories of what’s happening in this subcontinent.

Tonight the DAWN international associates’ conference will start, and this afternoon we will prepare our presentation for Europe. More later, including some pictures.

Transformation Africa Village

Today we visited the Transformation Africa Village, a piece of land where several ministries who serve Africa pool their resources and want to live as a community. After meeting the team, I spent some time with Isebel Spangenberg to exchange contacts for Joel News and the Global Day of Prayer. She also told me some great stories of what God is doing in Africa and the typical African way of getting things done - hakuna matata. At lunchtime Etienne took Amaury and me to a great sea food restaurant at the waterfront - yes, I told you I’m being spoilt here. And did I tell you I’m staying in a villa with swimming pool? These are the kind of stories you better not put in your missionary newsletter, right? Next time I’ll visit the townships, promise. ;-) Anyway, my host Niel and his family were so kind to also throw a barbeque, which the South Africans call a ‘braai’.



Niel is a property developer, and also the transformation visionary in this part of Capetown. We had some interesting conversations. He showed me the research done by Stellenbosch University in which they mapped every neighbourhood in Capetown. What they found (consistently all over the area) is an unexpected correlation between the church density on the one hand and crime and immorality on the other. In other words: the more churches, the less healthy the community! This is an interesting outcome, also for DAWN, because it clearly shows that even with a church on every 500-1000 people, the community impact can be nil. A sleeping church is even worse than no church. We talked a lot about holistic ministry and church as a movement. These guys know that repentance, prayer, community outreach and reformation are all connected. The people most aware of this are the poor and the young, while most resistance often comes from the pastors.

I look back on two great days with special people in Capetown. Tomorrow I’m off to Joburg.

The fruits of the land

Oh what a day… it’s sunny and warm in beautiful Capetown, and the South Africans are spoiling me big time. This morning Etienne took me to Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, where (as you can see on the picture below) we enjoyed the fruits of the land and a great view on the mountains. In the afternoon Gary Power, who works at the Transformation Africa office, too me up to Table Mount by funicular. Up there you have a great view over the whole bay area with Cape Point, Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was emprisoned), and a steep mountain range called ‘The Twelve Apostles’. (Click on the pictures to enlarge.)

On my way to South Africa

Tomorrow I'll be flying to South Africa. Thursday and Friday I plan to be in Capetown, meeting with Etienne Pieck, the youth strategy coordinator for the Global Day of Prayer and Amaury Braga, the international prayer coordinator for Dawn Ministries. Then Saturday until Thursday I will be in Johannesburg for the associates meeting of the DAWN international network. Missions strategy people from all over the world will be here (including 12 from Europe), so this should be good. Not much chance that I will see any lion, elephant, rhino, giraffe or buffalo on this trip, but at least I've been in Africa.

Desperate Netherlands

According to the European Spiritual Estimate, there is on average only one Gospel-Oriented church for every 27.749 people on the continent. In red the nations where there is even less than one church for every 40.000 people! Compare this to one church for every 1.766 people in China and one for every 2.413 people in India, and Europe starts standing out as today's most desperate mission field!

As you can see on this map, the Netherlands are also in the red numbers, which means there are around 400 churches in our nation who are actively concerned about the people in their community and their relationship with Jesus Christ. I commented about this on Andreas Wolf's weblog, stating that there are ten times more churches in the Netherlands, but he pointed out that probably one out of every 10 churches is actively evangelizing or church planting. I'm afraid he's right, and the local research we did in Utrecht confirms this. Out of 80 churches in Utrecht only 10 are actively, on a structural basis, reaching out to the community. Time to repent I guess.

Communion kids' style

Today I told my kids the story of the Last Supper. To make it more concrete, I suggested to have communion together. David said: "That's a good idea, Dad, let's do it in Peter's room." Peter, who always prefers sweets over normal food, suggested: "How about using cookies instead of bread?" I agreed, and got raisin biscuits and fruit syrup.

I handed David the buiscuits and asked: "Do you remember what Jesus said when he took the bread?" David: "Yes, he took the bread and broke it [breaking the cookies] and said 'this is my body, eat it'. I explained the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice for us, then gave the cup with fruit syrup to Peter, asking: "Do you remember what Jesus said when He took the cup?" Peter: "Yes, He said 'this is fruit syrup, and you can drink it all.'"

Also see the earlier episode titled 'Following Jesus kids' style'.

A new church for Europe

Had a good weekend. Saturday night dinner in Harderwijk with Roger Mitchell, Pieter & Helene Bos and Henriet Ferguson, assessing Dutch-British relations. They are working on some reconciliation issues, to help both nations grow in their God-given calling.

On Sunday morning I gave a seminar at the SoulNet weekend in Oldebroek titled 'A new church for Europe', envisioning one million new organic churches by 2020, touching all spheres of life. There was a good response by the young leaders, and I pray some of them will multipy 30-, 60- or 100-fold.



Unfortunately my notebook broke down. Let's hope it can be fixed before I go to South Africa, I would feel really disabled without. It's incredible how much my notebook has become an extension of my brain and flow of work.

What a pity...

... that Adam and Eve were no Chinese. They would have eaten the snake instead of the apple, and all history would have developed so differently.
(from Reinhold's blog, and Stefan Lingott comments)

Humor in the muslim world

The publication of a few Muh*ad cartoons by Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten caused a disproportiate reaction among fundamentalist muslims. Touch Muh*ad and you run the risk of having your property destroyed and a price being put on your head. Although it's never right to intentionally hurt people, I find the politically correct appeasement policy expressed by some leading political and religious leaders more startling than any of those cartoons. By principle I believe that the freedom of press and speech is more important than any religion's sacred cows, including Christianity's.

Now an Iranian newspaper, ready to pour oil on the fire, threatened to publish cartoons that mock the Jews and the holocaust. That's nothing new, really, and it has nothing to do with freedom of press, because there is no freedom of press in sharia-ruled Iran. Arabic, Palestinian and Iranian newspapers have been very intentional and structural in their anti-jewish propaganda over the past few years. Check out this article by Honest Reporting. Besides, in most islamic nations Christians are being discriminated and persecuted, while in Denmark and other EU nations muslims enjoy the same rights and liberties as other citizens. This whole controversy is becoming quite pathetic, and raises the question: what's under the surface?

Of course it's a clash of cultures. The values of Western democracy are incompatible with the more or less medieval mindset of fundamentalist muslims. But we also have to see the spiritual dynamics. Intercessors picked up on the developments and discern a 'spirit of ji*ad'. However you name it, when studying the life of Muh*ad it becomes quite obvious that he not only received 'revelation' from a demonic being, but also had a slightly distorted personality. He commited genocide on the jews in town, and the persistant focus of some of his followers on ji*ad, certainly indicates that there is a spirit of war and violence in the roots of this religion. The way the cartoon controversy is currently being exploited by muslim fundamentalist organisations is manipulative and intended to intimidate. They seem to be quite successful with that.

The challenge for Jesus-followers is to love and honor muslims and share Christ with them, while discerning the spirits of war and intimidation at work behind islam as a whole, and clearly confronting that in prayer.

Now how about humor - are cartoons beneficial at all from a Christian point of view? Yes, says Dutch ethics professor G.C. den Hertog in the Reformed Daily. And how about muslims - is there any sense of humor in the muslim world? Warner Independent Pictures just released a movie titled 'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World' (broadband trailer here), that made it to the official selection of the Dubai International Film Festival. So yes, praise God, there are muslims with a sense of humor.

Greenhousing in Cologne

I spent a few days in Cologne to check out Neil Cole's Greenhouse seminar for organic church planters. In two days he outlined biblical missional principles for reproduction that one can apply in any cultural context. So a lot was about DNA, sowing, reaping and gardening, though the classroom-style of teaching was less organic. Most of Neil's teaching is also availabe in his book 'Organic Church. Growing Faith Where Life Happens'.

Around 80 percent of the participants were American missionaries to Europe, which made it an interesting cross-cultural experience. ;-) It was good to catch up with Connect friends Jeff, Andi, Gabi and Petr, and with Rick and Bogdan from Poland.

The edge of reason

"I truly believe that happiness is possible even when you're thirty three and have a bottom the size of two bowling balls." Renée Zellweger in 'Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason', a British-style romantic movie with a high dose of irony, and a playful reference to the succesful BBC series 'Pride and Prejudice', with -again- Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. It was so funny that we watched it twice and didn't hit the bed before one o'clock.

Playing church on your PC

What a blast, this Megachurch PC game developed by e-church's Tim Bednar. Imagine if you could create the church you wanted, any way you wanted. In this game you pastor a simulated church and create your own Christian empire. Hire and fire staff and deal with idiots, naive volunteers, and denominational egos. Attract fickle unchurched people with Bingo, revival meetings or fasting - it is all up to you!

Choose a denomination (Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, plus many more obscure factions and a brand new emergent plug-in). Implement the latest ministry fad. With network play enabled, you can steal members from other churches and earn points just like you saved them yourself. The possibilities are endless! Denominations and Bible colleges use this game to prepare potential church planters and associate pastors. It is better than an internship!

A field guide to Evangelicals

Satirical e-zine Lark News published 'A field guide to evangelicals and their habitat'. Just read chaper 1 titled 'What evangelicals believe, plus a master list of who is going to hell'. Quote:

"The evangelical fixation on hell may bother you, but from a sociological point of view, believing in hell is thought to be less violent-inducing then believing in heaven. Members of some religions go on suicide runs, thinking they will earn a vaunted position in heaven, including dozens of 'extra virgins'. In contrast, evangelicals don't want anyone to die until they have received Jesus."



To be extra clear, the book charts out who will go to hell: the Clintons, all Catholics, the Dalai Lama, all divorce lawyers, Michael Moore, the whole staff of the New York Times, and SpongeBob SquarePants. And this is only a fragment of the list. Other chapters include 'Evangelical mating habits: the shocking truth', 'Planning your field trip to an evangelical church' and 'Decorating like an evangelical'. You can also do the EQ test, to determine how evangelical you are.